Venezuela a test of US strength

Donald Trump has not said explicitly that he wants to put an end to the repressive Russia- and Cuba-backed drug-smuggling dictatorship run by loony-left bus driver turned dictator Nicolas Maduro in oil-rich Venezuela. But that is indisputably the implication of the US President’s build-up in the Caribbean of an invasion-sized armada of warships that includes the USS Gerald R. Ford, the nation’s biggest aircraft carrier, and F-35 fighters and thousands of marines.

He had good reason to provoke the showdown. The political cover for the weeks of intimidation Mr Trump has directed against the regime in Caracas has been his determination to put an end to Venezuela’s role as a source for drugs entering the US. But you don’t send an estimated quarter of the US’s deployed warships to the Caribbean just to blow up drug smugglers’ boats, almost 30 of which have already been destroyed.

The President’s targeting of suspected Venezuelan drug-smuggling boats has drawn criticism, not least because it contradicts the decision he announced a few days ago to issue a presidential pardon for former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, 57, who was sentenced by a New York court in 2024 to 45 years in prison in the US over drug trafficking.

In the drug-trafficking business, Hernandez is as bad as they come. An associate of notorious Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin Guzman Loera, known as El Chapo, he is blamed for bringing at least 500 tonnes of cocaine into the US. Mr Trump said he had issued the pardon because “many friends” had asked him to do so: “They gave him 45 years because he was the president of the country – you could do this to any president of any country.”

Having launched his campaign against the oppressive socialist dictatorship in Caracas, Mr Trump must see it through to Mr Maduro’s removal from power. The stakes for Mr Trump in his showdown over drug supplies from Venezuela to the US are a test of policy coherence and strength in the US’s backyard at a time the Russia-Cuba alliance and China are increasing their subversive actions in the region. Mr Trump and the credibility of the US will be the losers if Mr Maduro emerges triumphant.