US President Donald Trump listens while White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller speaks in Warren, Michigan, April 29, 2025. Photo: AP/Paul Sancya.
By Misión Verdad – Oct 8, 2025
Recent reports by The New York Times and CNN confirm a dangerous escalation in the Trump administration’s foreign policy toward Venezuela and starkly expose the legal and military mechanisms being activated to justify a potential direct intervention if the scenario shifts from psychological operations and extrajudicial killings in the southern Caribbean to one where the expectations of the US war party—whose chief representative is the current secretary of state—are met.
Far from being a legitimate response to alleged ties between Nicolás Maduro’s government and drug trafficking—accusations already widely discredited by independent investigations and international organizations—these moves are part of a deliberate and coherent regime-change strategy made within the framework of a contemporary update of the Monroe Doctrine that seeks to reaffirm US hegemony in Latin America and the Caribbean through the threat or direct use of force.
Narco state: a lie as pretext
The Trump administration has built its narrative on unfounded accusations that portray Venezuela as a “narco-terrorist state.”
However, these allegations lack solid evidentiary support and have been systematically used as a tool for political pressure.
Trump’s recent decision to cancel the diplomatic negotiations led by his special envoy, Richard Grenell—who was seeking a negotiated solution to avoid a broader confrontation—demonstrates that the objective was never cooperation or fact-checking but rather the unilateral imposition of unacceptable conditions on Venezuela in order to create a pretext for intervention.
The fact that figures such as Marco Rubio, John Ratcliffe (CIA director), and Stephen Miller (a key Trump advisor) are openly pushing for a military operation to overthrow President Maduro, as reported by the NYT, reinforces the thesis that the discourse on drug trafficking is merely instrumental.
It is not about combating transnational crime but about legitimizing for US public opinion—and, to a lesser extent, international opinion—an aggression that flagrantly violates international law and the sovereignty of a United Nations member state.
Mass Demonstrations as Venezuela Demands UN Action to Halt US Military Threat
Legal loophole in the service of secret warfare
Perhaps the most alarming aspect revealed by CNN is the existence of a classified opinion from the US Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) granting US President Trump the authority to order the use of lethal force against a “secret list” of cartels and suspected traffickers.
This legal interpretation—which equates drug trafficking with an “armed attack” against the United States—represents a dangerous expansion of executive powers comparable to the covert warfare policies implemented after 9/11 but now applied across the entire American continent.
By declaring drug traffickers “illegal combatants” in a supposed “armed conflict,” the Trump administration blurs the line between organized crime and war, opening the door to extrajudicial executions, covert operations, and military attacks without congressional authorization or judicial oversight.
This logic is legally questionable—as lawyers from the Pentagon itself have pointed out—and it also normalizes lethal violence as a tool of foreign policy in the region.
Basically, “Make America Great Again” translates into a state of exception in which necropolitics is imposed at the institutional level: Washington decides who should live and who should die, at its discretion, in addition to waging its own hegemonic war.
Militarization of the Caribbean and the risk of regional war
The unprecedented deployment of US military assets in the Caribbean—including at least four attacks on vessels in international waters—cannot be interpreted as a mere anti-drug operation. It is a strategic show of force designed to intimidate the Venezuelan government and prepare the ground for a possible direct intervention.
This action clearly reflects a neocolonial vision that considers Latin America as a “backyard” where Washington can act without accountability.
The militarization of the Caribbean under the pretext of drug trafficking is, in essence, a rehash of the Monroe Doctrine, updated for the 21st century: it reaffirms US supremacy and criminalizes any attempt at political autonomy in the region.
In this context, Venezuela—due to its historical resistance to imperialism and its alliance with China, Russia, and Iran—becomes a prized target for its resources and geographic location.
The reports from the NYT and CNN should be read as early warning signs of an escalation that could lead to open war.
The cancelation of diplomacy, the creation of secret legal frameworks to justify lethal force, the expansion of the CIA’s authorities, and the military deployment in the Caribbean form a coherent framework aimed at overthrowing the Venezuelan government.
Facing this strategy, the international community—in particular the countries of Latin America—has a responsibility to denounce these actions for what they are: an imperialist aggression disguised as a fight against crime. Colombia has stepped forward in this regard, as have Cuba and Nicaragua as leading countries of ALBA-TCP.
A scenario of belligerent imposition by the United States not only affects Venezuela, although it is an official White House objective, but also involves the rest of the hemisphere, whether through geopolitical convergence, moral conviction, or mere exemplary punishment—”this could happen to you too.”
Peace in the region depends on the collective ability to resist this new wave of interventionism and defend the inviolable principle of national sovereignty in a region that has been declared a zone of peace.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/SL
Misión Verdad
Misión Verdad is a Venezuelan investigative journalism website with a socialist perspective in defense of the Bolivarian Revolution
