Venezuela Isn’t The Global Threat, Trump And Rubio Are

Will the U.S. government push forward with regime change in Venezuela?

By Daniel Falcone, Foreign Policy In Focus

U.S. warships and aircraft have gathered in the Caribbean as part of Washington’s latest military buildup in a renewed effort to combat narcotics trafficking. Many analysts see a familiar mix of political posturing and regime-change ambitions rather than a serious security operation.

In this exclusive interview for FPIF, sociologist and Venezuela specialist David Smilde talks about how the current show of force fits into a pattern of U.S. intervention in the region. Smilde examines the Trump administration’s motives, the outsized role of Secretary of State Marco Rubio in driving Venezuela policy, and the consequences of casting Nicolás Maduro as a “narco-terrorist” threat. He also looks at how both Washington and Caracas deploy “performance as strategy” and what remains for diplomacy and regional mediation amid deepening hostilities.

David Smilde is the Charles A. and Leo M. Favrot Professor of Human Relations and Senior Associate at the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research at Tulane University. He has researched Venezuela for three decades and lived there for 16 years.

Daniel Falcone: With the U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean and justifications of force as a counter-narcotics campaign, how is this not a genuine security initiative and more of a politically motivated show of force?

David Smilde: As many people have pointed out, Venezuela is not a leading source of cocaine coming to the United States and the most recent Drug Enforcement Agency numbers suggest less than 10 percent moves through Venezuela. Most of it originates in Colombia and moves through the Pacific route and through Mexico. In any case, most overdose deaths in the United States come from fentanyl, and none of that comes from Venezuela or elsewhere in South America. This is, first and foremost, political theater for Trump’s base. He campaigned on the idea that he would use the U.S. military against drug cartels, and these bombings of purported drug boats play well with his base.

There is no Cartel de los Soles in Venezuela or anywhere else. That is a tongue-in-cheek name created by some journalists 30 years ago to refer to the fact that there are military officers involved in drug trafficking. It became a real “thing” when it was the basis of a 2020 indictment of Maduro in the context of the maximum pressure campaign against him during Juan Guaido’s interim government.

Of course, the names of these cartels are usually created not by cartel members themselves but from the outside. But the term “cartel” actually has a meaning. It refers to situations in which various drug traffickers get together in one organization to coordinate and distribute providers, routes and markets, and follow a strategic plan to maximize prices and profits. That has not happened in Venezuela. There is no drug cartel for Maduro or anyone else to lead. Instead, there is the more typical ecosystem of various small scale drug networks going about their business, often with tacit agreements between them over territory, but without any kind of overall coordination or strategy as you would get with a cartel.

Furthermore, the idea of an invasion by the Tren de Aragua criminal gang is entirely bogus. The Tren de Aragua really does exist but focuses more on local drug trafficking and extortion rings in Venezuela, Colombia, Peru and Chile, and now apparently in Spain. They are not known to engage in maritime or even cross-national drug trafficking. The idea of a Tren de Aragua invasion of the United States has been promoted by Marco Rubio and members of the Venezuelan opposition precisely to frame what is happening in Venezuela as a threat to U.S. national security, requiring a military response.

Another important element behind this is the desire for regime change. The first Trump administration tried but failed to push Maduro out. Now, after the July 2024 electoral fraud, Maduro is an international pariah, widely seen as illegitimate inside and outside of Venezuela. At the same time, Marco Rubio is secretary of state and national security advisor, the two most powerful positions in foreign policy in the U.S. government. He has long been committed to regime change in Venezuela, in part because he thinks it would lead to regime change in Cuba and Nicaragua as well.

Trump, of course, is a long-time critic of regime-change operations, but Rubio has been able to repackage this as a battle against “narco-terrorism.” Every opportunity he gets, Rubio repeats the idea that Maduro is not president of Venezuela, he is the leader of a drug cartel. This could potentially be the justification for an air strike against Maduro, just like Trump did against Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in 2020, or some type of seizure and extraction.

Such an operation would likely just lead to a reorganization of the current government into an even more repressive version. But Trump could say “I did my part, now the Venezuelan opposition can do theirs.” And the truth is, they have been continually telling the Trump administration that the Maduro government is weak and they are ready to fill in the gap.

DF: Maduro mobilized millions of militia personnel and presented the crisis as a defense of national sovereignty. How much of this is political versus genuine self-defense? 

DS: In this case, performance is self-defense. Maduro wants to try to demonstrate that, in the case of an invasion, the population would not be easily controlled nor easily turned against the government. Or at least it wants to show that any U.S. military action would end up having significant “collateral damage” in the civilian population. Maduro’s public appearances in recent months have been among crowds of people or in hotels, probably with this logic in mind, i.e. increasing the costs of any air strike against him. We can expect this to continue as Maduro has shown time and again that the continuation of his government is more important to him than the well-being of the population.

DF: Do you see any place for civil society organizations to help in the mediation process? U.S.-Venezuela relations look to be at an all-time low.  

DS: At the current moment, the situation seems to outstrip the potential agency of civil society organizations, and diplomacy and negotiations will be at the state-to-state level. If there is military action against Venezuela, regional leaders will need to speak out loudly and clearly against it and try to seek a peaceful way forward. Both Presidents Lula da Silva in Brazil and Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico have expressed interest in mediating.

And that’s good, because one big reason for the current situation is the lack of effective regional diplomacy in 2024. While there were important statements from Colombia, Brazil, and Mexico, and none of them recognized Maduro’s claim to victory, they were never able to work together in a unified diplomatic effort to get Venezuela back on track. This left the field wide open for Rubio and Trump to fill this space in pursuit of their own political goals. Many Venezuelans feel that the world has forgotten them and moved on, only Donald Trump has taken up their cause. It’s an important lesson that progressive forces in the hemisphere need to reflect upon and address.

However, if Trump decides to just pack up and, say, go to the Pacific or focus on Mexico, there is likely to be a wave of repression within Venezuela against civil society and what opposition is left in the country, as Maduro seeks retribution. If that is the case, international organizations will be key to making sure this does not happen in the dark and trying to raise the costs for the Maduro government.

DF: Based on years of U.S. human rights abuses and illiberal and immoral sanctions, what path do you see toward rebuilding any semblance of a functional relationship between D.C. and Caracas? 

DS: U.S. actions should be criticized for the damage they have done and are doing in Venezuela. But that cannot overshadow the history of Chavismo’s aggressive erosion of democracy and widespread human rights violations. This is a left project that has gone wrong, that has betrayed its people and continues to oppress them.

Right now, it is hard to imagine any kind of positive relationship developing between the United States and Venezuela, but things can change fast. An old adage says, “in international politics, there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies, only permanent interests.” The United States has one of the world’s largest economies and Venezuela has the largest proven reserves of oil in the world, as well as a population with high human development indices. You can add in the fact that there are now hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans living in the United States. Everything points towards the potential for a mutually beneficial relationship, and one can easily imagine that happening, post-Maduro and post-Trump.

And you really do not even need to go that far back. During the first six months of the Trump administration, there were two competing theories of how to deal with Venezuela, the one we are currently seeing from Marco Rubio and the one that pointed towards negotiation and normalization with Ric Grenell. For a few months it seemed like Grenell was winning. Now it seems Rubio has the upper hand. But it is entirely possible that Trump could get tired of pushing for Maduro’s ouster and seek to come up with some sort of agreement for access to Venezuelan resources that would make Trump appear like the great dealmaker.

There are also signs that this is part of a broader reorientation of U.S. policies in Latin America, becoming a version of “separate spheres.” As U.S. global hegemony wanes, the Trump administration could be deciding that the Americas is the space in which the U.S. is preeminent. On the one hand, we have seen bombings off the Colombian coast and verbal sparring and retribution against Colombian president Gustavo Petro. And there are suggestions that Mexico could be next for U.S. attacks against supposed drug cartels. On the other hand, Trump recently provided Argentinian President Javier Milei with a $20 billion bailout, shortly before Argentinian regional elections.

This is what some are calling the “Donroe Doctrine,” a new stage of the Monroe Doctrine where the United States seeks to focus on Latin America and attempt to diminish the influence of China and Russia. So far, Trump has been able to keep Latin American leaders atomized with the threat of tariffs. But that could change over time as Trump loses support, and the region starts to see common cause in the emerging geopolitical context.

DF: What do you make of Trump’s recent suggestion that he could send in ground troops?

DS: In the past couple of days, President Trump has sent mixed messages, probably intentionally. On the one hand, he said “we’re going to talk to Maduro, he wants to talk,” suggesting there could be negotiations instead of a military strike. On the other hand, he told reporters he would not rule out troops on the ground. Parallel to Trump’s statements, Marco Rubio has announced that they would be seeking to name the “Cartel of the Suns” as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, but that this would not happen for another week, the grace period during which Congress can voice objections. Once they do that, it will be even easier for them to target Nicolás Maduro. This comes as polls have shown that the idea of military action in Venezuela is very unpopular among the U.S. public. This, at the same time that Trump’s candidates lost across the board in elections two weeks ago and Trump’s own ratings have reached new lows, putting him 13 points under water.

The current idea seems to be to strike up conversations with Nicolás Maduro with the sword of Damocles over his head, wresting whatever concessions they can. Just what U.S. demands will be is not clear. Rubio clearly will be pushing for regime change. Trump seems more motivated by geopolitics and Venezuela’s natural resources. If he could gain exclusive U.S. access to Venezuelan oil and mineral wealth, he could declare victory while satisfying his “America First” base and not getting involved in an unpopular regime change operation.