The prospect of U.S. military action against Venezuela and the regime of Nicolas Maduro is growing by the day, with U.S. President Donald Trump threatening this week to begin land operations in the Latin American country “very soon.”
The Trump administration has accused Maduro of leading a “narco-terrorist” state that facilitates drug trafficking into the U.S. and Europe, and of flooding the U.S. with illegal immigrants.
The U.S. has raised pressure on Venezuela by moving an armada of aircraft carriers and other warships to the region, along with thousands of troops. The military has also conducted more than 20 strikes on vessels suspected of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, which the administration has said are being run by drug cartels — some of them in collusion with Maduro’s government, which Maduro denies.
The legality of those strikes, which the Pentagon said this week have killed more than 80 people to date, has come under increased scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers. The Pentagon on Friday confirmed its latest strike in the area killed four people.
Despite no formal declaration of war against Venezuela, Trump has suggested the military operations against drug cartels could expand to within the country itself and could involve the CIA.
“You know, the land is much easier, much easier. And we know the routes they take,” Trump told reporters Tuesday as he met with his cabinet at the White House. “We know everything about them. We know where they live. We know where the bad ones live. And we’re going to start that very soon, too.”
The Department of National Defence told Global News that Canada “continues to monitor the situation closely.”
“The U.S.’s actions are unilateral and the Canadian Armed Forces does not participate,” a spokesperson said in an email.
Max Cameron, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia who studies Latin America, said in an interview that the U.S.’s military strategy is alarming.
He warned a military conflict between the U.S. and Venezuela could push the South American country into violent civil war — particularly if Maduro relinquishes power.
“I think there’s a sense of horror in many places that this is a return to gunboat diplomacy, to the Monroe Doctrine, to the Americans treating the Caribbean as an American lake that they can control and do what they want in, that they don’t have to comply with international law,” Cameron said.
The 1823 Monroe Doctrine, formulated by former U.S. president James Monroe, was originally aimed at opposing any European meddling in the Western Hemisphere and was used to justify U.S. military interventions in Latin America.
What is behind the U.S. actions against Venezuela?
Trump and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio have called Maduro an illegitimate president since his 2018 re-election, which the G7 and independent observers like the United Nations Panel of Electoral Experts said was plagued with voting irregularities.
Those countries and observer groups also accused Maduro of rigging the 2024 presidential election in his favour.
Canada has refused to recognize Maduro’s presidency alongside the rest of the G7 and has sanctioned members of the regime, most recently in March. The government has suspended consular services in Caracas and advises Canadians to avoid all travel to the country.
More than seven million people have fled Venezuela, according to Human Rights Watch, where Maduro has overseen a collapsing economy and violent — even deadly — human rights abuses since taking power in 2013.
In 2020, during Trump’s first term, U.S. prosecutors charged Maduro and top officials with narco-terrorism and drug trafficking offences, and announced a US$15-million reward for Maduro’s arrest. That bounty has since been raised to US$50 million.
The indictment accused Maduro of leading the Cártel de Los Soles, or “Cartel of the Suns,” which prosecutors say infiltrated Venezuela’s government, judiciary and military and has worked with gangs like Tren de Aragua and drug trafficking organizations like Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel to “flood” the U.S. with cocaine from Colombia and with the help of other Latin American countries.
Independent experts and researchers have cast doubt on whether the Cártel de Los Soles is a traditional drug trafficking organization — where the sole focus is the distribution and sale of drugs — but have acknowledged the Maduro regime is rife with corruption and colludes with drug traffickers to enrich itself.
Last month, the U.S. State Department declared the Cártel de Los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization, a designation also made for Tren de Aragua and Mexican drug cartels earlier this year.
The Tren de Aragua and cartel terrorist designations have been used by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Pentagon to justify the U.S. military strikes on alleged drug boats under a 2001 law, the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which allows a U.S. president to take military action against terrorist groups without congressional approval.
Although the law was passed to allow for quick actions against terrorist groups behind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, it has been broadly used by multiple administrations to go after designated terrorist groups around the world over the ensuing decades.
Designating Cártel de Los Soles would allow Trump to order military action against Maduro’s government in the same fashion.
Democratic lawmakers and even some Republicans have argued only Congress has the power to approve foreign wars, noting the unprecedented nature of attacking drug cartels with military force under the AUMF law.
“The American people do not want to be dragged into endless war with Venezuela without public debate or a vote,” Republican Sen. Rand Paul said Wednesday in a joint statement with Democrats pushing a war powers resolution for Venezuela in the Senate. “We ought to defend what the Constitution demands: deliberation before war.”
Do Canada, allies have a role?
CNN and the New York Times reported last month that the United Kingdom — a key U.S. partner in the Caribbean — has stopped sharing intelligence about drug trafficking in the Caribbean Sea because it did not want to be “complicit” in strikes Britain views as possibly illegal. Rubio called the report “false.”
The CNN report also said Canada has “distanced itself” from the strikes and told the U.S. it won’t share intelligence for the operations, although it will continue its U.S. Coast Guard partnership in the Caribbean.
Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand declined to comment on that report or the strikes in general when asked at the G7 foreign ministers meeting in Ontario last month, which Rubio attended.
“The United States has made clear that it is using its own intelligence, and that has been clear for some time,” she said, adding she did not bring up the strikes with Rubio at the meeting.
“In terms of Canadian efforts, I will say that we have been, under Operation CARIBBE and the Canadian Armed Forces, supporting the U.S. Coast Guard (and) intercepting narcotics destined for North America. We’re continuing to monitor the situation, but we have no involvement in the operations you’re referring to.”
Anand’s office and Global Affairs Canada deferred questions this week to the Department of National Defence. The minister’s office would not say if she and Rubio have discussed Venezuela in their recent conversations.
Trump’s actions against Venezuela, Cameron said, “has put the international community in a very difficult position” with no easy solutions.
“I would love to be able to say we should go back to diplomatic negotiations, which the regime has completely played,” he said. “So it is a very, very tough situation. That’s just the reality.”
Does the U.S. want regime change?
Trump has said, “we’re not talking about” regime change in Venezuela or removing Maduro from power.
But U.S. media outlets like Politico, citing administration sources, have reported that Rubio — the son of Cuban immigrants and a longtime critic of socialist leaders like Maduro — is the architect of the Venezuela strategy, with the goal of pressuring Maduro to give up power.
“Rubio has hit on a formula, which is we sort of combine the war on drugs with the war on terrorism,” Cameron said.
Democratic Rep. Adam Smith, who sits on the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, told NBC News last month that Rubio “denied” the administration was pursuing regime change in a classified briefing with lawmakers.
Cameron said he believes the Trump administration doesn’t want to admit to regime change plans “because then the analogy becomes Iraq” and the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein, which destabilized that country for years afterward.
Asked in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday if the U.S. is on the verge of conflict with Venezuela, Rubio said “no” but proceeded to defend the U.S. operations and poured cold water on efforts to resolve the issue with diplomacy.
“The fact that Maduro feels threatened by the presence of U.S. assets in the region in a counter-drug mission, it proves that he’s into the drug business,” he said.
“If you wanted to make a deal with him, I don’t know how you do it. He’s broken every deal he’s ever made. Now that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.”
Reuters reported on Monday that Trump spoke with Maduro by phone last month and told him he had a week to leave Venezuela and give up power. Trump last weekend announced airspace over Venezuela was “closed” — an announcement Reuters reported marked the end of the week-long deadline — which raised speculation of an imminent U.S. attack.
Maduro, who has denied the U.S. accusations against him and sought to rally the Venezuelan people to his side amidst Trump’s pressure campaign, confirmed Wednesday he had spoken with Trump, describing the call as “cordial.”
Trump this week met with his national security team to discuss “next steps” for Venezuela, but a decision has not been announced.
Cameron said a U.S. military invasion could bring about not just violent resistance from the military and pro-regime guerilla forces known as “colectivos,” but also what he called a “generation-defining civil conflict” to fill the power vacuum “that could go on for decades.”
“It’s a highly armed society, and not all of the people who are organized and armed are part of the chain of command,” he said. “It’s also a deeply divided country.”