The ‘drug war’ is a war for control of Venezuela’s oil
Donald Trump has opened a war in the Caribbean — without Congress, without evidence, and without limits. What was once called “drug interdiction” has been renamed a “non-international armed conflict” by Trump on Oct. 2. The new label hands the White House a blank check to kill, no questions asked.
In the past month, U.S. forces blew apart three small boats, killing 17 people. None were arrested, none put on trial. They were gunned down at sea — and only afterward did the White House declare them “combatants,” dressing up executions as acts of war.
To justify it, the administration claims drug shipments themselves are “armed attacks” on the United States. By this logic, smuggling cocaine is the same as launching an invasion — a stretch so absurd it borders on parody.
Of course, this also ignores that Venezuela is not involved in any way with the global drug trade. Pino Arlacchi, former head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), says that decades of annual reports on drug trafficking never once mention Venezuela, because it doesn’t exist.
Pino Arlacchi continues: “Yet Venezuela is systematically demonized, contrary to every principle of truth. In his memoir following his resignation, former FBI Director James Comey revealed the unspoken motives behind American policies towards Venezuela. Trump told him that Maduro’s government was ‘sitting on a mountain of oil that we have to buy.’ This is not about drugs, crime or national security. It is about oil that the U.S. would rather not pay for.”
The Quantico show of force
On Sept. 30, Trump and his handpicked “Secretary of War,” Fox host Pete Hegseth, ordered every four-star in the country and around the world — more than 800 generals and admirals — to Marine Corps Base Quantico.
On the surface, it was staged like a pep rally. But while the brass gathered, U.S. warships piled up off Venezuela’s coast, and military spotters tracked waves of U.S. jets and refueling tankers heading toward the Middle East. The movements looked almost identical to the days before Trump’s June strike on Iran.
Former CIA officer Larry Johnson suggested the Quantico spectacle was a cover for a smaller, closed-door war council. If Trump is gearing up for simultaneous action against Venezuela and Iran, he’d need his top commanders in the room — and away from prying eyes.
Venezuela in the crosshairs
To sell the escalation, the White House has begun hyping Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang as a “terrorist organization.” (“Tren de Aragua” isn’t a tightly organized gang but rather a brand name for a loose network of criminals who operate without any structure.) Yet the official memo never even names who the U.S. is supposedly at war with. That’s by design. Trump picks the enemy, hands himself kill authority, and brushes Congress aside.
Meanwhile, Navy ships linger off Venezuela, and leaks suggest plans for strikes inside the country itself. Semafor reported, “The Trump administration isn’t ruling out launching military strikes inside Venezuela … a senior Trump administration official confirmed.”
This isn’t about narcotics. It’s about expanding U.S. domination — and using the “drug war” as the excuse.
The real target is not drugs but regime change in Venezuela, home to the largest proven oil reserves globally. Trump administration officials privately call the Naval operations in the Caribbean “Noriega Part 2” — a reference to the 1989 invasion of Panama that toppled Manuel Noriega.
The drug war has always been a tool of empire. Now the mask is off. Trump’s doctrine is blunt: call anyone a “combatant,” move the battlefield wherever he wants, and keep Congress out of it.
This is not a war on drugs. It’s a war for domination. A war to turn the Caribbean and Latin America into live-fire zones. A war to normalize summary executions as U.S. foreign policy.
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