Earlier this week, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro announced he’s preparing to declare a state of emergency over what he calls the threat of U.S. aggression. This comes after several deadly U.S. strikes on suspected Venezuelan drug boats.
Though it hasn’t received much attention in the U. S., Reuters and others report a buildup of U.S. military ships and planes near the Venezuelan coast. And though President Trump has said there are no plans for an invasion, the New York Times reports Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been pushing for so-called regime change in Venezuela.
So what exactly is going on?
Katrin Bennhold, a senior writer on the New York Times International Desk, joined Texas Standard to discuss the situation. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: The U.S. military sunk several small boats off the coast of Venezuela. The administration says they belong to drug cartels. Is it clear that that was, in fact, the case – that these were cartel boats? Is it known how many boats were sunk, the number of lives lost, those kinds of details?
Katrin Bennhold: We know that four boats have been struck. The American side claims that these were cartel boats and trafficking drugs. They haven’t provided evidence, but these boats were sunk and in the process, at least 17 people have been killed.
The U.S. has significantly ramped up its military presence off the Venezuelan coast. What’s known about this escalation? Is the Trump administration saying much about it?
I mean, so far we know that they are going after drugs, according to them. They are basically saying that this is narco-terrorism.
I mean, the language is very interesting because they’re not so much talking about narco trafficking. They’re talking about narco-terrorism. Some of the language is actually kind of reminiscent of when the U.S. went after ISIS and al-Qaeda. They’re are talking about people that are a direct threat to the United States. “We’re going to hunt them down. We’re gonna blow up their networks.”
So that language has led some people to believe that there’s perhaps a more serious buildup going on in the Caribbean. I mean, we’ve seen several warships, surveillance planes, an attack submarine deployed to the Caribbean, 4,500 troops are there, and this is not a big enough force to sort of imagine a ground invasion, but it is a bigger force perhaps than what you might imagine being a kind of anti-drug trafficking operation to be.
You know, it’s interesting that you draw the parallels with al-Qaeda. For me, it was hard not to think of other U.S. military action in Central America. Grenada in 1983 during the Reagan years. There was Panama to go after General Noriega in 1989 during Bush 1.
Both of those were done on the grounds of protecting U.S. interests, fighting corruption, drug trafficking, as you were talking about. Both resulted in deposing the ruling government. Both condemned by the U.N. as violations of international law. And both sort of caught the U.S. public and Congress off guard when the missions were launched.
Why do you think Americans aren’t hearing much about this?
It’s interesting. I mean, there is some speculation about what the actual – perhaps unstated – goal here is. Maybe it’s not just about drugs.
And there are some current and former U.S. officials that have been telling my colleagues on the ground and in Washington, who’ve been reporting on this story, that this unstated goal is actually to force Maduro from power. In other words, regime change, right?
Now, regime changes in America are kind of two words that cause alarm bells to ring not just in America, but also abroad – partly because of the sort of misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. So there is some lack of clarity as to who exactly in the Trump administration is in favor of this.
It seems to be that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is pushing this very much. I mean, he has gone so far as to call Maduro a kind of fugitive from U.S. justice. He has used very strong language. He said, we’re not going to have a cartel operating or masquerading as a government, operating in our own hemisphere. That’s what he told Fox News. So he seems to be the one leading the faction inside the administration that actually wants to get rid of Maduro.
There are others that seem to be more cautious. People like Rick Grinnell, who is an envoy there and talking to the government. So it’s unclear who’s going to come out on top in the end. But there certainly is a faction in this administration that wants Maduro gone.
What is the U.S. strategic interest with regard to Venezuela, as you see it?
It’s interesting. Trump, on the one hand, when he was campaigning for reelection, was very clear that he wanted to extract America from foreign wars. He certainly didn’t want to start any new ones. And if anything, wanted to end wars, right?
So this is why this seems a little odd, because any confrontation like this would involve certainly commando raids of sorts. I mean, some kind of very invasive military action on Venezuelan ground, if you were serious about regime change.
He also campaigned on immigration and the fight against drugs. And those two issues obviously are in America’s interest, certainly in terms of how Trump thinks about the world. I mean, he has made those two issues kind of central to his bid to be reelected.
And so in that sense, it’s an interesting thing to watch him pivot to “America’s backyard” – not a word loved by Latin Americans. And I use it sort of with caution. But that’s, I think, how some of these people in the administration are thinking about Latin America these days.
