All the moves seem to be a replay of former President Bush’s Iraq war
By Ashok Nilakantan Ayers
NEW YORK: When President Trump declared Venezuelan airspace “closed in its entirety” last Saturday, threatening imminent land-based military strikes against what he described as drug trafficking operations, the announcement marked a dramatic escalation in a campaign that has increasingly strained credulity among foreign policy experts and regional observers.
Over the past three months, U.S. forces have conducted nearly two dozen lethal strikes on vessels allegedly carrying narcotics, resulting in at least 82 deaths. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the Navy’s most advanced aircraft carrier, now patrols Caribbean waters. Coast Guard drones have seized over $1 billion in narcotics. And the rhetoric from the White House has grown steadily more bellicose toward Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
What began as a counternarcotics initiative, administration officials insist, has become a necessary response to an escalating threat. But intelligence assessments reviewed by current and former officials, along with the deployment patterns and strategic positioning of U.S. military assets, suggest a more complex objective: the destabilization of Mr. Maduro’s government and, ultimately, access to Venezuela’s vast oil wealth.
It is a strategy that bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the prelude to the Iraq War more than two decades ago—a parallel that has not been lost on Latin American diplomats, United Nations officials, or members of Congress increasingly alarmed by what they see as a replay of one of America’s most catastrophic foreign policy blunders.
The military expansion has been swift and substantial. Since August, U.S. Southern Command—long considered a quiet backwater focused primarily on humanitarian missions—has transformed into the epicentre of what Pentagon officials describe as the most significant hemispheric military operation in decades.
The Coast Guard, bolstered by a $350 million infusion for autonomous systems, has deployed hundreds of airborne and undersea drones. Its V-BAT fleet—long-endurance aircraft capable of flying 1,150 miles without refuelling—has been credited with tracking vessels that led to massive drug seizures, including a record 60,000-pound cocaine haul unveiled at Port Everglades, Fla., earlier this month.
Defense technology companies, many of which saw revenues plummet after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, have found a lucrative new market. Shield AI, Vannevar Labs, and dozens of other firms are now providing artificial intelligence platforms, surveillance systems, and autonomous vehicles to federal agencies engaged in what officials call “narco-interdiction.”
“The narcotics threat is real, consistent, and impossible to fight with humans alone,” said Anthony Antognoli, a senior Coast Guard robotics official, describing the rationale for the technology surge.
But the strikes themselves have drawn sharp international condemnation. Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry has called them “extrajudicial killings” and a “colonial threat,” while the Organization of American States has urged restraint. On Wednesday, Caracas revoked landing rights for six foreign carriers, accusing them of collaborating with Washington’s efforts to isolate the country.
While the Trump administration frames its campaign as counternarcotics enforcement, intelligence officials and policy analysts say the operation’s scope and intensity point toward regime change.
This month, the U.S. formally designated the Cartel de los Soles—which Washington alleges is controlled directly by Mr. Maduro and senior military officials—as a foreign terrorist organization. In remarks to deployed troops over Thanksgiving, Mr. Trump accused the Venezuelan leader of rigging elections, systematic human rights abuses, and personally orchestrating drug trafficking into the United States.
“We’ve stopped about 85 percent by sea,” the president said. “Now we’re going to start stopping them by land. The land is easier. And that’s going to start very soon.”
Venezuelan officials have rejected all accusations, calling the U.S. campaign a “fabricated war” designed to justify military intervention. But several Latin American diplomats, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence assessments, said they believe Washington is laying the groundwork for a direct confrontation with Mr. Maduro’s government.
“This is starting to feel uncomfortably reminiscent of pre-Iraq 2003,” said one senior South American official. “The narrative of imminent threat, the buildup of assets, the use of intelligence that cannot be independently verified—the script is familiar.”
If the operational parallels to Iraq are striking, so too is the underlying strategic prize. Venezuela sits atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves—more than 300 billion barrels, most of it heavy crude that remains largely untapped due to decades of underinvestment and international sanctions.
Despite being the world’s largest oil and gas producer, the United States has long viewed Venezuelan reserves as geopolitically critical, particularly as China and Russia deepen their economic and military ties with Caracas.
Energy analysts and former Pentagon officials say the oil dimension cannot be separated from the military campaign, even if no administration official will acknowledge it publicly.
“The idea that this is strictly about drugs doesn’t withstand scrutiny,” said a senior energy economist at the Atlantic Council, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. “Securing geopolitical leverage over the planet’s biggest reserves—right in America’s backyard—is strategically invaluable.”
The Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq rested heavily on claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction—intelligence that proved to be false. United Nations inspectors found no evidence of active weapons programs before the invasion, yet the war proceeded, ultimately opening Iraqi oil fields to Western companies while spawning violent extremism that metastasized into the Islamic State.
Trump’s unpublished national defense strategy reportedly devotes extraordinary attention to hemispheric security, with competition with China relegated to what one official described as “a back seat.” Several current and former Defense Department officials acknowledged that reshaping Venezuela’s political landscape would fundamentally alter global oil markets and OPEC’s influence.
“If Washington can reshape Venezuela’s political landscape, it shifts the balance of global oil influence for a generation,” said a former senior Defense Department strategist. “That’s the quiet calculus.”
The question now preoccupying regional experts and members of Congress is whether the United States is about to repeat one of its gravest strategic errors—justifying military intervention with an overstated threat while pursuing an unstated objective, only to trigger unforeseen consequences that compound rather than resolve the original problem.
The Iraq War killed hundreds of thousands, cost trillions of dollars, and created a power vacuum that gave rise to ISIS. The group’s brutality and reach ultimately forced the United States back into the very region it had sought to stabilize, prolonging military engagement for another decade.
Venezuela presents its own combustible variables. The country has been devastated by economic collapse, with more than seven million people fleeing in recent years. Mr. Maduro’s security forces have been accused of systematic repression. Armed groups, including Colombian guerrillas and local militias, operate with varying degrees of impunity in border regions.
A destabilized Venezuela could trigger a humanitarian catastrophe far exceeding the current crisis, analysts warn, while creating openings for extremist groups, transnational criminal organizations, and hostile foreign powers to expand their influence.
“These missions create constituencies,” said William Hartung, a defense spending expert at the Quincy Institute. “Once billions are flowing to contractors, once military commands have expanded operations, there’s a lot of vested interest in keeping the threat narrative alive and the mission going.”
The United Nations has warned that continued maritime strikes without transparent legal justification could constitute “serious violations of international law.” Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico—all of which have complex relationships with both Washington and Caracas—have called for diplomatic solutions.
Yet Mr. Trump appears unmoved. In recent days, Venezuela has begun repositioning air-defense systems near coastal areas, and state media claim U.S. drones are violating sovereign airspace. The White House has not ruled out strikes on Venezuelan soil.
If ground operations begin, the United States may find itself, once again, waging a war whose public rationale—ending drug trafficking—conceals a far more intricate web of geopolitical ambitions, economic interests, and domestic political calculations.
And as in Iraq, the consequences may extend far beyond the oil fields that have quietly shaped the entire confrontation from the beginning. (IPA Service)
