Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

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........

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