Trump’s moves against Venezuela sound familiar for a reason

► The US military has been firing on what it says are drug-trafficking boats tied to Venezuela.

► President Donald Trump acknowledged authorizing covert CIA operations in the South American country.

► There’s a US Navy buildup in the Caribbean, but in a strange development, on Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the sudden departure of the commander overseeing them, Adm. Alvin Holsey.

► The Venezuelan opposition leader and recent Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado has endorsed US military intervention, including during an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday.

“Why do you want your country’s future to be decided by US military intervention?” Amanpour asked.

Machado was barred from running for office by Venezuela’s longtime strongman leader Nicolás Maduro, whose brutal rule has caused a mass exodus of millions of emigrants from the country, including to the US. His 2024 reelection was widely dismissed as illegitimate.

“Regime change was already mandated in absolutely unfair conditions that we won (the election),” Machado told Amanpour. Machado has dedicated her Nobel Prize to Trump.

Trump cites two main reasons for his actions against Venezuela.

“Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America,” he said at the White House on Wednesday, repeating the canard that has motivated his anti-immigration policies.

He also mentioned the allegation that Venezuela’s government is complicit in drug trafficking, something also alleged by Machado.

‘Recipe for disaster’

While the Venezuelan opposition might see hope in US military intervention, anyone who has paid much attention to the history of the CIA in Latin America will be extremely skeptical.

I talked to Tim Weiner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of multiple histories of the CIA, including, recently, “The Mission,” about the CIA in the 21st century.

Weiner noted that what when Trump acknowledged he had authorized CIA covert action in Venezuela, it undercut the “covert” part of any action.

He also pointed to the firing in May of Mike Collins, a longtime intelligence professional who was acting head of the National Intelligence Counsel, which had written an intelligence assessment that undercut the administration’s argument linking the Tren de Aragua gang to Maduro’s regime, a link that is key to Trump’s invocation of the 1789 Alien Enemies Act as a tool to more quickly deport some Venezuelans in the US without due process.

“Those are two ingredients in a recipe for disaster,” Weiner said. “The third ingredient is that the history of CIA-backed regime change is not a happy one, not just in Latin America, but throughout the world.”

The dark history of the CIA and regime change

 

If Trump or the US government were trying to use the CIA to effect regime change, that would be “ignoring both the intelligence and the history,” Weiner said, offering two examples that warn against American involvement in regime change in the Caribbean and Latin America.

“Fidel Castro survived covert action under presidents from (Dwight D.) Eisenhower onward and outlived them all,” he said, pointing to the most obvious failure.

“The successes, for example, in Guatemala, ushered in dictatorships and led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people,” Weiner said.

The last time the US went after a Latin American strongman on drug charges

Supporters of intervention in Venezuela have pointed to the US invasion of Panama as a model for a potential US intervention in Venezuela.

“And by the way, the guy who was running Panama in that moment was a drug trafficker,” said David Smolansky, another Venezuelan opposition leader, during an interview with Amanpour last week.

 

The US invaded Panama in 1989 to arrest its leader, Gen. Manuel Noriega, on drug trafficking and other charges, and to protect a large US expat community there. The invasion, which included paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division parachuting into the country, led to the eventual arrest of Noriega after he hid in the Vatican embassy there. Noriega became the first foreign head of state convicted in US court in 1992 and was in US prison until his extradition to France in 2010.

The US had clear interests in Panama because of the Panama Canal, which Trump has recently mused about retaking. But at the time the US arrested Noriega under President George H.W. Bush, the US maintained a large military base in Panama. It has no such presence in Venezuela.

Noriega also used to work for the CIA

Another important thing to know about Noriega: He was for years on the payroll of the CIA, a fact that taints the eventual US operation against him. So does the collateral damage the invasion caused.

“Unfortunately, American bombers killed hundreds of civilians in the process of extricating a former CIA, DEA, asset, from power,” Weiner told me.

Panama declared the day of the invasion, December 20, as a national day of mourning in 2019.

 

 

More than a narcotics state, Venezuela is an oil state

Venezuela also has strategic importance because of its natural resource wealth. That’s why, despite allegations that it is a passthrough for drugs entering the US, it has never been the originator of a major drug trade.

“Venezuela has one of the largest oil reserves in the world. They have the largest gold reserves in Latin America. So there’s never been a need for them to develop a native drug-producing industry,” said Juan Sebastian Gonzalez, who was the Western Hemisphere senior director on the National Security Council during the Biden administration, during an interview with Amanpour last week.

Does this sound familiar?

A country rich in natural resources where the US government does not like its leader. Americans could easily look back to the flawed intelligence presented in the leadup to the US invasion of Iraq. Except the Trump administration has not offered public intelligence to back up its claims.

Gonzalez told Amanpour there are multiple armed groups, including cartels, that control different parts of Venezuela. This would complicate any regime-change effort and could potentially spill out to other countries.
“I think any sort of US intervention, especially having boots on the ground, is something that would be a cause célèbre for every illegal armed group that has been fighting in Colombia and other parts of the hemisphere for over half a century. So, it’s easier said than done.”

But Trump would not directly say if he thinks the CIA has the authority to take out Maduro.

“Wouldn’t it be a ridiculous question for me to answer?” he said, after confirming he had authorized covert operations.

The buildup of naval vessels in the Caribbean is disproportionate to any drug operation, according to Gonzalez.

“So, this really looks, walks and talks like a regime-change preparation,” he told Amanpour.

Saying the quiet part out loud

Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith wrote, in a long X post about the questionable legal authority for authorizing CIA action in Venezuela, that there is more “wiggle room” to authorize CIA action than military action, at least under US law.

What’s interesting here is Trump’s decision to talk about it.

“As he often does when he is breaking law or norms, he acts openly and without shame or concern,” Goldsmith wrote. “It is a very effective method for defanging the public impact of law and norms—at least in the short run.”