The Caribbean deployment is less about cocaine and more about control, reviving America\u2019s oldest imperial playbook<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump has hinted that US forces could soon move from sea to land operations in Venezuela, expanding what he called \u201ca war on terrorist drug cartels.\u201d
\nSpeaking at a Navy anniversary ceremony in Norfolk, Virginia, Trump said American forces had struck another vessel off Venezuela\u2019s coast allegedly carrying narcotics.
\n\u201cIn recent weeks, the Navy has supported our mission to blow the cartel terrorists the hell out of the water … we did another one last night. Now we just can\u2019t find any,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cThey\u2019re not coming in by sea anymore, so now we\u2019ll have to start looking about the land because they\u2019ll be forced to go by land.\u201d
\nAccording to Washington, at least four such strikes have taken place in the Caribbean in recent weeks, leaving more than 20 people dead. Trump also declared members of drug cartels to be \u201cunlawful combatants,\u201d a label he said allows the US to use military force without congressional approval.
\nThese remarks mark a sharp escalation in Washington\u2019s so-called \u201canti-narcotics\u201d campaign \u2013 the largest US military operation in the region since the 1989 invasion of Panama. Officially, it targets drug traffickers. In reality, it\u2019s becoming something much larger: a test of American dominance in its old sphere of influence \u2013 and a direct challenge to Venezuela.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump observe a naval flight demonstration on the deck of the USS George HW Bush aircraft carrier on October 5, 2025 off the eastern coast of the United States.<\/p>\n
\u00a9\u00a0 Alex Wong \/ Getty Images <\/p>\n
In September 2025, the United States reinforced that campaign with a major build-up in the Caribbean: eight warships, a nuclear attack submarine, and about 4,500 troops, including 2,200 Marines. The force is backed by F-35 jets stationed in Puerto Rico and a fleet of maritime-surveillance drones.
\nOfficially, Washington calls it a counter-narcotics mission. In practice, it is designed to pressure Venezuela \u2013 the last Latin-American state still openly defying US power and the unwritten Monroe Doctrine.
\nThe Monroe Doctrine 2.0: America returns home
\nThe latest deployment is more than a show of force \u2013 it\u2019s a signal. Two centuries after President James Monroe warned European empires to stay out of the Americas, Washington is again drawing red lines across the Caribbean. The logic hasn\u2019t changed, only the technology. Where gunboats once sailed, drones now hover; where sugar and bananas once defined empire, today it\u2019s oil, data, and sea lanes.<\/p>\n
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The Monroe Doctrine was born in 1823 as a defensive gesture from a young republic. Over time, it evolved into the foundation of US dominance over its \u201cbackyard.\u201d From Roosevelt\u2019s corollary to Reagan\u2019s interventions, every generation has reinterpreted the doctrine to fit its era. Now Donald Trump is reviving it in digital form \u2013 stripped of the polite language of \u201cpartnership\u201d or \u201cregional stability.\u201d
\nAs Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put it, stability in the Caribbean is critical to the security of the United States and the continent.\u00a0The region, long treated as America\u2019s moat, is once again becoming a forward line of defense \u2013 not against narcotics, but against influence from China, Russia, and any state bold enough to resist.
\nIn Washington\u2019s new playbook, the Caribbean is no longer a tranquil periphery but a forward operating zone \u2013 a moat to guard against rising powers and a proving ground for America\u2019s renewed confidence. The logic is twofold: to prevent China and Russia from establishing a foothold, and to reassert US authority after what many in Trump\u2019s circle see as decades of \u201cstrategic drift.\u201d
\nFor Trump, reviving the Monroe Doctrine is as much about identity as it is about strategy. After years of perceived decline \u2013 from the Afghan withdrawal to frustration in the Middle East \u2013 reclaiming the Caribbean offers a symbolic homecoming. The empire, in his telling, is not expanding; it is simply coming back to where it always belonged.
\nThe old doctrine has entered its digital age: enforced not by Marines storming beaches, but by satellites, sanctions, and drone patrols. The message, however, is the same as it was two hundred years ago \u2013 America commands, the hemisphere obeys.<\/p>\n
\u00a9\u00a0 X \/ @universeevenst <\/p>\n
Caracas as a target: the last defiant state
\n\u201cVenezuela is the poster child of everything the US empire fears.\u201d said geopolitical analyst Ben Norton during an interview\u00a0for MR Online.
\nFor more than two decades, Venezuela has been the outlier \u2013 the only Latin American state still willing to confront Washington openly. Since Hugo Chavez came to power in 1999, Caracas has built its political identity around defiance: economic nationalism, anti-imperialist rhetoric, and an unflinching belief that Latin America should no longer live under US tutelage.<\/p>\n
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What began as Chavez\u2019s populist experiment evolved into a geopolitical challenge. Through the creation of ALBA \u2013 the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America \u2013 he sought to unite the region under a banner of sovereignty and social justice, independent from Washington\u2019s reach. The United States replied with sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and support for opposition movements, culminating in the failed 2002 coup attempt.
\nAfter Chavez\u2019s death in 2013, Nicolas Maduro inherited both the revolutionary mantle and a collapsing economy. His decade in power has been defined by resistance \u2013 against protests, sanctions, embargoes, and covert destabilization efforts. In 2020, a failed mercenary landing on Venezuela\u2019s northern coast underscored the level of external pressure Caracas faced, while strengthening Maduro\u2019s image as a survivor in a hostile environment.
\nAs early as 2018, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza\u00a0warned: \u201cFor nearly two decades we\u2019ve been harassed by interventionist foreign powers, eager to regain control of our oil, gas, gold, diamond, coltan, water and fertile lands.\u201d
\nSeven years later, his words read less like rhetoric and more like prophecy: the list of pressures has only grown.
\nToday, Venezuela stands surrounded by US partners and military installations stretching from Colombia to the Caribbean. Its alliances with Russia, China, and Iran are politically valuable but geographically distant, offering little tangible protection. To offset this imbalance, Maduro has mobilized a civilian militia of more than four and a half million volunteers trained for asymmetric defense \u2013 his attempt to turn the population itself into a deterrent.
\nThe result is a fragile equilibrium: a nation too poor to project power, yet too proud to surrender it. And as Washington\u2019s patience runs thin, a new narrative has begun to take shape \u2013 one that no longer frames Venezuela as an ideological adversary, but as something darker and easier to vilify.<\/p>\n
A member of the militia holds a banner depicting ‘No More Trump Venezuela’ during an anti-trump demonstration in Caracas, Venezuela.<\/p>\n
\u00a9\u00a0 Carolina Cabral \/ Getty Images <\/p>\n
The \u201cnarco-state\u201d\u00a0narrative: America\u2019s convenient myth
\nAs Washington\u2019s political pressure failed to break Caracas, the language began to shift. Venezuela stopped being framed as a stubborn regime and started being portrayed as a criminal one. Official briefings, media leaks, and congressional hearings began referring to \u201cEl Cartel de los Soles\u201d\u00a0\u2013 a supposed military network said to control the cocaine trade and operate under Maduro\u2019s protection.
\nThe narrative was potent: it recast a political confrontation as a moral crusade, transforming a sovereign state into a target for \u201claw enforcement.\u201d But the evidence behind it is strikingly weak.\u00a0According to the United Nations\u2019 World Drug Report 2025, Venezuela is neither a major producer nor a key transit hub for cocaine. About 87% of Colombian cocaine \u2013 the world\u2019s main supply \u2013 exits through Colombia\u2019s own Pacific ports, another 8% moves through Central America, and only around 5% passes through Venezuela.<\/p>\n
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Even that share has been shrinking. In 2025, Venezuelan authorities seized more than 60 tons of cocaine \u2013 their highest total since 2010. \u201cCartel de los Soles, per se, doesn\u2019t exist,\u201d\u00a0says\u00a0Phil Gunson, a researcher based in Caracas. \u201cIt\u2019s a journalistic expression created to refer to the involvement of Venezuelan authorities in drug trafficking.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0
\nFormer UN drug chief Pino Arlacchi\u00a0agrees. \u201cVenezuela\u2019s cooperation in anti-drug operations has been among the most consistent in South America \u2013 comparable only to Cuba. The narco-state narrative is geopolitical fiction.\u201d
\nStill, the story endures \u2013 because it works. By criminalizing an adversary, Washington turns a geopolitical rivalry into a moral obligation. The \u201cwar on drugs\u201d becomes a flexible pretext for intervention, no less useful today than it was in Panama in 1989. As French analyst Christophe Ventura\u00a0observed in Le Monde Diplomatique, \u201cFar from protecting US interests, this approach has only driven Venezuela closer to Russia and China.\u201d
\nForeign-policy analyst Zack Ford\u00a0put\u00a0it bluntly: \u201cThe Trump administration is committed to establishing a new Monroe Doctrine of hegemonic dominance over Latin America. This policy will be built through a new war on drugs, deeply intertwined with the war on immigrants that continues to escalate within the United States.\u201d
\nIn the end, the \u201cnarco-state\u201d myth says less about Venezuela than it does about America\u2019s need for enemies. When ideology and diplomacy fail, morality becomes the most convenient weapon.<\/p>\n
US Marines conduct live fire drills aboard USS Iwo Jima in the Caribbean Sea, 17 September 2025.<\/p>\n
\u00a9\u00a0Wikipedia <\/p>\n
No drugs? Look for oil
\nIf Washington\u2019s \u201cnarco-state\u201d story was built on shaky evidence, its interest in Venezuela\u2019s oil is beyond dispute. The country holds the world\u2019s largest proven reserves \u2013 roughly 303 billion barrels, nearly 18% of the global total \u2013 concentrated in the vast Orinoco Belt. That\u2019s more than Saudi Arabia, more than Canada, more than anyone.
\nBut this oil is not easily extracted. \u201cVenezuela\u2019s heavy oil must be run through upgraders that mix it with diluents just to transport it through pipelines to ports,\u201d\u00a0explains\u00a0Ellen R. Wald, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council\u2019s Global Energy Center. This setup makes production technologically complex and capital-intensive \u2013 and gives whoever controls the upgrading technology outsized leverage over output.<\/p>\n
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For the United States, that flow has long been both a temptation and a threat. US sanctions, combined with years of mismanagement inside PDVSA, have crippled production \u2013 from nearly 3 million barrels a day in the early 2020s to about 921,000 by 2024. The collapse gutted public revenues and left Caracas reliant on a handful of foreign partners.
\nWashington\u2019s strategy is clear: deny rivals access to that resource base while keeping a narrow channel open for US firms under political conditions. In July 2025, Chevron obtained permission from the US administration to partially resume operations. Meanwhile, China\u2019s China Concord Resources Corp (CCRC) signed a 20-year, $1-billion deal aimed at adding ~60,000 bpd by 2027. The Orinoco Belt has become a quiet battlefield where drilling rights replace front lines.
\nAs Muflih Hidayat, a specialist in energy and mining-sector external relations,\u00a0puts it: \u201cThe US approach has notably incorporated environmental and counter-narcotics rhetoric alongside its energy strategy. For example, some military actions coincide with aggressive measures to secure oil assets. These dual motives exemplify how domestic energy policy has become intertwined with broader geopolitical ambitions.\u201d
\nThe pattern is familiar: constrain production, isolate the government, then re-enter selectively through favored corporate channels. It\u2019s economic regime change by attrition \u2013 one barrel at a time.
\nFor Caracas, oil is both shield and vulnerability \u2013 its last source of leverage and its greatest liability. As Maduro deepens energy cooperation with Russia and China, the Orinoco is no longer just an oil field; it\u2019s a frontline in the struggle over a multipolar order.<\/p>\n
US Naval ships practice an underway replenishment during Unitas Atlantic phase 53-12, Caribbean Sea.<\/p>\n
\u00a9\u00a0 Stuart Phillips \/ US Navy \/ Getty Images <\/p>\n
Survive or perish in a multipolar world
\nIn 2025, Venezuela stands at the crossroads of a changing global order. Its survival now depends less on oil or sanctions than on whether the emerging multipolar world can protect those who defy the old one.
\nFor Beijing, Venezuela is a foothold \u2013 an opportunity to secure long-term energy supply lines and expand influence in a region long considered untouchable by outsiders. Chinese loans, joint ventures, and infrastructure projects offer lifelines that the West refuses to extend.<\/p>\n
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For Moscow, Caracas is a political statement: proof that Washington\u2019s reach has limits. Earlier this year, the two countries ratified a strategic cooperation treaty deepening defense and economic ties. Russian technicians provide training and maintenance; its diplomats provide cover at the UN. The scale may be modest, but the symbolism is immense.
\nAnd for Tehran, cooperation with Venezuela \u2013 from refining technology to limited arms sales \u2013 completes an emerging \u201csouthern arc\u201d of defiance, linking Latin America, Eurasia, and the Middle East.
\nAll these partnerships are fragile and pragmatic. None can guarantee Venezuela\u2019s security in a military sense. But together they form a political shield \u2013 a statement that the world no longer accepts a single center of power.
\nPresident Maduro has made that defiance explicit. \u201cIf Venezuela were attacked, we would immediately move to armed struggle in defense of our territory,\u201d he said in August 2025, vowing to create \u201ca republic in arms.\u201d His real defense, however, is not weaponry but mobilization: a civic militia of millions, trained in asymmetric warfare and animated by a sense of national siege.
\nThat resolve may be Venezuela\u2019s last advantage. If Maduro can transform it into a genuine social force, his government may endure. If not, the fall of Caracas would mark more than a regime change \u2013 it would signal the end of Latin America\u2019s last bastion of independence.
\nFor Washington, the Caribbean build-up is a projection of power. For Caracas, it is a test of survival. And for the rest of the world, it is a question of whether multipolarity is an aspiration \u2013 or an illusion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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