On January 3, 2026, the Trump/Vance administration ordered the U.S. military to attack Venezuela and seize its dictator, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife. There are multiple problems with this. First, the administration did this unilaterally, without Congress. Second, the administration launched the military operation under false pretenses. Their claim that Venezuela is the premiere narco-terrorist state that exports huge quantities of opiates to the U.S., killing hundreds of thousands of Americans is nonsense – and is as false as the claims that Saddam Hussein had WMDs.

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But let’s back up a bit. Four months earlier, President Trump announced that the United States had carried out a military strike in the southern Caribbean against – he claimed – a drug-carrying vessel that had just left Venezuela and was operated by the Tren de Aragua gang.

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Eleven people, the U.S. president reported, had been killed… including, it turns out, Alejandro Carranza, a Colombian fisherman who had long fished the Caribbean for marlin and tuna (we learned of this from his 14-year-old daughter, who told The New York Times, “I never thought I would lose my father in this way.”)

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< In January 2026, the families of two Trinidadian men, Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the Trump/ Vance administration, alleging American military boat strikes off the Venezuelan coast unlawfully killed their relatives. The suit claims the men were innocent, not drug smugglers as alleged by the U.S. >

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Since then, the U.S. has attacked at least 67 boats, killing at least 221 people. Even though people are being killed – and 15,000 U.S. service members are stationed in the region – the Trump/Vance administration is using military force against a target that poses no direct threat to the United States and is still doing so without congressional authorization.

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President Trump also announced that he had authorized covert CIA action on the ground in Venezuela – which kind of defeats the purpose of something being “covert,” does it not? – evidently authorizing everything from clandestine information operations to training guerrilla opposition forces to conducting lethal strikes.

 

… which is STRAIGHT UP UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

 

Even though the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) is grossly outdated and is being used outside its original mandate, it still at least exists – meaning it’s one thing to use lethal force against terror groups in the Middle East, where the military has relied on congressionally approved authorizations for using force, but it’s a different situation entirely when dealing with Latin American-based “cartels,” where no semblance of such authorization exists whatsoever.

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At the time, President Trump said: “I authorized for two reasons, really. Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America. And the other thing, the drugs, we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela, and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea.”

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First of all, there is zero evidence that Venezuela has “emptied their prisons into the United States of America.” Second, bombing random motorboats leaving from Venezuela seems like the wrong target because Venezuela is not a leading source of illegal drugs coming into the United States. Most cocaine is produced and smuggled from Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, and Venezuela plays essentially no role in the production and/or smuggling of fentanyl.

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But that’s that even the point. The point is that, despite Vice President JD Vance’s claims that “killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military” – which is an absurd thing to say – our armed forces are not law enforcement agencies.

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Our soldiers are not empowered to hunt down suspected criminals and kill them without trial (and remember, the U.S. military is attacking civilian vessels, not military ones). Because this is essentially what the Trump/Vance administration has our soldiers doing, there are legal questions not only about the strikes themselves but also concerning the U.S. military personnel involved in the operations, who could possibly be held personally liable.

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The Trump/Vance administration using self-defense as a legal justification for the military strikes, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio did when he said the drug cartels “pose an immediate threat” to the nation, is also absurd.​ In one instance, for example, U.S. national security officials told Congress that the first boat “had turned around and was heading back to shore” and “was fired on multiple times by the U.S. military after it had changed course.” Fleeing boats don’t exactly seem like an “immediate threat” to the United States.​

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Obviously, the Trump/Vance administration was inventing reasons to invade Venezuela, so what was all of this really about? Well, a couple of things, actually.

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In the Cold War-inspired mindset that plagues Donald Trump, JD Vance and Marco Rubio, strategic interests are key. So, locking down strategic assets is certainly one reason they’re doing these things – using the same logic that Vladimir Putin used when he brutally invaded Ukraine in 2022 in the first major land offensive for territorial advantage in Europe since World War II.

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Even though Marco, the late Senator Lindsey Graham, and other Trump enablers turned themselves into pretzels trying to convince us that Venezuela was about “narcotrafficking,” President Trump toppled Nicolás Maduro while pardoning ex-Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who actually said – out loud – that he wanted to “stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses”.… which is why the narcotrafficking explanation made no sense from the jump.

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What made perfect sense – and came as no surprise – was President Trump’s announcement in late August 2026 that he had cut what he called the “biggest oil deal in world history” with President Delcy Rodríguez for preferential rights to 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil reserves. Essentially, America will take a 35 percent stake in a private company run by Alejandro Betancourt, a Venezuelan businessman who Swiss authorities have issued a warrant for in connection with a money laundering investigation. His company, North American Blue Energy Partners, will have the right to develop those 65 billion in reserves and America will have the right to 20 percent of what they produce at the cost of production. Colonialism at its finest.

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The invasion was also about Nicolás Maduro. The Trump/Vance administration – especially Secretary of State Marco Rubio who, as a former senator from Florida, is faithful to the Venezuelan and Cuban exiles in Miami, and who also has a well-established loathing of leftist Latin American dictators – wanted Maduro out.

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This is not the first time Donald Trump has been down this road. The first Trump administration tried other tactics to remove Maduro. For example, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted him and 14 other senior officials on charges of narco-terrorism, corruption, drug trafficking and other criminal charges, saying that “Maduro and other high ranking Venezuelan officials allegedly partnered with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) to use cocaine as a weapon to ‘flood’ the United States.”

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Although Cuba, China, Russia and Turkey remain hard-core Maduro defenders, the United States and over fifty other governments tried hard in 2019 to elect Maduro out of office by recognizing a young opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, as the legitimate interim president of Venezuela – an effort that included a surprise appearance by Guaidó at President Trump’s 2020 State of the Union address. But the Venezuelan police, military, and courts all continued to recognize Maduro as the country’s rightful leader, which undermined the opposition effort.

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Then, in July 2024, Maduro – who happens to control the election board – declared he had won a third six-year term, which seemed unlikely since the exit polls showed just the opposite and he had polled behind his opponent Edmundo González by more than 25 percentage points for weeks. < González was running mainly because María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader and recent Nobel Peace Prize recipient, had been barred from running in the presidential election. >

 

Listen, there is no question that Nicolás Maduro is a bad guy who wrecked Venezuela.

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Once Latin America’s richest country and longest-running democracy – plus, the owner of the world’s largest proven oil reserves – Venezuela is now in deep, deep trouble. Thanks to hyperinflation, corruption, cronyism, severely inadequate government investment, and significant economic mismanagement by Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez, Venezuela is now a failed state.

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Falling oil production, decrepit infrastructure (think sporadic water, electricity, and cellphone coverage), failing banking systems, and U.S. sanctions have intensified the crisis, causing 7.7 million Venezuelans to flee their country.​ The Maduro regime violated human rights on a colossal scale, leaving hundreds of anti-Maduro peaceful protestors dead. Living standards and the health care system have collapsed, medicine is scarce, infant mortality is high, malnutrition is rampant, and diseases like measles, diphtheria, malaria and tuberculosis are resurgent. Over 7.6 million people still live in Venezuela are in dire need of humanitarian assistance.

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Plus, Maduro was most definitely in the drug trade and wanted desperately to grow his business. A 2022 report by the think tank InSight Crime reported that the “principal role” of Maduro & Co. was “to ensure the drug trafficking system functions to the benefit of the regime by placing corrupt and loyal personnel in strategic political and military positions.”

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In November 2025, the U.S. government designated the Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization, identifying Nicolás Maduro as the group’s leader (labeling an organization as a terrorist group gives American law enforcement and military agencies broader powers to target it). Already, the U.S. had indicted Maduro on narco-terrorism charges and put a $50 million bounty on his head.

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< Sidebar: There is confusion as to exactly what Cartel de los Soles is and is not. It is not, for example, a traditional Latin American family-run drug cartel and some analysts say, because there are no members and no hierarchy, it’s not even a unified organization. >

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Then there is the gang Tren de Aragua, which wasn’t under Maduro’s control but was definitely in cahoots with him. The gang, which started in a prison in the Venezuelan state of Aragua, trades in drugs, extortion and human trafficking. Its influence has moved beyond Venezuelan borders, and the group is trying hard to corrupt and destabilize neighboring democracies.

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Nicolás Maduro is bad. Tren de Aragua is bad. Drugs are bad. We get all of that. However, the United States of America should have learned by now that trying to achieve regime change through military force and CIA-sponsored coups d’état usually results in total disaster.

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< Although Nicolás Maduro’s vice-president Delcy Rodríguez took over as the interim president of Venezuela after he was captured, we still liken this to regime change because the actions of the U.S. government led to a major reshuffle of Maduro’s cabinet and Venezuela’s military leadership, including Rodríguez replacing long-time Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López. >

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America’s history of regime change is grim. U.S. interventions in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua were followed by decades of dictatorship and repression; the CIA-backed 1954 overthrow of Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz helped set the stage for the country’s bloody 36-year civil war; and the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, intended to overthrow Fidel Castro, pushed Cuba closer to the Soviet Union and intensified fears of another U.S. invasion. The following year, Castro allowed the Soviet Union to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba, triggering the Cuban Missile Crisis and bringing the world perilously close to nuclear war.

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The involvement of the United States in these operations also leads to chronic anti-Americanism and radicalizes many of the young people (like Che Guevara, who was in Guatemala in 1954).​ The asymmetrical political and economic dominance of the United States in Latin America – and its history of often unwanted interventions – is already so acute it even has a name: the Colossus of the North.

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Our relationships in Latin America were already in serious trouble, which is another colossal mistake made by the administration. They have alienated Colombia and Brazil by 1) imposing 50 percent tariffs on Brazil because officials there refused to stop the trial of President Trump’s buddy, former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, and 2) threatened to cut all U.S. aid to Colombia after Colombian President Gustavo Petro blasted the U.S. strikes in the Caribbean. Typically, it quickly got worse. President Trump then called President Petro a “lunatic who has many mental problems” and “an illegal drug leader” before the U.S. Treasury Department hit him with sanctions.

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… which is a major problem because it’s critical that the U.S. remain fully committed to helping Colombia fight cartels and cocaine trafficking, as we have done for decades.

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Randomly bombing boats and storming into other countries and arresting people is not what stable, healthy democracies do. It’s what dictators like former President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines do – who now, incidentally, is facing charges in the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity because, in part, he directed the execution of over 6,000 people suspected of using and/or selling drugs.

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So, let’s take a minute to assess what the United States has both lost and gained from attacking at least 67 boats, killing at least 221 people, and seizing Nicolás Maduro and his wife.

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We lost the right to say anything if Xi Jinping decides to overthrow Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te.

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We lost any moral authority we had since the military strikes the Trump/Vance administration is conducting in the Caribbean Sea and the Eastern Pacific are illegal under domestic and international law. The administration has ordered the execution of people who are not at war with the United States and who have not been afforded due process. Essentially, they are acting as judge, jury and executioner – and that is not allowed by the global community or by the United States of America.

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We lost this round in the war on drugs itself. President Trump has said at least 15 times that the American strikes have reduced maritime drug trafficking into the country by 97 or 98 percent, including an April post on Truth Social that said, “98.2% of Drugs coming into the U.S. by Ocean or Sea have STOPPED!”

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That’s a flat out lie. On May 29, 2026 – after the United States had spent $4.7 billion, which included AC-130J Ghostrider gunships, F-35 fighter jets and guided-missile destroyers, and around 15,000 U.S. military personnel – The New York Times reported that “epidemiologists, addiction scientists and public health experts say cocaine, by far the top drug smuggled out of South America, is as easy to get in much of the United States as it was before the strikes began” (these findings were based on evaluations of street prices, lethal overdoses, purity of samples and drug seizures at U.S. borders).

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For example, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection “seized 47,808 pounds of cocaine in the eight months since the strikes began, more than the 43,227 pounds the agency seized in the eight-month period before the campaign.”

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Then, on July 27, 2026, The Washington Post followed that up with a report of its own. According to a previously unreported assessment by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), a closed-door congressional briefing, and interviews with current and former U.S. and foreign officials: “The Trump administration’s deadly military strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats have not reduced the amount of cocaine entering the United States, but they’re prompting criminal organizations to develop new strategies and tactics and undermining traditional investigative methods.”

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“In a recent assessment reviewed by The Washington Post, DEA analysts found the strikes had failed to affect the supply or price of cocaine in the United States and had led traffickers to diversify beyond go-fast boats and to avoid international waters, opting instead for larger boats and hemming close to coastlines, where U.S. forces are less likely to open fire… traffickers are also relying more on aircraft, which take off from clandestine airstrips along the Colombian-Venezuelan border and head east to Guyana and Suriname to avoid U.S. forces.”

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A senior Colombian security official told the Post that the boat strikes have had a minimal impact: “There was a dissuasive effect in one type of transportation. So, it has forced them to seek out other methods. Taking the drugs out through ports has increased, stockpiling it on large ships.” 

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We have gained one thing though!! Now that we are “running” Venezuela until it can be “put back on track,” in President Trump’s words, the United States is now on the hook to help cleanup and rebuild after two earthquakes on June 24th caused an estimated $37 billion in damage (equivalent to roughly a third of Venezuela’s annual economic output) and killed more than 4,930 people.

 

Danny Muñoz, “a bricklayer who pulled the lifeless body of his pregnant stepdaughter out from underneath debris after their apartment building along the coast collapsed”, summed it up perfectly to the Wall Street Journal: “We’re in the hands of God, as well as the Americans. No one else can save us now.”