Donald Trump said Friday that he had “sort of” made up his mind about his plan for Venezuela, but he “can’t tell you what it would be.” With an aircraft carrier strike group and some 15,000 service personnel deployed to the region, it’s sort of hard to imagine that the president’s decision will be to stand down and go home.
I’ve been outspoken in calling on the administration to act against Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship in Caracas — a column I wrote in January ran under the headline “Depose Maduro.” With war looming, possibly within days, it’s worth making the case again — and thinking through the ways it could go wrong.
Let’s take it point by point.
Is there a vital American interest at stake? There is, and it’s not just the one the administration keeps talking about: drugs.
Not that there’s much doubt that the regime is deeply implicated in the drug trade, even if there are questions about whether Maduro runs an actual cartel. The most careful analysis I know of, a 2022 report by the InSight Crime think tank, notes that the “principal role” of the president and his henchmen is “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.”