Wednesday 8th of October 2025

the monroe doctrine 2.0.....

President Donald Trump has hinted that US forces could soon move from sea to land operations in Venezuela, expanding what he called “a war on terrorist drug cartels.”
Speaking at a Navy anniversary ceremony in Norfolk, Virginia, Trump said American forces had struck another vessel off Venezuela’s coast allegedly carrying narcotics.

“In 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’t find any,” he said.

“They’re not coming in by sea anymore, so now we’ll have to start looking about the land because they’ll be forced to go by land.”

 

The Monroe doctrine is back – dressed up as a war on drugs
The Caribbean deployment is less about cocaine and more about control, reviving America’s oldest imperial playbook

By André Benoit

 

According 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 “unlawful combatants,” a label he said allows the US to use military force without congressional approval.

These remarks mark a sharp escalation in Washington’s so-called “anti-narcotics” campaign – the largest US military operation in the region since the 1989 invasion of Panama. Officially, it targets drug traffickers. In reality, it’s becoming something much larger: a test of American dominance in its old sphere of influence – and a direct challenge to Venezuela.

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.

Officially, Washington calls it a counter-narcotics mission. In practice, it is designed to pressure Venezuela – the last Latin-American state still openly defying US power and the unwritten Monroe Doctrine.

The Monroe doctrine 2.0: America returns home

The latest deployment is more than a show of force – it’s 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’t changed, only the technology. Where gunboats once sailed, drones now hover; where sugar and bananas once defined empire, today it’s oil, data, and sea lanes.

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 “backyard.” From Roosevelt’s corollary to Reagan’s interventions, every generation has reinterpreted the doctrine to fit its era. Now Donald Trump is reviving it in digital form – stripped of the polite language of “partnership” or “regional stability.”

As Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put it, stability in the Caribbean is critical to the security of the United States and the continent. The region, long treated as America’s moat, is once again becoming a forward line of defense – not against narcotics, but against influence from China, Russia, and any state bold enough to resist.

In Washington’s new playbook, the Caribbean is no longer a tranquil periphery but a forward operating zone – a moat to guard against rising powers and a proving ground for America’s 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’s circle see as decades of “strategic drift.”

For Trump, reviving the Monroe Doctrine is as much about identity as it is about strategy. After years of perceived decline – from the Afghan withdrawal to frustration in the Middle East – 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.

The 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 – America commands, the hemisphere obeys.

Caracas as a target: the last defiant state

“Venezuela is the poster child of everything the US empire fears.” said geopolitical analyst Ben Norton during an interview for MR Online.

For more than two decades, Venezuela has been the outlier – the only Latin American state still willing to confront Washington openly. Since Hugo Chávez 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.

What began as Chávez’s populist experiment evolved into a geopolitical challenge. Through the creation of ALBA – the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – he sought to unite the region under a banner of sovereignty and social justice, independent from Washington’s reach. The United States replied with sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and support for opposition movements, culminating in the failed 2002 coup attempt.

After Chávez’s death in 2013, Nicolás Maduro inherited both the revolutionary mantle and a collapsing economy. His decade in power has been defined by resistance – against protests, sanctions, embargoes, and covert destabilization efforts. In 2020, a failed mercenary landing on Venezuela’s northern coast underscored the level of external pressure Caracas faced, while strengthening Maduro’s image as a survivor in a hostile environment.

As early as 2018, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza warned“For nearly two decades we’ve been harassed by interventionist foreign powers, eager to regain control of our oil, gas, gold, diamond, coltan, water and fertile lands.”

Seven years later, his words read less like rhetoric and more like prophecy: the list of pressures has only grown.

Today, 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 – his attempt to turn the population itself into a deterrent.

The result is a fragile equilibrium: a nation too poor to project power, yet too proud to surrender it. And as Washington’s patience runs thin, a new narrative has begun to take shape – one that no longer frames Venezuela as an ideological adversary, but as something darker and easier to vilify.

The “narco-state” narrative: America’s convenient myth

As Washington’s 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 “El Cartel de los Soles” – a supposed military network said to control the cocaine trade and operate under President Nicolás Maduro’s protection.

The narrative was potent: it recast a political confrontation as a moral crusade, transforming a sovereign state into a target for “law enforcement.” But the evidence behind it is strikingly weak. According to the United Nations’ World Drug Report 2025, Venezuela is neither a major producer nor a key transit hub for cocaine. About 87% of Colombian cocaine – the world’s main supply – exits through Colombia’s own Pacific ports, another 8% moves through Central America, and only around 5% passes through Venezuela.

Even that share has been shrinking. In 2025, Venezuelan authorities seized more than 60 tons of cocaine – their highest total since 2010. “Cartel de los Soles, per se, doesn’t exist,” says Phil Gunson, a researcher based in Caracas. “It’s a journalistic expression created to refer to the involvement of Venezuelan authorities in drug trafficking.”  

Former UN drug chief Pino Arlacchi agrees“Venezuela’s cooperation in anti-drug operations has been among the most consistent in South America – comparable only to Cuba. The narco-state narrative is geopolitical fiction.”

Still, the story endures – because it works. By criminalizing an adversary, Washington turns a geopolitical rivalry into a moral obligation. The “war on drugs” becomes a flexible pretext for intervention, no less useful today than it was in Panama in 1989. As French analyst Christophe Ventura observed in Le Monde Diplomatique“Far from protecting US interests, this approach has only driven Venezuela closer to Russia and China.”

Foreign-policy analyst Zack Ford put it bluntly: “The 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.”

In the end, the “narco-state” myth says less about Venezuela than it does about America’s need for enemies. When ideology and diplomacy fail, morality becomes the most convenient weapon.

No drugs? Look for oil

If Washington’s “narco-state” story was built on shaky evidence, its interest in Venezuela’s oil is beyond dispute. The country holds the world’s largest proven reserves – roughly 303 billion barrels, nearly 18% of the global total – concentrated in the vast Orinoco Belt. That’s more than Saudi Arabia, more than Canada, more than anyone.

But this oil is not easily extracted. “Venezuela’s heavy oil must be run through upgraders that mix it with diluents just to transport it through pipelines to ports,” explains Ellen R. Wald, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center. This setup makes production technologically complex and capital-intensive – and gives whoever controls the upgrading technology outsized leverage over output.

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 – 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.

Washington’s 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’s 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.

As Muflih Hidayat, a specialist in energy and mining-sector external relations, puts it: “The 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.”

The pattern is familiar: constrain production, isolate the government, then re-enter selectively through favored corporate channels. It’s economic regime change by attrition – one barrel at a time.

For Caracas, oil is both shield and vulnerability – 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’s a frontline in the struggle over a multipolar order.

Survive or perish in a multipolar world

In 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.

For Beijing, Venezuela is a foothold – 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.

For Moscow, Caracas is a political statement: proof that Washington’s 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.

And for Tehran, cooperation with Venezuela – from refining technology to limited arms sales – completes an emerging “southern arc” of defiance, linking Latin America, Eurasia, and the Middle East.

All these partnerships are fragile and pragmatic. None can guarantee Venezuela’s security in a military sense. But together they form a political shield – a statement that the world no longer accepts a single center of power.

President Nicolás Maduro has made that defiance explicit. “If Venezuela were attacked, we would immediately move to armed struggle in defense of our territory,” he said in August 2025, vowing to create “a republic in arms.” 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.

That resolve may be Venezuela’s 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 – it would signal the end of Latin America’s last bastion of independence.

For 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 – or an illusion.

By André Benoit, a French consultant working in business and international relations, with an academic background in European and International Studies from France and in International Management from Russia.

https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/57051/edit

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

pissing on your leg....

The clouds of war drift over the Caribbean. America’s engines of death idle in the waters outside Venezuelan territory. A New York Times report announces that President Donald Trump has “determined” that the United States is in a “war” with Venezuelan organized crime groups, of which, the State Department assures us strenuously, President Nicolas Maduro is the leader. A Washington Examiner report says that American forces are prepared for “seizure operations”—that is to say, expeditions to take assets like ports in Venezuela. The forthcoming National Defense Strategy reportedly directs a turn toward hemispheric concerns, and it looks as if we’re about to start that turn with a bang.

Stern stuff. But what are we actually after here? Let’s lay aside the somewhat dubious legal reasoning behind “determining” that the U.S. is at “war” with non-state actors, and the specious claim that such non-state actors are under the direct control of the Caracas regime, all of which seems like a clumsy and even embarrassing effort to get around Congress’s residual war powers. The tranche of propaganda emanating from Washington says this is about drugs; in fact, Venezuela does not play an outsize role in the drug trade, particularly that of fentanyl, and the government is cooperative with international anti-trafficking enforcement. (Strange if Maduro is actually the head of a cartel.) Venezuelan aliens entering the country illegally have fallen to negligible numbers, so it seems unlikely that this is about the administration’s immigration policy, either. Chinese, Russian, and Iranian cooperation with Venezuela has been on the rocks these past few years, due to the Venezuelan regime being a terrible business partner on pretty much every metric, although the Russians have stepped in to back Maduro up against the recent American pressure.

So if it’s not about drugs, and it’s not about immigration, and it’s not about cooperation with American adversaries, what’s it about? Theory one: oil, of which Venezuela has rather a lot. This seems somewhat doubtful, insofar as launching a war is a risky way at best to maximize the exploitation in the short to middle term. (Countries undergoing invasions tend to have somewhat unsure industrial infrastructure, surprising to say.) Also, America has other, easier sources for hydrocarbons, including those at home; it’s not the 1970s. Still, Trump is on the record saying we should have done blood-for-oil for real in Iraq, so maybe it’s in the mix. Theory two: tying up forces in a hemispheric imbroglio so we can say “no” to Israel when asked for more direct resources in the Middle East. This has been floated to me seriously; it seems, frankly, insane, and also I suspect attributes more intentionality to our national security policy than is perhaps just. But we are in fact notionally trying to retrench from the Middle East, and the rumors about the new NDS suggest that hemispheric issues are at the forefront, so there is a certain appealing rhyme to this explanation. 

 

Theory three, is, by my lights, the most plausible: We’re just doing it because we can. Nobody especially likes communist Venezuela. Trump, for all his peace rhetoric, does in fact enjoy displays of American hard power. (How many diplomatic summits kick off with a flyover by the host country’s bomber fleet?) We have a “Department of War” now, which, Trump has emphasized, shows that we don’t just do defense, but offense too. McKinley, the 47th president’s historical fixation in the administration’s early days, had a “splendid little war” in Latin America with few immediate ill consequences. (Although it has been persuasively argued that the Spanish–American War had long-lasting distorting effects on American foreign policy and government.) The usual analysts can be found who will say that the enemy regime just needs a kick, and we’ll be greeted as liberators. 

Hell, maybe they’re right. Maybe the effort to overthrow the Venezuelan regime will not devolve into a guerilla war in that nation’s mountainous interior; maybe it won’t result in regional chaos that sets off another round of mass migration. Is that a gamble you’d like to make? We have been insulated by oceans from our meddling in the Middle East. If things go wrong in Venezuela, we have to live in this hemisphere. 

It is difficult to weigh the options when the administration is being obfuscatory or forthrightly dishonest about our motives. If it is in the American national interest to overthrow Maduro per se, the administration ought to make that case. Nor does it seem constitutionally healthy, after 30 years of aggregating war powers in the executive and the disastrous results, to resort to “determining” that we are at war with groups that the administration sometimes says are non-state actors and at other times asserts are working for the Venezuelan regime. 

Is that rain on my leg, or is the administration trying to sell me on a war?

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/what-does-the-u-s-want-in-venezuela/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

fishing to death....

 

Fishermen in Trinidad and Tobago fear for their lives and jobs after US strikes in the Caribbean

BY  ANSELM GIBBS

 

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (AP) — On a recent afternoon, Kenrick Modie finished untangling his fishing net in a quiet Caribbean village.

As he slipped into a hammock at his home overlooking the sea, he worried that his life and livelihood could be wiped out by a U.S. military strike.

Modie lives in the Caribbean twin-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago, which is now entangled in a geopolitical face-off between the United States and Venezuela, just 11 miles away.

U.S. President Donald Trump, “is giving instructions to shoot and kill people,” Modie said about recent U.S. military strikes targeting suspected drug vessels in the Caribbean as it bulks up its military presence in the region. “What could we do? We’re just a little dot.”

His concerns heightened after Trump declared in a memo obtained by The Associated Press that the U.S. was in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels in the Caribbean, alleging they are trying to bring “deadly poison” to U.S. shores. And on Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he had ordered another strike on a small boat he accused of carrying drugs in the waters off Venezuela — the fourth since revelations that Trump told lawmakers he was treating drug traffickers as unlawful combatants.

 

Meanwhile, Venezuela has accused the U.S. of military buildup and aggression, prompting President Nicolás Maduro to place the country’s military and civilians willing to take up arms on high alert.

Stuck in the middle is Trinidad and Tobago, a nation with a multimillion-dollar fishing industry that employs thousands of fishermen who cast their nets almost daily to sustain themselves and their family.

 ‘If we die, we die’

Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has said that drug cartels have contributed to pain and suffering in her country, and she has urged the U.S. to “kill them all violently.”

She also said she is willing to grant the U.S. access to Trinidad and Tobago, if needed, so Americans can defend Guyana from neighboring Venezuela, which has claimed two-thirds of Guyana as its own.

Maduro said that Persad-Bissessar’s willingness to grant such access is like declaring war against Venezuela. The Venezuelan president has called for a return to good relations with its Caribbean neighbor, even as Trinidad and Tobago’s government claims there’s no bad blood between the countries.

While those in authority trade words and military commanders ramp up their posturing, dozens of fishermen in Trinidad and Tobago feel their lives are at risk given the ongoing U.S. strikes and escalation of tensions with Venezuela.

“If we die, we die, that’s how this life is,” Modie said.

He fears being killed by a U.S. military strike while out fishing because he believes his boat could be mistaken for a drug-smuggling vessel. Modie said he hasn’t seen substantial evidence that those killed in the U.S. strikes were indeed transporting drugs. He also worries about innocent fishermen being killed and falsely labelled as narco-terrorists by authorities, with the dead men being unable to clear their names.

 Fishing in fear

Only seven miles separate Trinidad and Venezuela at their closest point. On a clear day, Venezuela is visible from the village of Icacos, which is located on Trinidad’s southwestern tip.

Driving around Icacos and neighboring Cedros village, dozens of boats strewn along the shoreline show how heavily these communities depend on fishing.

Fishermen in these two villages say they are already under threat from pirates, and the military buildup at sea now adds yet another threat.

Watching three other fishermen unload their catch for the day at the Cedros Fishing Complex, Kamal Bikeran said his crew now stays in shallower waters and aren’t going as far out to sea as before, because of the tension involving the three countries.

“The U.S. has come there, and the Venezuelan military is saying they are more present, so you have to watch out,” Bikeran said. “At any point in time, outside there, you could be taken out.”

Forced to fish in shallower waters, Bikeran and other fishermen said the heightened regional tension is drying up their livelihoods, as they are now catching fewer fish.

 

Trump gave fishermen a reason to worry after the first U.S. military strike on Sept. 2, which he said killed 11 suspected narco-terrorists.

“Boat traffic is substantially down,” Trump said in early September. “I don’t even know about fishermen. They may say, ‘I’m not getting on the boat.’”

Two more fatal U.S. strikes have since followed. At least two of the three operations were carried out on vessels that originated from Venezuela, riling some Caribbean leaders.

Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in late September, Caribbean leaders referred to the region as a zone of peace.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley appealed for dialogue to avoid a war between the U.S. and Venezuela. The prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, described the foreign militarization of the waters near Venezuela as “exceedingly troubling.”

  

Fishing in fear has become the new reality, said Shyam Hajarie, who has been a fisherman for more than 40 years. The Cedros native, like others, depends on his daily catches to support his family. He’s unsure if the military buildup in the Caribbean would soon affect fish prices at the market.

“Just praying that everything works out with this situation with Venezuela and the U.S.,” he said. “That they make peace and not war.”

____

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

 

https://apnews.com/article/trinidad-us-military-venezuela-strikes-fishing-fcd24c441f58162b811a24b247334fc5

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.