Trump discovers that ‘the big club’ doesn’t live twice

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The regime change operation in Venezuela is taking place in the shadow of a filmic alibi: the “war against narcoterrorism”. Intended to give a veneer of legality to murderous actions against suspected drug traffickers, the formula applies to the dictatorship of Maduro, designated by the White House as head of a certain Cartel de los Soles.

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The entire American narrative is fraudulent, even on a factual level. Drug traffickers are common criminals, not enemy combatants. Deadly attacks on ships accused of carrying drugs are scandalous violations of international law. The Cartel de los Soles does not exist. The name is used, in Venezuela, to identify the fluid involvement of leaders of the armed forces in different drug trafficking organizations. Maduro runs a criminal regime, but he does not run a cartel.

The “civic, military and police” dictatorship, by Maduro’s own definition, enjoys a unique cohesion and stability, even after losing what little popular support it had left. His mortar resembles that of the mafias. The loyalty of the military, police forces and civilian militias is based on a shared system of plundering state revenues from oil and gold exploration and control of foreign trade. The kleptocratic regime also collaborates with domestic and Colombian drug traffickers.

Trump did not understand Venezuela. He imagined that the combination of the powerful military apparatus deployed in the Caribbean with explicit offers of amnesty to the dictator and his closest entourage, in addition to the CIA’s clandestine contacts with senior army officers, would bring the desired result. Maduro, however, remains in his post. He did not travel alone to Havana or Moscow, nor was he deposed in a palace coup. Resistance, expressed both through provocative rallies and radicalized internal repression, presents a dilemma for the United States.

Russia and China are not obstacles. Both powers would gain geopolitical benefits from a possible overthrow of Maduro through an all-out US offensive. Putin and Xi would interpret the event as the sedimentation of a global politics of spheres of influence: the exchange of Venezuela for Ukraine and, later, for Taiwan. The obstacles in Trump’s path are American public opinion, opposed to a war in South America, and above all his own ideological base.

Maga, a Trumpist movement whose clearest voice is that of Vice President JD Vance, is guided by an isolationist ultranationalism that generally rejects any military involvement abroad. The Big Stick in Venezuela was conceived outside the sphere of Maga, by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Republican from the Cuban-American community of Miami whose golden dream is the dismissal of the Chavista and Castro regimes. Trump bought the idea in hopes of securing a consecrating foreign policy triumph at a promotional price.

The price has already inflated. There is no guarantee that one-off attacks on ground targets will precipitate regime change. Maduro’s eventual survival would install the typical logic of military escalations. At the end of the trip, barring unthinkable American occupation, Venezuela could become the scene of adventures of different armed groups and a lasting sanctuary for drug trafficking cartels.