Miguel Gutierrez/EPA
“Yankee, go home.” Protinator with the image of Donald Trump in T-Shirt during the day of enlisted in Caracas, Venezuela.
What do Donald Trump’s maneuvers in his war for drug trafficking in the region and what may be the consequences? Strategy aims at conflicting geopolitical and commercial interests.
The mobilization of troops on the border with Mexico and the sending of war ships to the Venezuela coast are a forceful message from the United States. It is not possible to state, however, if the strategy is bluff to intimidate and demonstrate power or prelude to direct intervention.
The latest episode of tension between the two countries involved the circulation of a video shows US military firing at a Caribbean vessel that would have left Venezuela towards US territory. President Donald Trump confirmed that in the operation. The Venezuelan government accused the US of making images through artificial intelligence.
According to Tamara Lajtman, a doctorate in Social Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires, US foreign policy in combating drug trafficking in Latin America DRIVE TO THE 1970sled by both Republican and Democratic governments.
In this second term, Trump “deepened this narrative of securitization, which fuses migration, drug trafficking and terrorism under a single spectrum of threats to US national security,” Luso-Argentina researcher told DW.
Aníbal García, a doctorate in Latin American Studies from the Autonomous University of Mexico, agrees. “We have fusion of war against drug trafficking with that of terrorism. There is a deepening of diplomacy for the use of force by the United States that reinforces this narrative of narcoterrorism from different public policies, ”he told DW.
Most aggressive tone
In addition to concrete actions, García notes a reinforcement of political relations with Latin America. States that, from all trips made and announced by Marco Rubio, head of the State Department, 37% It is destined for Latin America. “The main topics concerned are security, fighting drug trafficking and migration, besides China.”
In recent months, Lajtman notes, the United States narrative “translates into the militarization of borders, the expansion of detention centers, or the designation of cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. They give a much more aggressive tone to known strategies.”
“Pressure mechanism”
In February 2025, the State Department included the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua, Salvadorenha Mara Salvatrucha and Mexican cartels on the list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTO). And in early August, the US for information leading to the capture of the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduroraising it to $ 50 million (about 43 million euros). They accuse him of being the leader of an alleged criminal group designated Los Soles cartel.
The recent publication of the New York Times, which indicates that Trump would have sent a decree to the Pentagon to authorize the use of military force abroad against Latin American cartels considered to be narcotist, could make his way to maneuvers in Venezuela, Mexico and Central America.
“Although direct intervention was extremely expensive, the truth is that sending the fleet to the Caribbean is a reality. The simple threat serves as a pressure mechanism. It is most likely to remain, combined with financial sanctions and other extraterritorial legal measures,” says Tamara Lajtman.
In the opinion of the researcher at the University of Santiago de Chile, it is a set of rules designed as a response to terrorism: “Trump uses this legal architecture to reconfigure and legitimize pressures and threats, especially against Venezuela. No doubt, The main objective is to promote a regime changewhich would not be new. ”
“The pressures also deepen tensions with Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, Reinstalling a climate of cold war in a region that seeks to discipline itself in the framework of a global competition with China and Russia, ”he adds.
Oil
Is it a viable intervention? “In the history of American politics, Trump went further. Since the invasion of Panama in 1989, there was no possibility of a new invasion in Latin American and Caribbean territory for reasons related to drug trafficking, which is latent in the case of Venezuela,” says Aníbal García.
The Mexican researcher identifies, behind the increasingly interventionist policy of the US, a geopolitical interest in waging the presence of China in Latin America and the intention to “appropriate the large oil reserves of Venezuela“In addition to being a major commercial competitor, China figures as another target in the US war against drug trafficking, based on the allegations that Fentanil precursors would come from Asia and, in particular, from that country.
In the case of Mexico, who maintains cooperation in terms of drug trafficking, security and migration, García also recognizes the pressures of the North neighbor: “We have not had, at least in the last 25 years, such a Beligenous government as the current one in the United States, even more than Trump’s first.”
After sending troops from the Armed Forces to the border and the designation of drug cartels as terrorists, “There is a possibility of having a war in other countries, but there is no evidence that supports that this will happen”caveat.
Regarding a possible armed intervention in Venezuela, he warns: “We hope this will not happen due to the amount of problems it would generate and, above all, the loss of human lives. We have seen that, after interventions from the United States, there are long periods of instability in the invaded country and, in addition, international relations in the region are reconfigured.”
