The president of the United States, Donald Trump, assures that now and what will be the next steps to be taken in the military campaign that he has ordered against “narcoterrorism” in the waters of the Caribbean and the Pacific. But he did not want to make known what his plans consist of.
“I have more or less decided,” he declared to the press accompanying him on board the plane. Air Force One in which he was traveling to spend the weekend at his private residence in Florida, Mar-a-Lago. “I can’t tell you which one it is. [la decisión]but we have made great progress with Venezuela in terms of preventing drugs from invading the United States, he pointed out.
Trump’s statements came after he held multiple meetings with his national security team to analyze, including the possibility of direct attacks on targets in Venezuelan territory. The talks were taking place after the arrival in the area of the largest warship in the world, the aircraft carrier Gerald Fordthe most modern in the US Navy, to join the flotilla of a dozen ships that have been in international waters of the Caribbean for three months, on the border with Venezuelan territorial waters.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chief of Staff Gen. Dan Caine presented several possibilities to Trump in a briefing Wednesday. That meeting was followed this Friday by another, according to what the newspaper published The Washington Post.
On Thursday, Hegseth had announced in a message on social networks in Latin America, baptized as Lanza del Sur. The US forces have already begun to frame within that operation the attacks they carry out against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, which already exceed twenty and have left at least eighty dead.
In recent weeks, Trump and his advisers have sent contradictory signals about what Washington’s objectives are with that operation. The president had declared on several occasions that the attacks against the alleged drug boats have been a success in preventing the arrival of drugs to the United States and that, given that the traffic of suspicious vessels had decreased drastically, the next step would be “actions on land.” But since then he had toned down his rhetoric somewhat.
In an interview given to the program 60 Minutes on the CBS television network, the Republican agreed that Maduro’s days in power “are numbered,” but considered the idea of the United States going to war with Venezuela unlikely. And in a briefing on Capitol Hill ten days ago, led by Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Administration representatives had denied that the campaign was considering attacking Venezuela.
The US Government justifies its military campaign as necessary to fight drug trafficking that kills tens of thousands of people in this country every year. Numerous experts, human rights defenders and legislators denounce that this is an illegal mission, among other things because it does not have the authorization of the United States Congress. The Administration has included several of the cartels on its list of international terrorist organizations. Arguing that its members are enemy combatants, it considers that it is in a “direct and non-international armed conflict” with these groups, and does not need the approval of the Capitol.
The enormous dimensions of the deployment have raised suspicions that the real objective is to force the end of the Chavista regime, either through direct action in Venezuela or by exercising one. For months now, Washington has been increasingly linking Maduro with drug trafficking cartels; He accuses him of being a leader of these organizations and considers that his regime, overwhelmed by international sanctions, only survives thanks to the income from this deadly smuggling; In August, the reward offered for his capture was increased to $50 million.
Adding to the pressure of the attacks against the alleged drug boats are bomber training flights near the Venezuelan coast, and Trump’s authorization for the CIA to carry out covert actions within Venezuela.
