Drugs, Oil, and Immigrants

This account of Trump administration “decision-making” on Venezuela is pretty much what you would expect; there are no coherent goals to the campaign because different elements of the administration (Miller on immigration and drugs, Trump on oil, Rubio on regime change) want different things. Because the ends are utterly confused the ways and the means are also confused.

Courts soon ruled that illegal immigration does not count as the kind of invasion that justifies using the wartime deportation law. But Mr. Miller later talked about reviving the use of the Alien Enemies Act if the United States were in an actual war with Venezuela, a former U.S. official said.

At the same time, Mr. Miller was exploring policies unrelated to Venezuela that, like the deportations, had their roots in the so-called U.S. war on terror. He looked at the idea of bombing fentanyl labs in Mexico. But it became clear that Mexican leaders would not consent, and the administration feared losing their cooperation on drug and migrant issues. The Washington Post reported earlier on Mr. Miller’s discussions about striking cartels in Mexico.

By early May, Mr. Miller’s team began asking for further options for using force against drug cartels.

White House officials and others bandied around relatively more constrained ideas, including using the C.I.A. to carry out covert strikes on docked boats that did not have people in them. But Mr. Miller’s team wanted to publicize the strikes. Officials also discussed blowing up fake drug boats to instill fear in traffickers. But Mr. Miller’s aides wanted the real thing, officials said.

By June, a request to explore a possible maritime operation was circulating in the Pentagon. It was not yet focused on Venezuela, but that would soon change — triggered by Mr. Trump’s yearslong interest in the country’s most valuable resource.

It should go without saying that the bloody overthrow of Maduro will not be good for oil, drugs, or gangs; there is very little upside to turning Venezuela into the Western hemisphere’s version of Syria. It’s also worth noting here that when the Bush administration was coming up with justifications for invading Iraq the actual inter-agency process functioned more or less competently, in that it unified the disparate parts of the administration around a single coherent argument for war (WMD, which… um… didn’t work out). Trump’s crew gives new meaning to the term “Mayberry Machiavellis.”

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Robert Farleyمصدر