The ouster of Maduro claim to be justified because he is a narco trafficker bringing illicit drugs into the United States.
For Americans focused on the latest football or basketball game scores, the latest with Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce and the pressing return and exchange of Christmas gifts, the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, as leader of his country, all seems distant. After all, the Trump Administration has been preparing us for the justification of this regime change by daily announcements, religiously noted and parroted back by all major news networks, that the ouster of Maduro would be justified because he is a narco trafficker bringing illicit drugs into the United States, albeit no one has offered up concrete proof to corroborate this.
Little to no mention has been made over the past six months about the real motive behind the removal of Maduro: Trump’s desire to acquire control of the vast Venezuelan oil deposits. Venezuela’s 303 billion barrels of oil reserves are the largest in the world, dwarfing those of Saudi Arabia and Iran. On;y now is there some acknowledgement that oil is at the heart of the matter. Why should such the wealth of such oil reserves rest with a country whose leader is a widely recognized dictator and drug dealer? Just because the oil belongs to that country?
The full hypocrisy of Trump’s justification for seizing Venezuela’s oil becomes glaringly clear when you consider that Trump recently pardoned a tried and convicted narco trafficker, former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been serving a 45 year prison sentence. He was convicted by a U.S. Federal Jury of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and related firearms offenses. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Hernández and his co-conspirators trafficked more than 400 tons of U.S.-bound cocaine through Honduras between 2004 and 2022.
The use of a fabricated pretext to justify an American incursion is not new.
President James Polk claimed Mexico had “shed American blood on American soil!”
On April 25, 1946, American troops engaged Mexican soldiers in a dispute over the boundary between Mexico and the newly annexed American state of Texas. President Polk ordered American soldiers to provocatively cross into the disputed territory, assuring confrontation. In the skirmish that ensued, several Americans were killed. President James K. Polk declared that Mexico had “shed American blood on American soil!” This justified declaring war on Mexico when the real motive was Polk’s ambition, driven by the popular doctrine of Manifest Destiny, to acquire the land stretching to the Pacific Ocean.
The pretext worked! War was declared, Mexico lost the war, and the United States acquired half of Mexico’s territory, what is today the American states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
In 1898 there was a liberation movement afoot in Cuba seeking freedom from Spanish rule. The United States was concerned because its trade with Cuba accounted for $100 million dollars and American interests were being jeopardized. American newspapers of the day publicized atrocities against Cubans perpetrated by the Spanish government and the threat to Americans on the island. When there an explosion on the USS Maine, anchored in Havana harbor, resulted in the loss of 260 American lives, the United States accused Spain and on April 25, 1898 war was declared. In the ensuing conflict, the United States not only occupied Cuba but also Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. It was never proven that Spain had, in fact, sabotaged the USS Maine and, years later, it was speculated that the explosion was more probably caused by a fire in a coal bunker that ignited the ship’s ammunition stores. But…
The pretext worked! War was declared on Spain. In the wake of the defeat of Spain, the United States acquired sovereignty over Puerto Rico and Guam and the Philippines with Cuba as a protectorate.
The USS Maine before the explosion.
On 31 December 1958, revolutionary Commander Fidel Castro led his insurgent troops into Havana, Cuba, forcing Dictator Fulgencio Batista to flee the country taking with him an amassed fortune of more than $300 million. As part of Castro plans for a future Cuba governed by Cubans, he ordered the country’s oil refineries, then controlled by U.S. corporations such as Standard Oil and Esso and Shell Oil, to be nationalized. This, along with Cuba’s growing outreach to the Soviet Union, alerted President Dwight Eisenhower that regime change might soon be necessary. He approved a CIA budget of $13,000,000 to explore ways of removing Fidel Castro from power.
When President John F. Kennedy became President. on January 20, 1961, he inherited Eisenhower’s invasion plan for regime change which had been originally planned in May of 1960. Kennedy approved the plan going forward. An army of some 1500 exiled Cubans were soon trained by the CIA. The pretext here was that Cuba’s ties with the Soviet Union was an unacceptable threat to the United States and regime change was needed.
The pretext worked. The U.S. financed and backed forces of Cuban exiles landed on the Bay of Pigs. But be careful what you wish for. Fidel Castro was able to repel the invasion, killing or capturing all of the Cuban exile interlopers and giving the United States a resounding defeat.
Fidel Castro was able to repel the invasion, killing or capturing all of the Cuban exile interlopers and giving the United States a resounding defeat.
In 1964, the United States was at peace with Viet Nam but fearful of communist expansion in Southeast Asia. The domino theory–that one country after another would fall to communist rule–urged a stop to the spread of communist in Southeast Asia. On August 4, 1964, the USS Maddox was patrolling the waters off the Gulf of Tonkin, in North Viet Nam, when it was fired upon by the North Vietnamese Navy. No American forces were injured. When a second attack by the North Vietnamese Navy was reported, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which granted President Lyndon Baines Johnson the power to assist any Southeast Asian country whose government might be jeopardized by communist aggression. Years later, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara admitted that the commander of the Maddox had fired on North Vietnamese Navy first and that the second attack by the North Vietnamese, the claim cementing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, never actually occurred.
The second attack was completely made up!
But the pretext worked. After the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution the United States soon became embroiled in an anti-communist war that lasted until 1973 when the U.S. was forced to flee North Viet Nam in defeat. Again, be careful what you wish for.
Manuel Noriega. As an agent for the CIA and received a yearly stipend of $185,000 to $200,000.
Manuel Noriega came to power in Panama in 1983 and continued until he was ousted in 1989. During his rise to power in Panama, he worked as an agent for the CIA and received a yearly stipend of $185,000 to $200,000. Early on, as one of the CIA’s most valued intelligence assets, Noriega acted as a conduit for U.S. funds and weapons to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua and other U.S.-backed forces in Latin America. But eventually the U.S. relationship with Noriega soured when Noriega insisted on maintaining ties with Cuba and Libya and after his illegal drug trafficking became widely known. A regime change was needed and when a U.S. funded coup d’etat attempt on Noriega failed to achieve that, the U.S. began plans for an invasion. All that was needed was a pretext to force a regime change favorable to the U.S. and that pretext was that Noriega was a drug trafficker. When a U.S. Marine, First Lieutenant Robert Paz, was killed at a road block incident in Panama City on December 16, 1989, the go-ahead was given for an invasion that had been months in the planning.
The pretext worked. The U.S. invaded Panama, Manuel Noriega surrendered and was brought to trial as a drug trafficker. He was convicted and the U.S. facilitated the ensuing regime change.
There are many others that can be added to this litany of pretexts for American interventions.
Trump’s most current pretext of justifying Venezuelan regime change by pointing to Maduro’s drug trafficking avoids calling attention to what it really is: a blatant illegal land grab for control over Venezuela’s oil. Yes, Maduro is a drug trafficker, and by all accounts a repressive dictator causing great harm to the Venezuelan people. But the future of Venezuelan oil should be determined by the Venezuelan people not by a puppet government set up by the United States to guarantee its oil interests.
This current pretext is different in a significant way. Unlike past interventions, this one is taking place not in the distant past, but right now. In the year 2026. Trump’s actions resurrect the Monroe Doctrine, which states that European powers cannot intervene in the affairs of the Western hemisphere and that the United States has the right to intervene or “protect” anywhere it wishes in the Americas. By using the criteria of drug smuggling as a reason for intervention, Trump is signalling he may intervene in any Latin American country he wishes for whatever reason or pretext he chooses to define or invent.
By pointing to Maduro’s drug trafficking Trump avoids calling attention to what his action really was: a blatant illegal land grab for control over Venezuela’s oil.
Many nations are now subject to a potential intervention by pretext: Colombia because it’s drug trafficking is out of control, Mexico because of its drug cartels, Cuba because of its failing economy and anti-US history. All Central American nations are at risk because they can’t control their immigrant exodus to the U.S. border. Trump has once again openly declared he wants the United States to occupy and take over Greenland. The pretext now is that Greenland is strategically important to the U.S. By this reasoning, Trump is declaring he can take over any country in the world if he so chooses. Even Canada better be wary–Trump is not beyond inventing a reason to invade Canada and make it, as he has touted, the 51st state. Illicit trafficking of Canadian maple syrup? Any pretext is possible!
America has returned to the age of “big stick” diplomacy where might is right. International laws are only as good as your defense of them on the battle field.
As we have seen this past year Trump has usurped the rights of the American people time and again. He has ignored due process by summarily kidnapping people off the street and deporting them without a chance to have their day in court. And he has shown his disrespect for the laws of our land by pardoning hundreds of convicted criminals including convicted notorious drug dealers.
The only thing that can save us now is the United States Constitution and those who meticulously uphold it.
____________________________________________________________________________
Copyright 2026 by Jesús Salvador Treviño. All images on this blog are in the public domain.