by Steven Richards
The Trump administration’s military buildup in the Caribbean aimed at pressuring Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro reached a new stage on Tuesday when the USS Gerald R Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, arrived in the region.
The U.S. military’s ramped-up efforts to interdict suspected drug-running operations and pressure Venezuela are now increasingly being met with strong opposition from South America’s leftist governments.
The Trump administration’s military buildup in the Caribbean aimed at pressuring Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro reached a new stage on Tuesday when the USS Gerald R Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, arrived in the region.
The buildup, President Donald Trump says, is to combat the illicit drug trade and combat what the administration has labeled “narco-terrorism.” To carry out the president’s new take on the historic Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. military has conducted several strikes on suspected drug boats heading for the United States.
The increasing strikes and military buildup just miles from the Venezuelan coast have prompted the Maduro regime to launch a “massive mobilization” of its armed forces in response. Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López said the U.S. “imperialist threat” would be met with exercises by his country’s forces until Wednesday.
But, the buildup and strikes have also put South America’s leftist governments on edge, even longtime U.S. allies in the fight against drug trafficking. This is a marked departure from President Trump’s first term when many of the countries surrounding Venezuela were headed by friendly leaders.
For example, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a leftist and former member of an armed insurgent group in his country, has ramped up his rhetoric and action against the Trump administration as tensions between Venezuela and the U.S. mount.
The Colombian president has argued that Trump’s strikes against the drug trafficking boats are a violation of international law and violate the human rights of Latin Americans. At the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York last month, Petro shockingly called for criminal proceedings against the U.S. president.
“Criminal proceedings must be opened against those officials, who are from the U.S., even if it includes the highest-ranking official who gave the order: President Trump,” Petro said.
The passengers of the drug boats “were not drug traffickers; they were simply poor young people from Latin America who had no other option,” he asserted.
After the Trump administration announced it would deploy even more firepower to the Caribbean—namely the Ford carrier and its strike group—Petro suggested that Colombia could team up with Maduro’s Venezuela to resist the United States’ encroachment.
“America is not a continent of kings or princesses, princes or despots. Every dictator who has appeared here has faced rebellion...isn’t it time, then, to talk about Gran Colombia again?” Petro said this week. Gran Colombia was a short-lived South American republic founded by revolutionary leader Simon Bolivar, which encompassed modern-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama, after winning independence from Spain.
“I propose to the peoples inhabiting this territory… [that] they rebuild this idea… of a Gran Colombia, with a common parliament and collegiate presidency, as in the European Union,” the Colombian leader later elaborated on X.
The same day, Petro also cut intelligence sharing with the United States over the drug boat strikes. This decision by the leftist government in Bogota threatens the longstanding U.S.-Colombia alliance that has for decades been vital to the United States’ counter-narcotics and counterterrorism operations in the region. The U.S. also helped stabilize the country from its civil war with an insurgent Marxist group called the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which lasted from 1964 to 2016.
Petro’s stance is a marked shift from the Colombian government during Trump’s first term. At that time, Colombia’s conservative President Iván Duque Marquez collaborated with Trump on drug trafficking issues and even recognized a Venezuelan opposition government in a bid to force Maduro to step down.
President Trump is also facing pushback from the leftist President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has urged the president to reduce his pressure campaign on Venezuela and stop the boat strikes.
"I told President Trump, and I tell you, that political problems are not solved with weapons. They are solved with dialogue," Lula told the press earlier this month. "It's not necessary, not necessary. Police has all the right to fight against drug-trafficking. All the right and responsibility to do it, and the U.S. could be trying to help the countries.”
Since the beginning of Donald Trump’s second term in office, relations between the United States and Brazil have deteriorated markedly. Washington has imposed sweeping tariffs—at one point threatening a 50% levy on Brazilian exports—and taken targeted sanctions against Brazilian officials, heightening tensions. Brazil, under Lula, has pushed for greater autonomy in foreign policy, deepened ties with trade blocs that include China and Russia, and expressed strong opposition to perceived U.S. interference in its judicial and political affairs.
During Trump’s first term, Brazilian politicians of all political stripes cooperated with the United States. Brazil’s center-left president, who left office in Jan. 2019, supported the American effort to isolate Maduro’s regime. Then, the country elected conservative leader Jair Bolsonaro, who was a close ideological ally of the American president. Like Duque’s Colombia, his government also recognized a Venezuelan opposition government against Maduro.
Tensions with Brazil are largely focused on the Trump administration’s opposition to the prosecution of Bolsonaro by the country’s Supreme Court over his efforts to contest the results of the 2022 presidential election in his country. He was charged by that court with attempting a coup.
The tensions with two formerly close partners come as President Trump and his administration have placed a renewed focus on the Western Hemisphere as a region of vital national security importance for the United States—what has been described as a revival of the Monroe Doctrine.
The "Monroe Doctrine" is "the best known U.S. policy toward the Western Hemisphere," according to the National Archives. The doctrine established the notions of "spheres of influence" and "the doctrine warned European nations that the United States would not tolerate further colonization or puppet monarchs."
Since taking office, the president has pressured Panama to push Chinese companies—and, by extension, Chinese Communist Party influence—out of strategic locations along the vital Panama Canal. The president also floated acquiring Greenland, warning that the island could be a landing pad for Chinese influence.
The administration is also making use of America’s vast military resources to back its diplomacy, even in seemingly unconventional ways. It has deployed troops to police the southern border, naval vessels to interdict drug smugglers, and aircraft to deter local adversaries—like Venezuela—who clandestinely contribute to the drug trade. The escalating strikes on suspected drug trafficking boats have been a central component of this strategy.
However, the new role for the U.S. military is not without its critics. Some have raised concerns about whether the president has the legal authority to take military action against cartel interests or drug traffickers without prior congressional authorization.
Steven Richards
Source: https://justthenews.com/government/diplomacy/leftist-south-american-government-unite-opposition-trumps-pressure-venezuela
No comments:
Post a Comment