From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy

Waging a narco-war is a red herring


When the headlines scream rCLnarco-warsrCY and pundits wag their fingers
about rCLfentanyl,rCY it is tempting to reduce Donald TrumprCOs Venezuela policy to one issue: drugs. A convenient shorthand rCo but also a red
herring. Read closely and a very different logic emerges.

Drugs matter, and the effort is to some degree about exactly that. Yet
so does immigration. VenezuelarCOs hydrocarbons also matter rCo and they matter even more in a world where OPEC has been deliberately
constraining supply to keep oil prices high.

Deploying narcotics as a public justification is smart politics. It communicates a moral urgency that resonates at home (the drug crisis is
real) and offers a legal-rhetorical peg overseas (designating cartels as terror proxies, authorizing kinetic steps under counter-terror
authorities). But policy is not simply argument; it is incentive
architecture.

TrumprCOs operation in Caracas is being built around a set of incentives rCo for the United States, for CaracasrCOs elites, for regional partners rCo
that are designed to minimize the chance of an expensive occupation
while still extracting tangible leverage rCo maybe for regime change but
also maybe for a great deal. Think of it as the art of coercion without conquest: pressure applied across multiple vectors until the cost of
continued behavior exceeds the benefit. ItrCOs actually pretty straightforward.

First: Trump dislikes regime-change wars in the classic sense. The
rCLAmerica FirstrCY portfolio is transactional by design: fewer open-ended nation-building campaigns, more calibrated use of force or diplomatic
pressure where the legal and political cover exists. Analysts who assume
he secretly dreams of invasions are projecting a familiar neocon fantasy
onto an administration that, in practice, is stingy about long ground
wars. Evidence? You donrCOt need it, just look at recent history.

Second: Immigration is leverage. Policy signals link security operations
to deportation and migration enforcement. In recent moves, naval
deployments and strikes on alleged trafficking vessels have been
accompanied by rhetoric and, at points, explicit linkage to deportation policies. Military pressure, then, functions as bargaining power in a
broader domestic political market.

Third: Venezuela is about oil. The South American country has long been
known as a hydrocarbon state, and for good reason. In World War Two, Venezuelan crude was indispensable to the Allied effort, fueling ships,
planes and entire campaigns across the Atlantic. Today, by contrast, the United States trades virtually nothing with Caracas rCo a startling
reversal given that Venezuela still holds the largest proven reserves in
the world. If brought back into the US market, and modernized, its
output could rival Gulf producers and alter the balance of supply.

Fixating on crude alone, however, misses the resources that also matter
in 21st-century geopolitics rCo the critical minerals that feed electric vehicles, batteries and telecom. BeijingrCOs interest in Venezuela, for
one, is not sentimental. It is a modern scramble for inputs.
WashingtonrCOs policy calculus therefore has an industrial logic as well
as a geopolitical one: deny adversaries secure access, protect supply
chains, and leave a neighboring state structurally unable to become a
reliable client of a rival power.

Unlike Ukraine, VenezuelarCOs resource wealth doesnrCOt need to be inflated rCo it is obvious, vast and sitting in plain sight. Unlike Iran, despite MadurorCOs theatrical boasts of millions of rCLmilitiamen,rCY the country has no real military capability. Unlike Taiwan, we donrCOt need to invoke the complexity of semiconductors; VenezuelarCOs importance is more tangible, rooted in immigration, drugs, oil, gas and minerals. And unlike the myth
of a population united in anti-Americanism, VenezuelansrCO resentment of Washington is overstated rCo their hatred of Maduro certainly runs far
deeper.

Seen from this angle, the narco-terror narrative is a tool rCo a great
one. Declaring networks as terror or terrorist-adjacent reconfigures the
legal playbook. It widens authorities, attracts military assets and legitimizes potential strikes that would be harder to justify under
other rubrics. It also performs a diplomatic service: it makes pressure acceptable to partners who would recoil at a naked campaign aimed at
regime decapitation. The subtext is surgical: apply pain without
promising occupation.

A full-scale invasion or a prolonged occupation would be catastrophic
for the United States politically and logistically; it would also play straight into the hands of CaracasrCOs propaganda and regional rivals. So
if you cannot replace Maduro through direct warfare, how do you change
his cost-benefit calculus? You make continued rule more expensive, more dangerous, and less useful: target revenue streams, hinder patronage,
sap his ability to reward subordinates and increase the political price
of belligerence. See the logic?

Critics who treat TrumprCOs approach as incoherent are often reading intentions without seeing incentives. They assume that because the
rhetoric is muscular, the endgame must be militarized. But policy is a transaction between ends and feasible means. TrumprCOs approach always
aims to maximize leverage while minimizing open-ended commitments. That
is not a cautious liberal policy of benign persuasion; it is a
hard-nosed transactionalism that prefers calibrated coercion to costly conquest. By contrast, Biden relied too much on goodwill and rCLgood gaitrCY diplomacy rCo noble on paper, disastrous in practice.

TrumprCOs policy welds legal cover, domestic political salience,
asymmetric pressure, and an appreciation for resources into one
instrument. The risks are real: escalation through miscalculation, the entanglement of law enforcement and low-intensity military force, and
the moral hazard of normalizing extraterritorial strikes. But proceeding
with prudence rCo not cowardice rCo has great potential. As Trump fans love
to say, rCLtrust the plan.rCY


Juan P. Villasmil
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