False Pretenses Behind the Naval Operation Against Venezuela?

How about all that oil?

The Dispatch Via Archive.ph

David Smilde/September 4, 2025

The nation is not a major source of drugs to the U.S., for starters.

The U.S. has sent eight warships and one attack submarine to international waters off the coast of Venezuela, nominally to combat “cartels [that] have engaged in a campaign of violence and terror throughout the Western Hemisphere…[and] flooded the United States with deadly drugs, violent criminals, and vicious gangs.”

Part of this operation has been the designation of the “Cartel de los Soles” in July, as a specially designated terrorist group. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump celebrated the operation’s first result on Truth Social—a drone strike on a small wooden boat with outboard motors, that he claimed was being used to transport drugs to the U.S.

The entire naval operation raises a number of questions. First, Venezuela is not a leading source of the drugs reaching U.S. streets. The last estimates made by U.S. agencies suggest that between 10 and 13 percent of global cocaine supplies passes through Venezuela, and much of that goes to Europe.

The preferred route for cocaine headed to the United States these days is from Colombia through Ecuador and up the Pacific Coast to Central America or Mexico, or through the Western Caribbean. In any case, fentanyl is a bigger threat on U.S. streets than cocaine—it accounts for 70 percent of the fatal overdoses—and none of it comes from Venezuela.

Preferred route for cocaine is Columbia. And fentanyl is a bigger issue for the US.

Perhaps more important, there is no actual organization called Cartel of the Suns. The idea of such a cartel emerged 30 years ago as a sort of catchall term to refer to the very real involvement of military officers in drug trafficking. In Venezuela, military officers wear suns on their lapels rather than stars, hence the play on words. Insight Crime, an investigative journalism outlet that specializes in crime in the Americas, has said “the drug trafficking structures in the Venezuelan state are not a cartel, they are a series of often competing networks buried deep within the Chavista regime, with ties going back almost two decades.” Javier Mayorca, Venezuela’s most serious journalist writing about drug trafficking, has suggested the term Cartel of the Suns “has become something of an urban legend that has been growing in Venezuela and as time goes by, gets used to describe different actors.” 

So, the Cartel of the Suns is like a meme- a mind virus.

The existence of such a cartel gained more formal acceptance in 2020, when the U.S. Department of Justice, as part of a maximum pressure campaign, obtained an indictment naming Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as its leader. However, the actual text of the indictment includes no evidence or even concrete claims about a cartel. It accuses Maduro and others of facilitating or permitting various drug trafficking operations, including by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group. 

FARC is Columbian! And the US is very well aware of that fact! FARC started out as a rebel group- leftist in nature- The US armed certain factions in Columbia to kill FARC rebels. I’m not saying FARC is a bunch of good eggs. The article below lays out the background, minimally, but, it helps.

Here’s a link to a 2013 article documenting those early days

The covert program in Colombia provides two essential services to the nation’s battle against the FARC and a smaller insurgent group, the National Liberation Army (ELN): Real-time intelligence that allows Colombian forces to hunt down individual FARC leaders and, beginning in 2006, one particularly effective tool with which to kill them.

In March 2008, according to nine U.S. and Colombian officials, the Colombian Air Force, with tacit U.S. approval, launched U.S.-made smart bombs across the border into Ecuador to kill a senior FARC leader, Raul Reyes. The indirect U.S. role in that attack has not been previously disclosed.

The covert action program in Colombia is one of a handful of enhanced intelligence initiatives that has escaped public notice since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Most of these other programs, small but growing, are located in countries where violent drug cartels have caused instability.

Colombia and the FARC have been in peace negotiations in Havana for a year. They have agreed so far on frameworks for land reform, rural development and for allowing insurgents to participate in the political process once the war ends. The two sides are currently discussing a new approach to fighting drug trafficking.

Let’s get back to Venezuela

Invasion? Not likely.

In fact, there are not nearly enough U.S. troops on these ships for such an operation, and if there is one thing Donald Trump has been consistent about throughout his career, it is an aversion to extended military occupations.

Regime Change? That’s what I see at play. An attempt at regime change– And not for the first or second time either!

The pressure provided by the U.S. military build-up could conceivably cause a crack in the regime.

Problems with the presentation;

This entire discourse lacks substantial evidentiary support and has been contradicted by U.S. officials. But as false stories of “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq made clear two decades ago, in the right context the tall tales told by displaced politicians seeking foreign intervention in their home countries can take on a life of their own. In this case, claims of Maduro using criminal groups to invade the U.S. have been repurposed by an administration that lives and breathes conspiracy theories, loves political theater, and is willing to use whatever means possible to deport undocumented immigrants. 

Is this a show of strength for the American populace concerning undocumented immigrants?

Which brings us to an additional motivation for this operation. In March, Trump deported approximately 250 Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador, without due process. He justified this action by invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which permits the government to deport citizens of an enemy country during a time of war, without due process. Lower courts barred Trump from deporting detainees without the opportunity to defend themselves, a decision upheld in May by the Supreme Court.

However, the Supreme Court did not actually rule on the legality of the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, but rather on procedural issues. They sent the case back to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which decided on Tuesday, in a split decision, that the administration could not use the AEA because the presence of Tren de Aragua in the U.S. did not amount to a “predatory incursion.” The case will undoubtedly return to the Supreme Court. 

In this context, having warships off the coast of Venezuela, presumably to fight off Cartel de los Soles and its supposed operational arm, the Tren de Aragua, from “flooding the U.S. with drugs,” could pass muster for a “military conflict.”

How about all that oil?

The Trump administration is big on promotion, so, it could be part of the illegal migrant issue? However, I don’t so. Because they (US admin/state department) are pushing the bogus drug issue- akin to Iraq & the WMD’s, plus the US has made multiple attempts to overthrow the Venezuelan leadership- Starting with Hugo Chavez, through to Maduro. And Venezuela has a lot of oil!!

The world’s most oil– Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves, more than five times more than the United States.