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On September 2<\/span>, President Donald Trump\u00a0posted<\/a>\u00a0a 29-second black-and-white video of a high-prow, four-engine speedboat. At the 20-second mark, there\u2019s a bright flash and fire. Trump claimed the footage was shot that morning, and that it showed the U.S. military destroying the vessel, killing 11 Tren de Aragua members smuggling drugs bound for the United States.<\/p>\n In the week since, little more information about the strike has been made public. No one has disclosed the coordinates where it took place, or any evidence that, as the administration insists, the vessel was carrying drugs and those onboard were smugglers. The administration hasn\u2019t even said what kind of drug was being smuggled.\u00a0No bodies have been fished out of the sea.\u00a0No debris.<\/p>\n On Friday, Trump officials\u00a0canceled<\/a>, without explanation, a scheduled briefing with the Senate Intelligence Committee to discuss the attack. When challenged about the legality of the killing, Vice President JD Vance\u00a0tweeted<\/a>\u00a0that he didn\u2019t \u201cgive a shit.\u201d \u201cKilling cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,\u201d he said, and more such actions should be expected.<\/p>\n No doubt the assault is par for Trump\u2019s general MO, an expression of his aggrieved nationalism: the idea that the country is besieged by a variety of threats, among them Latin American drug traffickers. According to Pete Hegseth, the secretary of what until recently was the Department of Defense, now the Department of War, the killing was a defensive act against enemies trying \u201cto poison our country with illicit drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet there\u2019s no proof that the 11 people were smugglers or migrants.\u00a0The kind of go-fast boat shown in the video are called\u00a0pangas.\u00a0<\/em>They can\u2019t carry enough fuel to get to the United States. They are used for smuggling, but also for trading and fishing. It was likely headed to Trinidad, where might have transferred cargo to larger ships bound for the United States.<\/p>\n Whether the vessel was carrying cocaine, migrants, or mackerel, our country\u2019s highest officials are boasting about assassinating 11 human beings,\u00a0civilians, traveling in a small ship in international waters who have not charged with, much less proven guilty of, a crime.<\/p>\n People should be outraged at what is in effect pure murder.\u00a0But they should also be looking at why the U.S. military is suddenly shifting its focus to the Caribbean, amassing navy vessels and thousands of sailors off the shores and carrying out such a brazen strike. If they look close enough, they might see what the Trump administration is after \u2014 and the rift within Trump\u2019s coalition that might scuttle his Latin American plans.<\/p>\n During this fraught geopolitical moment, as Washington hemorrhages global influence, the U.S. bipartisan strategic class is turning, as it often turns during crisis times, to Latin America.<\/p>\n A few years ago, Army Gen. Laura Richardson, as Biden\u2019s head of SOUTHCOM \u2014 the branch of the Pentagon charged with policing South America and the Caribbean \u2014 gave a series of think-tank talks on the importance of the region\u2019s resources to the United States: \u201cYou have heavy crude. You have light sweet crude. You have rare earth elements,\u201d she\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0the Aspen Security Forum: \u201cYou have 31 percent of the world\u2019s freshwater. \u2026 Sixty percent of the world\u2019s lithium is in the lithium triangle: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile. \u2026 You have Venezuela\u2019s resources as well, with oil, copper, gold.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Latin America is \u201coff-the-charts rich\u201d when it comes to resources, the general\u00a0said<\/a>, and Washington\u2019s \u201cadversaries\u201d \u2014 Russia and China \u2014 want a cut. Moscow and Beijing had consolidated their influence in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and were forging alliances with Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Argentina.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Richardson said the best way to secure access to the region\u2019s riches was through \u201cengagement\u201d \u2014 that is, refraining from using overt forms of dominance and working to shore up soft-power alliances, including commercial treaties.\u00a0<\/p>\n There are those, a minority to be sure, within the Trump administration who think the same. First among them is Richard Grenell, who has long advocated for normalizing relations with Venezuela. A close friend of the president, Grenell holds the catch-all title of \u201cspecial envoy for special missions,\u201d allowing him to carry out under-the-table diplomacy. Grenell is an anti-NATO America Firster who believes that a non-conflictive approach to Latin America is the best way the U.S. can ensure access to essential resources in a fracturing world.\u00a0<\/p>\n So even as the White House was ramping up its rhetoric against Caracas \u2014 in effect\u00a0declaring<\/a>\u00a0the entire Venezuelan government a cartel and President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro its \u201ckingpin\u201d \u2014 Grenell scored an important victory, obtaining licenses allowing Chevron to bypass Washington\u2019s harsh sanctions (first imposed by George W. Bush and then strengthened by every president since)\u00a0to start pumping Venezuelan crude.\u00a0<\/p>\n Chevron tankers began delivering Venezuelan oil to Port Arthur, Texas, just weeks before the assault on the speedboat. On September 3, a day after the bombing of the boat, Reuters\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that Venezuela\u2019s oil exports to the U.S. had risen sharply, oil that otherwise would have been sent to China.<\/p>\n Harry Sargeant III is another within Trump\u2019s circle who shares Grenell\u2019s deal-making approach to Latin America. A Mar-a-Lago billionaire who made a fortune off Pentagon contracts delivering oil to U.S. troops during the Second Gulf War, Sargeant is a major Republican donor. He\u2019s also a confidant of Maduro, and\u00a0works<\/a>, even during the Biden presidency, as a Caracas\u2013Washington go-between. He runs, under special waiver, several lucrative operations in Venezuela, including exporting asphalt. And Trump\u2019s current chief of staff, Susie Wiles, had earlier\u00a0worked<\/a>\u00a0for Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm whose clients included both Trump and Venezuelan businesses tied to Maduro.<\/p>\n For his part, Venezuela\u2019s Maduro, with few close allies of consequence in Latin America apart from those who defend Caracas on the principle of sovereignty, would be happy to make a deal with these profit-seeking elements of the Trump administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Trump says he gave the order to bomb the speedboat, the most lethal U.S. military operation in Latin America since its 1989 invasion of Panama. Yet the brinkmanship belongs to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. By raising the stakes and promising that such attacks will continue, Rubio is looking to gain hard-liners the upper hand against appeasers like Grenell \u2014 especially if the fallout from the executions forces Chevron to shut down its Venezuelan operations.<\/p>\n Rubio had tried to block Chevron\u2019s license from going through, delaying it numerous times.\u00a0He has\u00a0opposed<\/a>\u00a0efforts by Sargeant and others in the business lobby to obtain similar exemptions for individual companies, instead\u00a0pushing<\/a>\u00a0for a universal ban on U.S. business activity in Venezuela.<\/p>\n Rubio, in earlier electoral campaigns when he ran against Trump, held himself up as the defender of the liberal international order, a champion of NATO and advocate of Ukrainian sovereignty.<\/p>\n Now, he might as well hoist the Jolly Roger over the State Department, as he applauds the piratical murder of civilians traveling in defenseless open boats on the high seas. \u201cIt will happen again,\u201d Rubio said<\/a> menacingly, promising another strike against civilians.\u00a0<\/p>\n During Trump\u2019s first term, Rubio, as Florida\u2019s senator, worked in league with then-national security adviser John Bolton. The duo was\u00a0largely responsible<\/a>\u00a0for the\u00a0fiasco<\/a>\u00a0of pretending that the head of the national assembly, Juan Guaid\u00f3<\/a>, was the real president of Venezuela in a bid to overthrow Maduro. The farce led to a botched mercenary\u00a0invasion<\/a>\u00a0and, finally, to the Venezuelan opposition itself\u00a0stripping<\/a>\u00a0Guaid\u00f3 of his \u201cpresidential role.\u201d<\/p>\n That escapade didn\u2019t chastise Rubio, who, apart from whatever statesmanship he once aspired too, can\u2019t escape Florida provincialism. Joan Didion, in her book\u00a0\u201cMiami,<\/em>\u201d\u00a0<\/em>describes<\/a>\u00a0anticommunist Cuban exiles as controlled by \u201ca kind of collective spell, an occult enchantment,\u201d a \u201cfebrile complex of resentments and revenges.\u201d Mixed with Trumpism, that enchantment is a powerful propulsive, fueling a desire to vanquish not just left-wing authoritarians in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua but also squishy social democrats in Brazil and Chile, who\u00a0criticize<\/a>\u00a0Israel and sell their\u00a0soy beans<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0lithium<\/a>\u00a0to China.<\/p>\n Rubio, who like Kissinger years ago serves as both secretary of state and national security adviser, is part of a hard-line interagency war machine that includes Hegseth at the Department of Defense, er, War; CIA Director\u00a0John Ratcliffe<\/a>; Lt. Col. Michael Jensen, a veteran of special forces, at the National Security Council, and\u00a0Terrance Cole<\/a>\u00a0at the Drug Enforcement Administration. Vance seems to function as this group\u2019s cheerleader.<\/p>\n They are all maximalists, looking to fuse the war on drugs with the war on terror.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n They are all maximalists, looking to fuse the war on drugs with the war on terror \u2014 with the goal not to nudge Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela toward more open societies but to bring the hammer down on the continent: sanctions, reaper drones, covert ops,\u00a0concentration camps<\/a>, election manipulation, an expansion of DEA operations, and, as promised, more bombs, more civilian deaths.<\/p>\nThe Latin American Pivot<\/h2>\n
Marco Makes His Move<\/h2>\n
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