The United States claims it wants to crack down on drugs—but that’s not the whole story
This article was originally published by Prospect on November 28th 2025. Below is the first three paragraphs, reproduced with permission from Prospect. Visit their site to read it in full.
The $50m bounty placed on the head of President Nicolás Maduro and the enormous build-up of US military forces in the Caribbean—the largest since the US invasion of Panama—make one thing clear: the United States wants regime change in Venezuela. Whether it will seek to achieve this by direct military intervention or by creating the conditions for Maduro’s overthrow by forces in Venezuela is blurrier. More opaque still is Washington’s motivation.
It seems unlikely that restoring democracy and human rights are the central driver, given President Trump’s apparent soft spot for strongmen rulers like Maduro elsewhere in the world. The Trump administration maintains that it is targeting Venezuela as part of the “war on drugs”: it accuses Maduro of running a drug-trafficking organisation called the Cartel of the Suns (Maduro denies this). Yet that explanation has many experts in the drugs trade scratching their heads. Venezuela is a relatively minor player in the huge business of trafficking narcotics to the US (Mexico and Colombia are far bigger exporters).
Maduro himself, meanwhile, claims the military build-up is an American attempt to secure control over Venezuela’s natural resources, including its oil reserves. On that point, Colombia’s left-wing president Gustavo Petro recently came out in hearty agreement. Oil “has to do with everything”, he explained last week to CNN. “In general, all wars of this century have had to do with oil.”
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Image: Flag of USA and Venezuela painted on a concrete wall with soldiers shadow, Tomas Regina – 2232753213
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