War on Venezuela? Why Trump is Killing People in the Caribbean

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FEATURING GUILLAUME LONG - For months now, the Trump administration has been building up military hardware in and around the Caribbean and making inflammatory statements implying an impending war with Venezuela. US airstrikes on ships in the region have killed dozens of people under the dubious claim of illegal narcotics shipments. But, in a recent CBS interview, Trump claimed it was unlikely he would launch a war on Venezuela. 

Guillaume Long is a senior research fellow at Center for Economic and Policy Research. He has held several cabinet positions in the government of Ecuador, including Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Culture, and Minister of Knowledge and Human Talent. Most recently, he served as Ecuador’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva. He spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about why the US is bombing ships in the Caribbean and whether Trump will launch a war on Venezuela.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, I feel as though, looking at what Trump is doing in Venezuela, we really need to go back to the very beginning of his term this January, where he signed an executive order declaring drug traffickers to be effectively foreign terrorist: “Designating cartels and other organizations as foreign terrorist organizations, and specially-designated global terrorists.” That was the name of his executive order. Is this what he is drawing from, as far as you can tell, in terms of creating his own authority to, to drop bombs and to make threats against Venezuela? 

Guillaume Long: Yeah, I think there's… we have to differentiate a few things. I think you're absolutely right. I mean, naming cartels ‘terrorist organizations’ and, and sort of doubling down on the war on drugs and really sort of heightening and raising the tone of the whole war on drugs, and making that parallel between ‘war on drugs’ and ‘war on terror,’ which is not the first time it's been done. 

The word ‘narcoterrorism’ goes back now, a couple of decades. It was done under the Bush administration as well. But, doing all this, has been one of the aspects of the Trump administration in the Western Hemisphere, and it's in the US policy towards Latin America. And it's part and parcel of a return to Latin America under a security guise, right? 

We are really seeing the United States ‘securitizing,’ I don't really like that verb, but, you know, making security the big deal of the US' approach towards Latin America. It is all about security. Which essentially means US policy towards Latin America right now is all about ‘big stick,’ right? It's about security. It's about, now we're, we're gonna be talking about it. It's about gunboat diplomacy. It's about wielding a big stick and there's not much carrot. It's all about, you know, ‘do this or else.’