{"id":219901,"date":"2025-12-07T09:23:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T09:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/219901\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T09:23:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T09:23:13","slug":"whats-behind-trumps-power-play-in-the-caribbean-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/219901\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s behind Trump\u2019s power play in the Caribbean? \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not since 1989 and its invasion of Panama has the United States<\/a> so ostentatiously wielded its \u201cbig stick\u201d in the Caribbean.<\/p>\n

In recent months Washington has amassed a fleet led by the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford \u2013 billed by its navy as the world\u2019s most lethal combat platform \u2013 in the sea that has been nicknamed \u201cAmerica\u2019s Lake\u201d because of US dominance over it. <\/p>\n

Along with 15,000 troops the flotilla has been deployed to target drug cartels as part of Operation Southern Spear. <\/p>\n

Since US president Donald Trump<\/a> declared his country to be in a \u201cnon-international armed conflict\u201d with traffickers, the US has carried out at least 21 strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that its officials allege were smuggling drugs, in a campaign that has embroiled US defence secretary Pete Hegseth<\/a> in accusations of possible war crimes.<\/p>\n

The ultimate target of this supposed policing operation is Venezuela\u2019s dictator Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, for years the principal antagonist of the US in the western hemisphere. After several previous failed attempts to eject the Chavista socialist from power, Washington once again has the former bus driver in its crosshairs.<\/p>\n

Last month, it designated the Cartel de los Soles a foreign terrorist organisation identifying Maduro as the group\u2019s leader. <\/p>\n

Named after the sun-shaped insignia worn by Venezuelan military officials, the Cartel of the Suns refers to the various networks within the country\u2019s security and military apparatus involved in drug trafficking. <\/p>\n

Many observers contest the US claim the groups constitute a properly structured cartel or are headed by Maduro rather than just operate with his connivance. But the designation has ratcheted up the pressure on the Venezuelan regime which has been deeply implicated in criminality.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe USS Gerald R Ford in the Strait of Gibraltar before arriving in the Caribbean. Photograph: Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Apprentice Alyssa Joy\/US Navy via The New York Times <\/p>\n

Trump has already confirmed he has authorised the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela and that he was considering land-based strikes there. After reportedly offering Maduro safe passage to leave the country he told reporters, \u201cif we can do things the easy way that\u2019s fine, and if we have to do it the hard way, that\u2019s fine too\u201d.<\/p>\n

This psychological pressure campaign against Maduro is just the latest sign that under Trump, Washington has adopted a new more muscular interpretation of its interests in the western hemisphere. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Is Trump starting a war with Venezuela?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

For decades the region was largely ignored by US policymakers focused on the Middle East and the challenge posed in Asia by a resurgent China. But since Trump\u2019s return to the Oval Office he has as well as drug cartels also targeted Greenland for acquisition from Denmark, called for the retaking of the Panama Canal which the US relinquished sovereignty over in 1999 and even suggested Canada should join the US as its 51st state.<\/p>\n

Trump has presented his new approach in America First terms as necessary to confront the drug and migrant traffickers that fuelled the twin domestic crises that helped propel him from reality television into the White House. <\/p>\n

But senior members of his administration have framed the policy more broadly. In an article published just after taking up his role, secretary of state Marco Rubio lamented that Washington\u2019s years of neglect of the region had allowed problems such as the migrant and drug crises to fester, adding these were \u201cintentionally\u201d amplified by leftist regimes such as Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. <\/p>\n

\"MaduroMaduro has tightened his personal security, including changing beds, and leaned on Cuba, a key ally, amid a growing threat of a military intervention in the country, according to multiple people close to the Venezuelan government. Photograph: The New York Times<\/p>\n

All the while, he said China was using its growing economic leverage to turn regional nations into \u201cvassal states\u201d. \u201cThat ends now,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have ignored our own hemisphere for a very long time and by turning our back on it we left the door open for China, Russia, Iran and other not so friendly powers to expand their influence,\u201d says Melissa Ford Maldonado, director of the Western Hemisphere Initiative at the America First Policy Institute. <\/p>\n

\u201cNow what we see is that with his actions, president Trump wants to change that and have the US lead the western hemisphere again.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Men killed in US military strike on Caribbean drug boat \u2018clung to wreckage for more than an hour\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

In his article, Rubio noted that while many countries would co-operate enthusiastically with the new US presence, others would not. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe former will be rewarded. As for the latter, Trump has already shown that he is more than willing to use America\u2019s considerable leverage to protect our interests,\u201d he warned. <\/p>\n

Many have called this new posture a revival of the Monroe Doctrine. One of the oldest pillars of US strategic thinking, this is named after president James Monroe who in 1823 declared the western hemisphere closed to further colonisation by European powers. <\/p>\n

Since then the doctrine has been interpreted as an expression of US primacy in the region especially after president Theodore Roosevelt \u2013 he of the \u201cbig stick\u201d \u2013 said in 1904 the Monroe Doctrine imposed on the US the obligations of an \u201cinternational police power\u201d within its own hemisphere.<\/p>\n

\"USUS secretary of state Marco Rubio has lamented that Washington\u2019s years of neglect of the region had allowed problems such as the migrant and drug crises to fester. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla\/ Getty Images <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is too soon to say how the world is going to evolve. The post-second world War era is over but it is not certain what comes next. One possibility is the US agrees three spheres of influence with Russia and China and Europe becomes somewhat orphaned. But there is going to be a new configuration and clearly the US once again sees the Americas as its backyard, reviving the Monroe Doctrine,\u201d says Rubens Barbosa, Brazil\u2019s former ambassador in Washington.<\/p>\n

But while the campaign against Maduro has been framed as a counter-narcotics policing operation, some see old Cold War antagonisms still at play. Central to this view is the role of Rubio, the administration\u2019s acknowledged Latin American expert. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Trump may find momentum of US military build-up targeting Venezuela hard to resistOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cSince its start, the Trump administration has taken a strong ideological position against leftist governments in the region such as Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Colombia,\u201d says Barbosa. \u201cThis has been especially true of Secretary of State Rubio. An ultraconservative former senator from Florida whose family fled to the US from Cuba, he knows the region and has a very strong position against the left.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Maduro has been designated the head of a drug trafficking organisation and targeted by a military build-up, the US administration has taken a more benevolent approach towards right-wing politicians in the region linked to the drugs trade. <\/p>\n

Last week, former Honduras president Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez walked free from a US prison after receiving a pardon from president Trump one year into his 45-year sentence for drug trafficking. He had been convicted of using his office to facilitate the importation of over 400 tonnes of cocaine into the US. <\/p>\n

One witness claimed the convicted president boasted about stuffing cocaine \u201cright up the noses of the gringos\u201d. In freeing him, Trump said Hern\u00e1ndez had been \u201cset up\u201d by the Biden administration.<\/p>\n

\"Honduras'Honduras’ Mayoral candidate for the ruling Libertad y Refundacion party, Juan Diego Zelaya, gestures during the vote count in Tegucigalpa, on December 2nd. Photograph: Orlando Sierra\/ AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n

The pardon follows the decision in October to drop US sanctions on Paraguay\u2019s former president Horacio Cartes. <\/p>\n

These had been imposed after authorities accused him of obstructing international efforts against transnational crime in order to protect himself from investigation. In 2010, Cartes was identified in a US state department cable leaked by WikiLeaks as the head of a drug trafficking organisation.<\/p>\n

Cartes was Paraguay\u2019s president from 2013 to 2018 and remains the leader of the country\u2019s ruling Colorado party which has sought to align itself with Trump\u2019s Maga movement. Paraguay\u2019s current president Santiago Pe\u00f1a, a prot\u00e9g\u00e9e of Cartes, described the re-election of Trump as \u201ca dream come true\u201d.<\/p>\n

If Trump\u2019s campaign targeting states involved in the drugs trade so far only extends to those run by leftists, this is not to say it is unpopular in the region. The political emergence of a new hard right across Latin America that is openly admiring of Trump and his Maga movement means many in the western hemisphere are not opposed to what has almost inevitably been labelled the \u201cDonroe Doctrine\u201d. <\/p>\n

A recent poll across Latin America for Bloomberg found that 53 per cent of respondents supported a US military intervention in Venezuela against 35 per cent who opposed it. \u201cA lot of people hear Monroe Doctrine and they associate it with something very negative. But the national interests of the US actually align very well with those of our neighbours in the western hemisphere,\u201d says Maldonado on the America First Policy Institute, pointing to shared concerns about the violence caused by drug cartels.<\/p>\n

Though Trump\u2019s popularity across the region varies, it is consistently higher than that of Maduro. He is blamed for Latin America\u2019s biggest ever refugee crisis as eight million Venezuelans have fled their country\u2019s economic implosion under his watch. <\/p>\n

Now many hard right candidates are seeking to emulate Trump and link the presence of these refugees with rising crime rates, despite no evidence for this. \u201cIf Trump manages to kick out Maduro by any means and somehow restores democracy in Venezuela there is no way he is not going to be liked on this continent,\u201d says Marta Lagos, director of Latinobar\u00f3metro, a regional research group based in Chile. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0The Irish Times view on Trump and Latin America: Milei\u2019s win part of a wider strategyOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cDrug trafficking, organised crime and migration have taken over the whole region\u2019s agenda and things like education or health now take second or third place. It is not an ideological question. People blame Maduro for the eight million Venezuelans going around the continent looking for jobs. Venezuela is visible everywhere.\u201d <\/p>\n

The migration crisis is partly the result of the expansion of organised crime across Latin America. Traffickers have reinvested drug profits into other criminal activities including people smuggling. Exacerbation among voters at the failure by leaders of both left and right to tackle these criminal networks has opened a window for a new generation of Trump-aligned politicians. <\/p>\n

The region\u2019s most popular president is Trump ally Nayib Bukele, of El Salvador, whose hard line stance against his country\u2019s previously rampant gangs has trampled on constitutional protections but brought about a collapse in what was one of the world\u2019s highest murder rates. <\/p>\n

\"SupportersSupporters of Javier Milei at the far right presidential candidate\u2019s campaign stop in Salta, Argentina, in 2023. Photograph: Sarah Pabst\/ The New York Times <\/p>\n

In Chile, fear of rising crime has driven the hard right to the verge of power for the first time since the end of the Pinochet dictatorship. Running on a law-and-order platform Jos\u00e9 Antonio Kast is the overwhelming favourite to defeat his communist rival Jeannette Jara in next Sunday\u2019s (December 14th) presidential run-off. <\/p>\n

An admirer of Trump, he has promised to seal his country\u2019s borders and evict the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who fled to Chile following the implosion of their country\u2019s economy and whom many Chileans blame for the dramatic rise in crime.<\/p>\n

But whatever the fate of Maduro or the region\u2019s Trump-inspired law-and-order crackdown, it is not clear how much the US can offer the region on the economic front in order to raise living standards and lower inequality. There was a US$20 billion bailout for Trump\u2019s Argentinian ally president Javier Milei that helped ease a run on the peso ahead of crucial midterm elections he won. <\/p>\n

But the aid to a direct competitor provoked intense hostility from US farmers in Trump-voting states back home. <\/p>\n

While China has emerged in recent decades as a key commercial ally right across the Americas, the Trump administration has slapped tariffs on many states, raising questions about how reliable a partner it can be under an America First president. <\/p>\n

Chinese investment in major infrastructure projects in Latin America has garnered the hostility of the Trump team. But how much an administration that has mandated allies such as Japan, South Korea and the European Union to invest in the US economy would itself be willing to invest across the western hemisphere in order to push out vital Chinese financing remains to be seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not since 1989 and its invasion of Panama has the United States so ostentatiously wielded its \u201cbig stick\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,356,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,42875,51692,7,8,107,4450,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-219901","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-nicolas-maduro","20":"tag-pete-hegseth","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topstories","23":"tag-us","24":"tag-venezuela","25":"tag-world","26":"tag-world-news","27":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115677561248650900","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}