Trump Just Started a C*caine War - But He's The One Getting Wrecked

Right, so Donald Trump has discovered cocaine — not in his bloodstream, but as the perfect excuse for war. Eleven Venezuelans blown out of the water? “Narcos.” Nine fishermen held at gunpoint on their own tuna boat? “Narcos.” F-35 stealth fighters landing in Puerto Rico? Naturally, it’s about smugglers in speedboats. And now Colombia, Washington’s pet project for thirty years, suddenly branded a failure in the drug war the very month its president dared to call Israel’s Gaza campaign a genocide. If you believe this is about cocaine, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. What’s really being smuggled here is an old trick in a new bottle: dress up aggression as interdiction, punish leaders who refuse obedience, and mask the real prizes — oil, minerals, and blind loyalty to capitalism.
Right, so there is something grotesque about Donald Trump casting himself as the warrior against cocaine. In his telling, US destroyers roam the Caribbean to protect American families, stealth F-35 fighters roar into Puerto Rico to scare off smugglers, and tariffs are imposed to choke off narco cashflows. But reality looks nothing like the script does it? And given the dayglo skin tone of the tangerine tyrant passing himself off as President of the USA, the chemically induced complexion doesn’t exactly scream free of additional additives does it?
But the seriousness of the story is no laughing matter. On 2 September, US missiles ripped into a vessel in the southern Caribbean, killing eleven people. A week later, three more were dead after another strike. In between, nine Venezuelan fishermen hauling tuna were boarded at gunpoint by a destroyer, held for eight hours, and released without charge. These are not clean police operations. These are acts of war dressed in the language of law and order.
You do not need stealth jets to chase drug runners. You do not need guided-missile destroyers to stop a fishing boat. You do not slap 25 per cent tariffs on countries that dare to buy Venezuelan oil if your worry is cocaine. You certainly do not decertify Colombia, Washington’s most faithful partner in counternarcotics for thirty years, despite the reputation Colombia very much has, especially in the very year its president dares to cut ties with Israel.
The narcotics narrative is the fig leaf. The real game is oil, minerals, and obedience. Venezuela, with the largest proven reserves of crude on the planet, has always been the prize. Colombia, rich in coal, gold, copper, lithium, and other minerals, is the test case for punishing leaders who won’t fall into line — especially when those leaders call Israel’s war on Gaza a genocide. Put together, the story is not of drug interdiction but of sabre-rattling, intimidation, and the recycling of one of Washington’s oldest tricks: shout “narcos,” fire the missiles, and hope no one notices the oil rigs popping up in the background.
On that first September strike, Trump was almost gleeful. He boasted that eleven “narco-terrorists” had been killed, men he linked to Venezuela’s notorious Tren de Aragua gang. The White House produced footage and intelligence it claimed showed narcotics on board. But no independent verification has been offered. Venezuela’s account was starkly different: an unprovoked attack in international waters, civilians among the dead, and sovereignty trampled underfoot. The words may differ, but the reality is the same — eleven people killed without trial, their families told only that the President of the United States had arbitrarily declared them criminals. No evidence. No due process. Just bodies in the water and a label applied after the fact.
The second strike a week later followed the same pattern. Trump again declared victory against traffickers. Caracas again spoke of aggression. And again the dead could not defend themselves against the label pinned to them by a foreign power.
Then came the fishing boat. A tuna vessel, nine men aboard, intercepted by a US destroyer. Great use of public funds. They were boarded, searched, detained for eight hours, and then released. No cocaine. No contraband. Nothing. For the men themselves, it was piracy. For their families, it was terror. For Caracas, it was proof that the United States no longer respected even the thin veneer of their sovereignty. And yet Washington shrugged it off, insisting this was part of counternarcotics.
By then, of course, stealth fighters were already arriving in Puerto Rico weren’t they? Ten F-35s, the crown jewel of US air power, parked on the runway at Muñiz Air Base. The Pentagon swore this was part of the mission against cartels – F-35’s deployed to find drugs? Really? Came down in the last shower did we? No one with a straight face can claim stealth jets are needed to chase smugglers in speedboats. They are there to send a message to Caracas: we can strike you at will. We are in the right place to do so now. And to the rest of the region: the skies are ours.
Maduro’s response obviously was furious. He called the US actions aggression, vowed that Venezuela would resist, and even warned of armed struggle if Washington pressed further. In a fiery broadcast he branded Senator Marco Rubio “the lord of death,” accusing him of cheerleading bloodshed. Entertaining Netanyahu as he is right now by calling Palestinian’s “barbaric animals” as the UN formally finds Israel guilty of genocide, I’d say Maduro is right on the money there. Venezuela boosted coastal troop deployments and mobilised its civilian militias.
Caracas sees these strikes not as isolated counternarcotics operations but as preludes to regime change. And given the history, why wouldn’t they? John Bolton once admitted on live television that US oil companies would benefit if Venezuela’s crude were opened up. Trump has been blunter still, imposing tariffs on any country that buys Venezuelan oil. The prize has never been cocaine. It has always been about the oil.
But the real shock today came not in Venezuela but next door. This morning news has dropped that the United States did something it had not done in nearly three decades: it decertified Colombia as a partner in the war on drugs. For thirty years, since the height of Plan Colombia, Bogotá had been the favourite ally. Billions of dollars in US aid, training, equipment, and joint operations made Colombia’s military one of the most US-integrated in the hemisphere. Every year, no matter how high coca cultivation rose, Washington certified that Colombia was cooperating. Suddenly, that seal of approval has been stripped away.
Washington pointed to UN data, though the data is from 2023. Coca cultivation, it said, had reached 253,000 hectares in 2023, up from 230,000 the year before. Potential cocaine production had risen to 2,644 metric tons. To US officials, this was proof that Colombia had “failed demonstrably.” But Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s president, was not having it. He pointed to record seizures which are much more recent, thousands of labs dismantled, and the lives of dozens of soldiers and police lost in counternarcotics operations. His line was simple: Colombia was not failing, it was sacrificing. To declare otherwise was to spit on the graves of those who had died.
Petro went even further. He called the decertification an insult. He argued it was political, not technical. Critics in Bogotá and beyond agreed. For years, Colombia had received certification despite high coca levels, because its leaders played ball. What had changed was not the coca leaf but Petro’s politics. He had pulled Colombia’s ambassador from Tel Aviv. He had suspended arms deals with Israel. He had accused Tel Aviv of genocide in Gaza. He had begun talking about keeping Colombia’s mineral wealth sovereign, about turning away from fossil fuels, about drawing closer to BRICS. They co-chaired a meeting of The Hague Group to bring about sanctions on Israel. The timing told its own story. Few believe it is a coincidence that Colombia’s first decertification in thirty years, off the back of a single set of two year old figures, albeit the most current ones available, came within months of Petro’s break with Israel.
The US will never say so openly. It insists this is about hectares and tonnage. But the coincidence is too sharp. The inference is too strong. Colombia’s punishment looks less like drug policy and more like political discipline.
The association with Venezuela is striking as well. In one country, missiles and destroyers. In the other, decertification and humiliation. Both neighbours. Both resource-rich. Both led by governments unwilling to obey Washington’s line, left wing socialists both. Both punished under the same “narco” label. It is not policy consistency. It is strategy.
The pattern is old. The United States has used narcotics as a pretext in Latin America for decades. Noriega was once Washington’s man in Panama, until he wasn’t, at which point his ties to cocaine became the justification for invasion. The Contras in Nicaragua were funded by covert drug profits while the US looked the other way. Plan Colombia funnelled billions into a militarised approach that left cultivation high but US contractors paid. The Chávez years saw constant accusations of “narco-state,” even as US demand for cocaine fuelled cartels across the continent. The constant is not success against drugs but leverage over governments.
This time the pattern is wider. Venezuela and Colombia are being targeted together, creating a regional arc of coercion. F-35s in Puerto Rico, tariffs on oil buyers, destroyers in the Caribbean, decertification in Bogotá — this is a full-spectrum display. It is not about smugglers. It is about demonstrating who controls the northern Andes and the Caribbean basin. And beyond the region, others are watching. Russia has ties to Caracas, China buys its oil, Iran has supplied fuel and drones. By pressing so hard, Trump risks not only destabilising neighbours but inviting rival powers to step deeper into the hemisphere.
The gamble is that the domestic optics outweigh the risks. Trump believes calling fishermen traffickers and labelling allies failures makes him look tough. He believes Americans will see strength. But the costs are already being counted. Oil markets are sensitive. Every barrel of Venezuelan crude kept off the table tightens supply. Prices rise. Petrol prices, or gasoline if you will creeps up. And Americans vote with their wallets at the pump. Tariffs too are blunt. A 25 per cent surcharge punishes not just Venezuela but any country that buys its oil. The result is higher costs across the board. Tariffs are not free; they are taxes on those buying goods, passed on to consumers. Inflation follows.
Shipping insurers have noticed too. When US destroyers start boarding fishing boats and missiles strike vessels, premiums rise. Importers and exporters pay more again. Wall Street watches Colombia nervously. A country once hailed as the stable ally of the US now looks politically risky. Decertification sends a message to investors: politics rules, not stability. Capital flees to safer ground.
The boomerang effect that follows is real. What Trump sells as strength abroad could implode into weakness at home. If gas prices spike before the midterms, if inflation bites again, if Wall Street jitters, the very drug war theatre staged for domestic gain could become the disaster that sinks him at the polling booth, but he’s always too stupid to see it, he still doesn’t understand how tariffs work, he’s just too hard of thinking.
And then there is the law. Striking boats in international waters without producing verifiable evidence of narcotics is not just heavy-handed; it’s bloody illegal. Even allies are uneasy. What happens if the next “drug boat” turns out to be indisputably civilian? The diplomatic explosion would be enormous. Venezuela already calls the tuna boat raid piracy, which it was, its directly comparable in effect to Israel boarding Freedom Flotilla Coalition vessels in recent months in international waters.
The moral stakes cannot be ignored either. Colombia has lost thousands in its drug war — soldiers ambushed, police assassinated, villagers caught in crossfire. Families grieve every year. Yet when their president refuses to nod along with genocide in Gaza, none of that counts in Washington’s calculus anymore. Venezuela has suffered years of sanctions, shortages, and pressure. Yet when its fishermen are seized at sea, they are labelled traffickers without proof. Sovereignty, sacrifice, human life — all subordinated to politics.
This is the real meaning of Trump’s war on drugs. It is not a war on narcotics. It is a war on governments unwilling to obey. It is a war for oil and minerals. And it is a war for Israel’s diplomatic shield. For Trump, the pretext is enough. For Latin America, the question is whether this time the neighbours see through the fig leaf, close ranks, and refuse to be hammered into submission.
Perhaps a new BRICS plan proposed by Iran might be a saving grace though? The war on illegal sanctions has become the topic of just such a debate amongst the BRICS economic bloc and a proposal by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian might see the orange drain from Trumps puckered face. Get all the details of that story in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch.
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