The Social World

Tag: Nicolás Maduro

  • Why Iran needs the Maduro regime

    Why Iran needs the Maduro regime

    The aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford and three warships have been sent to the Caribbean, where they are joining a dozen Navy warships already off the coast of Venezuela, in an unprecedented show of military force.

    President Trump and his administration are taking aim at the administration of Nicolas Maduro, over his alleged role in the drug trade which presents a national security threat to the United States. It’s clear that if the US succeeds in destabilizing and displacing President Maduro’s regime, it would be a blow to the region’s drug traffickers. What is less known is that it would also hit Iran.

    Venezuela has long served as a launchpad for Iranian operations to establish a foothold in South America. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), its Quds Force, and Iran’s Intelligence Ministry have all had a presence in Venezuela. The Quds Force has used economic delegations to Venezuela and other countries around the world as cover for terrorist activity. According to reports, in September 2020 an Iranian delegation landed in Caracas comprised of businessmen who acted as Quds Force facilitators.

    The Quds Force’s Unit 840, which plots terror schemes abroad, has historically been active in Venezuela. Evidence suggests the son of a senior intelligence advisor close to the supreme leader was at one point responsible for Unit 840’s Latin America operations. He has traveled to Venezuela to nurture these illicit networks. His presence shows the importance of Caracas for Iran.

    Another Quds Force group, Unit 11000, was recently implicated in a plan to assassinate Israel’s Ambassador to Mexico. Critically, a Unit 11000 operative who spearheaded the plot operated out of Iran’s embassy in Caracas. This is a strategy Tehran has employed elsewhere, particularly Europe, where IRGC Quds Force and intelligence agents are given diplomatic cover and use of Iran’s embassies worldwide as a staging ground for assassinations, bombings and surveillance.

    Another arm of the Iranian state, its intelligence ministry, also works out of Venezuela. Majid Dastjani Farahani, who is an Iranian intelligence officer, has launched operations to harm American citizens in retaliation for the killing of the late IRGC Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani. Farahani is wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and its notice indicates he has ties to Venezuela. It’s the same for Mohammad Mahdi Khanpour Ardestani, another Iranian intelligence ministry officer, who has also worked out of Venezuela.

    In a 2021 indictment concerning a plot to kidnap Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad from New York, Iranian operatives researched seizing her and transfer her to Venezuela by sea. The Quds Force has also used Venezuela to fund its campaigns, sending gold from Caracas to generate income in exchange for Iranian oil. In 2024, the US Justice Department successfully seized a former Iranian-owned Boeing aircraft. It had been transferred from the Quds Force-affiliated Mahan Air to a Venezuelan cargo airline. Its crew included a former IRGC commander.

    Iran’s proxy Hezbollah has also used Venezuela as a hub to support its own terrorism, drug trafficking and business interests. For example, Ghazi Nasr Al Din, whom the US Treasury Department sanctioned in 2008, doubled as charge d’ affaires at the Venezuelan embassy in Syria and director for political aspects at its embassy in Lebanon. At the same time, he facilitated travel for Hezbollah operatives and raised funds in Venezuela for the terrorist organization.

    A former member of the Venezuelan National Assembly and Maduro ally Adel El Zabayar was indicted in 2020, with the US government alleging he served as a go-between in recruiting terrorists from Hezbollah and Hamas to carry out terror attacks on the United States.

    Likewise, Iran’s defense ministry has maintained its own pipeline in Venezuela. Qods Aviation Industries, which is a defense ministry subsidiary, has exported drones to Caracas, including the Mohajer-2.

    The defense ministry also manages an oil venture with Venezuela to fund defense projects, according to the US Treasury. In 2023, the US government sanctioned Iran’s then-defense attaché in Caracas for facilitating these deals.

    Public reports also suggest Iran has developed a drone development base at El Libertador Air Base, where it trains Venezuelan military personnel. As the Trump administration has intensified its pressure campaign against Caracas in recent months, Venezuela has asked Iran for “passive detection equipment,” GPS scramblers, and “almost certainly drones with 1,000 km range,” according to the Washington Post.

    Over the years, Maduro has reportedly sought missiles from Iran as well. The possibility of this triggered a crisis for the Biden administration in the summer of 2021, after Iranian warships headed for the region.

    If Maduro is ousted, Iran stands to lose many of its assets in Venezuela. Venezuela, much like Syria under the Assad regime, helps further Iranian interests across the region – military, terror, economic, and political. At a time when Tehran and its proxies across the Middle East have been weakened after the war with Israel, the loss of Maduro would be another blow to the Iranian regime.

  • How Trump could attack Venezuela

    How Trump could attack Venezuela

    President Trump has assembled the largest naval force in the Caribbean since the Cold War. How will it be used? Is he considering an attack on Venezuela to overthrow the Maduro regime? Will he pursue the drug cartels by attacking them in Venezuela? Or will the President simply continue America’s counter-drug operations at sea? With all of these possibilities there is the hope that the Maduro regime will collapse under the pressure of America’s military might.

    At present, the United States is countering the flow of illegal drugs by sinking suspected drug-carrying boats off the coast of Venezuela. The effort is in its 11th week and has led to at least 21 vessels being destroyed. US counter-drug operations in the Caribbean have been going on for decades and have bipartisan support (although the use of lethal force does not). In 2023, President Trump campaigned against drug smuggling, calling it an attack on US citizens. Yet he also cautioned against being involved in foreign conflicts. As he said in his inaugural address: “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.” The current approach to Venezuela balances these two commitments.

    The political challenge is that, having built up such military strength and made explicit threats against the regime (with Trump saying “Maduro’s days are numbered”) if America doesn’t attack, it could be characterized as another instance of TACO – “Trump always chickens out.” Maduro would celebrate having successfully stood up to the gringos for a second time. President Trump would need some sort of diplomatic success to stand down without looking weak.

    The arrival of the Gerald R. Ford seems to signal some sort of direct action against Venezuela. The aircraft carrier, a scarce and powerful military asset, is not suited for plinking small drug boats. Aerial gunships, maritime patrol aircraft and drones have been doing this fine on their own. However, the Ford, in combination with bombers and other naval assets, is perfect for attacks on the mainland. The United States has enough Tomahawk missiles and other land attack munitions in the region for such strikes. Indeed, the Pentagon has reportedly briefed the president on attack options.

    What are these options? The United States could expand its ongoing counter-drug campaign by using this assembled military force to attack the drug cartels in Venezuela: destroying drug production facilities, disrupting seaports and airports used for smuggling, and killing cartel leaders. Such strikes would hit a major drug transit hub and deter would-be cartel members. Even when the cartels adjust, as they will, the attacks set a precedent for a muscular way of countering the flow of drugs. Attacking the cartels ashore is also attractive because it is easy to stop and claim victory, as the strikes will have visibly destroyed some drug smuggling capabilities.

    The administration could decide to overthrow the Maduro regime, which it sees as leading an illegitimate narco-terrorist state. It has put in place a narrative that would justify such a step. An air campaign could attack the headquarters of the Venezuelan security forces and Maduro’s United Socialist party, as well as bases for internal security forces, and perhaps some military air defenses.

    An air campaign might also try to kill Venezuela’s leaders, including Maduro himself. But even putting aside the legality of this, it is hard to hit a target that is moving and hiding. In the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for example, the United States launched an aggressive air campaign against “high-value targets.” None were successful in killing senior Iraqi leaders. It took a decades-long intelligence effort for Israel to penetrate Hezbollah to track and kill its leadership in 2024. It is unclear whether the United States has a similar level of reach within the Maduro regime.

    In the background of all of these options is the hope that the regime collapses internally – an implicit goal from the beginning of the campaign. The intimidation effort has increased over time with the rising military capability, operations close to the Venezuelan coast, flybys of US bombers, and covert CIA action to undermine the regime. Perhaps an element of the Venezuelan security forces could be induced to break away and launch a coup. To prevent this, Maduro has worked hard to ensure his military’s loyalty, incorporating senior officers into his kleptocracy and weeding out any who showed unreliability. Yet the United States is quietly pointing out to military figures that when it overthrew Saddam’s government, the Iraqi military was disbanded. The message is clear: change sides or face social and economic ruin.

    A ground invasion, despite all the attention it has garnered, is not possible at the moment. The United States has about 2,200 Marines in the region, whereas Venezuelan ground forces number about 90,000 between the army, national guard, and marines. Conducting a ground invasion would require massive, multi-divisional reinforcements of at least 30,000 troops and likely much more. There are no signs of such deployments.

    Yet current situation is unsustainable. The United States is like an archer who has drawn his bow. Eventually, the archer must launch an arrow or stand down. An armada – particularly the USS Ford – cannot remain in the Caribbean for more than a few weeks. These assets will be needed elsewhere to respond to crises in other parts of the world, conduct exercises with allies, or show force to competitors like China. There is immense pressure to begin operations or back down. President Trump says he has “sort of” made up his mind. What he does now will reveal his theory of victory.

  • Why is Trump sending an aircraft carrier to Venezuela?

    Why is Trump sending an aircraft carrier to Venezuela?

    Venezuela has been on tenterhooks for weeks, waiting as the United States gathers an armada of warships. The world’s largest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford, looks likely to arrive in the Caribbean from the Mediterranean early next week to join the assortment of destroyers, frigates, amphibious assault vessels and a nuclear-powered submarine. 

    No one seems to know exactly what this magnificent display of American naval firepower is all about. Has it been sent to destroy the cocaine smuggling networks in Venezuela, or topple President Nicolás Maduro, the egregious leader of that poor country? Or is its purpose to remind the Latin American region that the US under Donald Trump could come in guns a-blazing whenever it wants?

    Whatever the answer, Trump is currently examining all the options for some form of possible military action over and above the target practice granted the US Navy to knock out any speedboat coming out of Venezuela suspected of carrying cocaine. So far at least 17 vessels have been destroyed, including one semi-submersible, resulting in the death of 70 people. 

    This, however, is not the sort of mission appropriate for the mighty Gerald R. Ford, a carrier with space for up to 90 aircraft on board. There has to be a grander plan. This, at least, will be the thinking of President Maduro, who has been appealing for military help from his backers, including Vladimir Putin.

    Apart from Maduro himself, his regime flunkies, the police and the army who get paid high wages to stay loyal, there can’t be many people in Venezuela who would not welcome US intervention to get rid of a president who has destroyed the country’s economy through gross mismanagement, corruption and greed since he came to power in April 2013. Nearly eight million people have already fled the country, leaving behind their unsellable homes and businesses.

    The options in front of Trump are said to include: comprehensive strikes within Venezuela on the known drug cartels’ strongholds; attacks on the military protecting Maduro; seizing the country’s oil fields; and going for Maduro directly, just like the US did in Panama three decades ago, when Mmore than 26,000 US troops swept in by helicopter and landing vessels to capture General Manuel Noriega, the country’s leader. Noriega, like Maduro, was designated by Washington as a drug trafficking baron.

    Trump, however, is already being criticized for the attacks on drug boats. They are not justified under international maritime law, experts have said. The Trump administration has argued that the US is engaged in an armed conflict against drug cartels and that those killed were “unlawful combatants.” This was the phrase used by President George W. Bush’s administration to justify the extra-judicial capture and detention in Guantanamo of suspected al-Qaeda terrorists following 9/11.

    The Trump administration has reportedly been seeking advice from the Justice Department about the legality of attacking facilities in Venezuela associated with the drug cartels, as well as, potentially, a direct targeting of Maduro. 

    Judging by leaks in Washington, it would seem the advice was that the administration does not have legal justification for strikes on Venezuela. Officials have been quoted as telling Congress that Trump was not currently planning to launch strikes inside the country. 

    If this is the case, then the arrival of USS Gerald R. Ford and its accompanying warships presents Trump with a conundrum. Deploying a carrier from the Mediterranean via the Atlantic to the Caribbean Sea, a journey of around 2,700 nautical miles, is not done for fun. It’s a deliberate and provocative move, authorized by the president to send the most potent warning that the US means business.

    The US Navy already has at least 13 surface warships and a nuclear-powered submarine operating near Venezuela. Some of the warships and the submarine are armed with Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles, the weapon system favoured by previous US presidents to carry out strikes without the need for sending troops. In addition to warships, the US has reactivated a Cold War era naval base in Puerto Rico, about 500 miles from Venezuela’s coast, and sent troops, F-35B stealth fighters, Marine Corps helicopters and heavy transport aircraft.

    The US is essentially facing off against not just the Venezuelan cartels, but Maduro’s military too. There is intelligence evidence that the Venezuelan army plays a role in ensuring the successful trafficking of drugs out of the country. The biggest cartel, the Cartel de los Soles, is allegedly led by high-ranking members of the Venezuelan armed forces. Military facilities identified as being linked to the drug cartels could be targets for Tomahawks. 

    But will Trump go this far? Having deployed so much firepower to the Caribbean, is he going to give the order to launch strikes, or will he listen to the Justice Department lawyers, counselling caution?

    The sudden announcement last month of the early retirement of Admiral Alvin Holsey, commander of Southern Command, which oversees American operations in the South Caribbean and Latin America, suggests there may be growing internal concerns about what the Commander in Chief has in mind.

  • Trump is being misled on Venezuela

    Trump is being misled on Venezuela

    President Trump is being misled into a regime-change war close to home. Few Americans nowadays find much to celebrate in the Iraq War or the intervention that overthrew Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. Regimes were successfully changed both times, but what came after the dictators’ downfall was civil war, regional instability and mass-migration flows that exported many of those nations’ troubles to their neighbors.

    Now the Trump administration wants to do to Venezuela’s despot, Nicolás Maduro, what George W. Bush did to Saddam Hussein and Barack Obama did to Gaddafi. That will predictably do to the Americas – including the US – what the War on Terror did to the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.

    Why would Donald Trump make such a mistake? Bush and Obama’s foreign-policy blunders gave the President one of his strongest campaign themes in 2016, and his first term was distinguished by his success at keeping America out of new wars. His use of force abroad has typically been selective – why depart from what’s worked?

    If the examples of Bush II and Obama aren’t enough, the Trump administration should consider what happened when Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter intervened in places such as El Salvador. The US-backed civil war in El Salvador sent waves of refugees and immigrants northward, including to the US, where some of the new Salvadoran communities formed gangs – notably MS-13.

    The tension in the Trump coalition isn’t just between foreign-policy hawks and doves – it’s between hawks and immigration restrictionists. Refugees and mass migration are inevitable consequences of today’s wars. And the Trump administration’s policy does not make sense as a tactic to stop illegal drugs, especially fentanyl, from reaching our border: the chaos and population flows that regime change triggers are a boon to drug networks and human traffickers.

    It’s true that Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez have also caused some migration by remaining in power, but the people fleeing because of socialism are often middle-class and freedom-loving; war uproots everyone, especially the poor.

    Despite claiming in 2016 that George W. Bush should simply have taken Iraq’s oil, Trump is probably not contemplating an invasion to seize Venezuela’s petroleum resources. He’s conducting a “maximum pressure” campaign to make an example out of Maduro, regardless of whether or not the socialist dictator can be forced out of power.

    Trump wants to show that there are rewards for America’s friends and painful punishments for her enemies, and he takes the Western Hemisphere particularly seriously. Maduro’s agony will be a lesson to anyone else in Latin America who thinks of making a foe out of Washington. At least, that’s the theory – but the US has a long history of throwing its weight around in Latin America and only making enemies in the process.

    The model Trump should adopt isn’t Reagan’s strategy in Latin America but rather the one that won the Cold War in Europe: stabilizing America’s friends and helping them prosper, thereby heightening the contrast between life under freedom and life under socialism.

    Seeing that contrast inspired Europeans to liberate themselves, tearing down the Berlin Wall and replacing communist governments with democratic ones. If Latin Americans want freedom – and they do, as Argentina’s election of Javier Milei indicates – they can achieve it just as Eastern Europeans did.

    The examples of those places where the US relied most on force during the Cold War are overwhelmingly negative. Even the great triumph of Reagan-era political warfare in Afghanistan defeated a Soviet puppet only to create conditions that brought the Taliban to power and provided al-Qaeda a haven from which to attack the US. That’s a Pyrrhic victory if ever there was one.

    The Trump administration’s interest in toppling Maduro preceded Marco Rubio’s tenure as secretary of state, and sources with ties to the administration say it’s unfair to blame Rubio for the neocon tilt of Venezuela policy. But if there’s a war, it will be Rubio’s at least as much as Trump’s, and if it goes badly, Rubio will get the blame – not least from the President himself.

    Rubio has earned a great deal of respect from many in the MAGA movement who once thought of him as a Bush Republican – weak on immigration, neocon in foreign policy. He risks proving his detractors right if he embraces a regime-change program left over from the days of Mike Pompeo.

    As for Trump himself, he sees force as another form of leverage in negotiations. He won’t bomb allies in trade talks, but he will use America’s military might to change the way adversaries think. And if he’s not about to start a war with China, he’s fully prepared to demonstrate what he can do on Maduro.

    Making an educational point, rather than actually changing the regime in Caracas, may be his objective. But there’s a constituency in the Republican party that wants more than that, and Trump likes to give everyone in his coalition something they have their hearts set on.

    In this case, however, he can’t please neocons or hawks without harming immigration restrictionists as well as doves. Obama, Bush II, Reagan and Carter have shown that when America tries to change other regimes, the result is mass migration that changes Europe and the US. Regime change abroad leads to regime change at home, and right now Trump is the regime.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 10, 2025 World edition.

  • Trump, the foreign policy president?

    Trump, the foreign policy president?

    President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine continued his excellent sartorial adventure at the White House, appearing in an elegantly cut black suit and shirt on Friday as he met with President Donald Trump in the Cabinet Room. But while they may have helped avoid any emanations of wrath from his host, his habiliments did not appear to prompt Trump to approve the dispatch of Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv, a coveted item indeed. “We’d much rather not need Tomahawks,” Trump said. “We’d much rather get the war over. It could mean a big escalation. It could mean a lot of bad things could happen.” 

    Back to square one, in other words. In August, Trump had claimed that his summit meeting with President Vladimir Putin would lead to a breakthrough. It never happened. Instead, the Russian President made Trump look like a patsy. Now he’s trying to play the same game.  

    Trump acknowledged that Putin might be trying to string him along once more. Was he concerned? “Yeah, I am, but I’ve been played all my life by the best of them,” he said. “I’m pretty good at this stuff. I think that he wants to make a deal.” So far, his optimism has proven unwarranted. 

    For his part, Zelensky played his cards, the ones that Trump previously claimed he did not possess before reversing that judgment, very well. He did not provoke Trump. Instead, he said it was important to maintain pressure on Putin and ensure that Ukraine receives real security guarantees. Zelensky also held out the possibility of Ukrainian cooperation with America on advanced drone technology in exchange for long-range missiles. 

    The question for Trump is simple: does he want to up the pressure on Putin before he enters negotiations in Budapest? Or does he want to try and placate the Russian tyrant in the coming weeks? Trump’s very avidity for a deal is what has made him such a pliant object in the hands of Putin, a former KGB agent who has a shrewd understanding of his counterparts. Few, if any, American presidents have been able to come out ahead in dealing with him, whether it was Bush, Obama or Biden. Instead, Putin has outmaneuvered them while steadily increasing his reach and power, both at home and abroad. A bad hombre, to use Trump’s phrase. 

    The person that really seems to have incurred Trump’s ire is another dictator. “He doesn’t want to fuck with the US,” Trump announced during lunch with Zelensky. He was referring to Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro who has been a thorn in the side of Trump.  

    In what he regards as his sphere of influence, Trump wants to dictate the terms of surrender to pesky fellows like Maduro. Elsewhere, he wants to preside over ceasefires and peace agreements. The main thing is that Trump, and Trump alone, is at the center of events. 

    A summit in Budapest, where he is supposed to meet Putin, will once more allow Trump to seize the spotlight, at least for a few days. It may also provide a fillip to Trump’s ally, Hungarian president Viktor Orbán, who faces a tough election in April. The government shutdown in Washington may not have ended by then, but this prospect does not appear to trouble Trump unduly. He’s too busy becoming a foreign policy president to preoccupy himself with domestic matters.

  • Schrödinger’s covert action

    Schrödinger’s covert action

    While much of the pushback from the right wing to Donald Trump’s international hawkishness has come from voices focused on the Middle East, and feared potential for wider wars prompted by support for Israel, the actual test of a break within the Republican coalition on foreign policy disputes could come over the president’s stepped up focus on Venezuela.

    The most recent development, with Trump issuing a rare public acknowledgement that he has authorized covert CIA actions on land. “I authorized for two reasons, really,” he explained this week. “Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America. And the other thing are drugs, we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea.”

    Think of it as Schrödinger’s covert action – does it really stay covert once you announce it? This would also seem to go against Trump’s stand against starting new wars, particularly those with a mind on regime change, which some of the president’s more hawkish supporters would clearly like to be the ultimate aim. It also includes newly ordained Nobel Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, who took to the airwaves in an interview with Christiane Amanpour this week practically begging Trump to greater action against Nicolas Maduro’s regime.

    The sheer amount of resources the United States has moved into the region is impressive, well beyond the drones being used to take out a series of Venezuelan drug shipments at sea. As The Wall Street Journal reports:

    “The U.S. has moved advanced weaponry into the Caribbean and in the skies north of Venezuela, including eight Navy warships, an attack submarine, F-35B jet fighters, P-8 Poseidon spy planes and MQ-9 Reaper drones. The Pentagon has deployed elite special operations forces, including the Army’s secretive 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the ‘Night Stalkers,’ a U.S. official said. Large troop-carrying and attack helicopters are part of the mix, with some aircraft conducting training flights fewer than 90 miles from Venezuela, the official said.”

    This is definitely a significant force, but what it isn’t is a prelude to a land invasion of the sort likely necessary to take on Maduro’s armed forces. Instead, for now at least, Trump seems happy with the kind of actions that disturbs Rand Paul and Thomas Massie, but doesn’t commit larger troop numbers or personnel to a regime change project.

    A fundamental aspect of the Trump tenure in his second term is that everyone is mindful about the future and what it will bring – namely, if his personally defined version of America First is the enduring approach of the GOP, or if there is a shift toward either further pullback around the world or back toward a default pre-Trump Republican security policy.

    There are plenty of observers on both sides who emphatically believe they will be the beneficiaries once that post-Trump sort happens. Their reactions, and the reactions of voters on the American right, to whatever does happen in Venezuela in this ramped up non-covert covert action could determine where the wind is blowing headed into 2028. Or it could become an object lesson in how even the president most resistant to starting new farflung foreign wars might end up in one much closer to home.

  • Machado deserves the Nobel

    Machado deserves the Nobel

    I was fourteen when I clambered onto a boulder along Caracas’s Francisco Fajardo highway – what people called Piedra de la Libertad, the Liberty Rock – and spoke out about a government that had just ignored a referendum. “Tyranny” was more than a buzzword. To my astonishment, a woman I didn’t yet know – María Corina – helped me climb it. With her megaphone, I spoke of unifying, as a sea of flags from rival parties fluttered before me.

    Many dismissed her then. A woman who once called Chávez a “thief” to his face – too brash, too ideological, too direct for the choreography of Venezuelan politics. The old hands said she could never reach the people; she lacked the soothing tones, the feigned humility, the convenient ambiguity that defined our politicians. As a young member in the National Assembly, she was sidelined. She was too elegant, too upper-class – a sifrina, as Caracas gossips liked to say, the Venezuelan equivalent of a Valley girl. How could a man from the hills of Petare ever vote for her? She doesn’t have “the balls,” they said.

    They were wrong.

    Today, history has delivered yet another act of vindication. The Nobel Committee has awarded María Corina Machado the Nobel Peace Prize, citing her “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.” Amid threats, bans, and intimidation, she stayed – refusing exile, unlike so many of the men once praised for having “the balls.” Though barred from appearing on the ballot, she led her movement to victory through Edmundo González, winning more than seventy percent of the vote. Now in hiding, she continues to labor, with unbroken discipline, toward a peaceful transfer of power.

    Some skeptics call her win puzzling, particularly in a moment when the world is watching Trump mediate a ceasefire in the Middle East. They argue: surely, stabilizing a brutal conflict warrants a Nobel more than the struggle of a single nation. These are understandable complaints – and one sure hopes that when peace materializes, Trump will get his Nobel. Yet to dismiss Machado’s recognition is wrong-headed. Plus, attempts to make Machado appear as a figure that opposes Trump is plainly ridiculous – she even dedicated her prize “to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause.” She knows Trump deserves his Nobel too.

    Attack the prize itself if you wish. After all, Senator Mike Lee isn’t wrong when he remarks that “apparently the Nobel Peace Prize isn’t about delivering peace anymore.” Alfred Nobel’s 1895 will defined the award as recognition for those who have accomplished “the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

    By that reading, few modern laureates qualify. Yet the committee long ago widened its understanding of peace to include those who wage domestic campaigns rather than diplomatic ones. Poland’s Lech Wałęsa, America’s Martin Luther King Jr., Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi – their prizes honored movements, not treaties; conviction, not realpolitik.

    Criticizing the prize itself has its logic – a logic I share. What makes little sense is dismissing María Corina Machado’s fight. Hers, too, is a movement – civil, disciplined and rooted in the idea that peace is not merely the end of conflict, but the beginning of freedom.

    What Machado has done is durable: she has carved out a moral pole in a country where everything else has crumbled. She is the first Venezuelan opposition leader to cement a position – not in charisma, but in principle. Though barred from contesting in 2024, it was her movement that outpaced Chavismo in hearts and minds. She is the first to deliver a genuine, stark ideological, moral and political alternative that has beaten Chavismo in recognition – even if the seizure of power remains pending.

    As she hides in an undisclosed location within Venezuela, separated from her family, Machado’s resolve stands in sharp contrast to the opposition figures who sought safety abroad. Juan Guaidó and others, once luminous names, now flicker dimly from foreign capitals. Machado stayed.

    Her struggle has always been peaceful. She called for marches and assemblies, even when many Venezuelans, understandably, chafed at the limits of nonviolence. And she did so without fear – unlike former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, who bent under the regime’s threats and now serves as little more than a decoration in the architecture of controlled opposition. If that is not Nobel-deserving, with the modern recipients in mind, then one wonders: what is?

    When she handed me the megaphone more than a decade ago, she offered belief. I knew then that the movement she would lead would become a vessel for her country’s conscience. She aimed for a moral revolution at a time when climbing the political ladder rewarded conformity and orthodoxy. Many of those who now praise her – much like Trump – once ridiculed her.

    Her prize is not a consolation; it is a spotlight – and it is deserved. Her moral clarity, her endurance, her refusal to yield to bitterness are rare forms of courage in an age addicted to cynicism. Let us be careful not to undermine Machado’s merit. Her victory need not diminish Trump’s successes. They both deserve their Nobels.

  • Shutdown siestas

    Shutdown siestas

    Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday

    Washington is ten days into the government shutdown, and the Republicans and Democrats remain at loggerheads. Members are accosting each other in the corridors of power – in front of a gawking media, naturally – and challenging their adversaries to debate on TV shows. The impression our leaders are trying to give us is that they are working hard to reach a solution to the impasse. The same can’t be said for admin officials: Cockburn understands a large swathe have taken the opportunity to head off on vacation – and are doing their best to ensure they don’t post any pictures. (As ever, if you’ve spotted a secretary soaking in the sunshine, let Cockburn know at cockburn@thespectator.com.)

    As no one knows when an agreement will be reached, starting a week ago some officials booked some absurdly long-distance weekend trips, including one to the Persian Gulf, according to Cockburn’s sources.

    But mothballed federal workers, set to miss a paycheck, are frustrated with the shutdown. They’re not the only ones: a little birdie spotted Senator John Fetterman in the hallway on the Hill after a vote this week. The Pennsylvania Democrat put his hand under the hand-sanitizer machine. Nothing came out… so he walked into the elevator, muttering, “government never works.” Too right.

    On our radar

    WHAT’S UP, DOC? President Trump is spending the morning at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he will undergo an annual physical.

    AGENT MELANIA While her husband was occupied, First Lady Melania Trump gave a rare press conference, detailing how she’d been in back-channel contact with President Vladimir Putin of Russia in order to secure the return of Ukrainian children who’d been abducted during his invasion.

    TISH UPON A STAR The Department of Justice indicted New York Attorney General Leticia James on bank fraud and false-statement charges Thursday. The evidence was presented by Lindsey Halligan, the former Miss Colorado runner-up and newly appointed US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

    Nobel intentions

    So, not this year then. María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader, is the recipient of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. Given President Trump’s position on her rival President Nicolás Maduro – which most notably has taken the form of turning Venezuelan “drug boats” in the Caribbean into red mist – the choice by the Norwegian committee seems a sage one. Surely the President wouldn’t throw his toys out of the stroller after being passed over for a woman whose cause he supports?

    “We are on the threshold of victory and today, more than ever, we count on President Trump, the people of the United States, the peoples of Latin America, and the democratic nations of the world as our principal allies to achieve Freedom and democracy,” a savvy Machado posted on X this morning. “I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!”

    With his trademark subtlety, Trump has been campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize over the first nine months of his presidency, securing letters of support from various world leaders and claiming to have ended seven wars. (If the Israel-Hamas ceasefire holds, that would make eight.)

    The world is watching his Truth Social timeline with bated breath as he undergoes a physical at Walter Reed this morning, to see how he reacts to being passed over. So far, he’s reposted Machado’s tribute to him. In the meantime, they will have to satisfy themselves with the musings of White House communications director Steven Cheung: “President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives. He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will. The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace.”

    If Trump is seeking inspiration for how to respond with grace after being overlooked for an honor, he should probably avoid the example set by David Beckham. The soccer star was hoping to be knighted by the Queen following the 2012 London Olympics. Leaked emails revealed that he was not best pleased with the Honors Committee: “Who decides on the honors? It’s a disgrace to be honest and if I was American I would of [sic] got something like this 10 years ago…” That’s the only part Cockburn can safely quote…

    Who will play Turning Point USA’s alternative halftime show?

    Turning Point USA has announced its plans to host an “All-American Halftime Show” during the Super Bowl. It’s offering this as an alternative to the actual halftime show, which will feature Puerto Rican entertainer Bad Bunny, who mostly performs in Spanish. TPUSA doesn’t like Bad Bunny’s stance on ICE, which included him posting a video of ICE raids in his home territory of Puerto Rico, where he called ICE “sons of bitches.”

    But who, exactly, is TPUSA going to be able to recruit to even vaguely approach the popularity of Bad Bunny, the second-most streamed artist in the country on Spotify so far this year? The appropriately named Creed, who have never done the Super Bowl but did once perform an iconic 9/11 tribute show in Dallas during a Thanksgiving game, might be available and willing. There are some obvious MAGA country choices, such as the ossified Lee Greenwood, Ted Nugent, Kid Rock, Jason Aldean, maybe Toby Keith. TPUSA probably won’t be able to land Luke Bryan and definitely doesn’t want Zack Bryan – no relation – whom DHS Secretary and “Deportation Barbie” Kristi Noem said this week had written a “completely disrespectful” song with lyrics that claim ICE “is going to come bust down your door.”

    All this halftime politics nonsense makes Cockburn miss the apolitical days of wardrobe malfunctions, Prince shredding and Britney Spears and Aerosmith duetting on “Walk This Way.” His prediction: TPUSA’s All-American Halftime Show will have a wan YouTube audience while Santa Clara rocks to Bad Bunny bringing out Daddy Yankee for a duet on “Gasolina.” It will be completely disrespectful – and thoroughly entertaining.

  • What Trump really wants from Venezuela

    What Trump really wants from Venezuela

    When the headlines scream “narco-wars” and pundits wag their fingers about “fentanyl,” it is tempting to reduce Donald Trump’s Venezuela policy to one issue: drugs. A convenient shorthand – but also a red herring. Read closely and a very different logic emerges. 

    Drugs matter, and the effort is to some degree about exactly that. Yet so does immigration. Venezuela’s hydrocarbons also matter – and they matter even more in a world where OPEC has been deliberately constraining supply to keep oil prices high.  

    Deploying narcotics as a public justification is smart politics. It communicates a moral urgency that resonates at home (the drug crisis is real) and offers a legal-rhetorical peg overseas (designating cartels as terror proxies, authorizing kinetic steps under counter-terror authorities). But policy is not simply argument; it is incentive architecture. 

    Trump’s operation in Caracas is being built around a set of incentives – for the United States, for Caracas’s elites, for regional partners – that are designed to minimize the chance of an expensive occupation while still extracting tangible leverage – maybe for regime change but also maybe for a great deal. Think of it as the art of coercion without conquest: pressure applied across multiple vectors until the cost of continued behavior exceeds the benefit. It’s actually pretty straightforward. 

    First: Trump dislikes regime-change wars in the classic sense. The “America First” portfolio is transactional by design: fewer open-ended nation-building campaigns, more calibrated use of force or diplomatic pressure where the legal and political cover exists. Analysts who assume he secretly dreams of invasions are projecting a familiar neocon fantasy onto an administration that, in practice, is stingy about long ground wars. Evidence? You don’t need it, just look at recent history. 

    Second: Immigration is leverage. Policy signals link security operations to deportation and migration enforcement. In recent moves, naval deployments and strikes on alleged trafficking vessels have been accompanied by rhetoric and, at points, explicit linkage to deportation policies. Military pressure, then, functions as bargaining power in a broader domestic political market.

    Third: Venezuela is about oil. The South American country has long been known as a hydrocarbon state, and for good reason. In World War Two, Venezuelan crude was indispensable to the Allied effort, fueling ships, planes and entire campaigns across the Atlantic. Today, by contrast, the United States trades virtually nothing with Caracas – a startling reversal given that Venezuela still holds the largest proven reserves in the world. If brought back into the US market, and modernized, its output could rival Gulf producers and alter the balance of supply. 

    Fixating on crude alone, however, misses the resources that also matter in 21st-century geopolitics – the critical minerals that feed electric vehicles, batteries and telecom. Beijing’s interest in Venezuela, for one, is not sentimental. It is a modern scramble for inputs. Washington’s policy calculus therefore has an industrial logic as well as a geopolitical one: deny adversaries secure access, protect supply chains, and leave a neighboring state structurally unable to become a reliable client of a rival power.

    Unlike Ukraine, Venezuela’s resource wealth doesn’t need to be inflated – it is obvious, vast and sitting in plain sight. Unlike Iran, despite Maduro’s theatrical boasts of millions of “militiamen,” the country has no real military capability. Unlike Taiwan, we don’t need to invoke the complexity of semiconductors; Venezuela’s importance is more tangible, rooted in immigration, drugs, oil, gas and minerals. And unlike the myth of a population united in anti-Americanism, Venezuelans’ resentment of Washington is overstated – their hatred of Maduro certainly runs far deeper. 

    Seen from this angle, the narco-terror narrative is a tool – a great one. Declaring networks as terror or terrorist-adjacent reconfigures the legal playbook. It widens authorities, attracts military assets and legitimizes potential strikes that would be harder to justify under other rubrics. It also performs a diplomatic service: it makes pressure acceptable to partners who would recoil at a naked campaign aimed at regime decapitation. The subtext is surgical: apply pain without promising occupation. 

    A full-scale invasion or a prolonged occupation would be catastrophic for the United States politically and logistically; it would also play straight into the hands of Caracas’s propaganda and regional rivals. So if you cannot replace Maduro through direct warfare, how do you change his cost-benefit calculus? You make continued rule more expensive, more dangerous, and less useful: target revenue streams, hinder patronage, sap his ability to reward subordinates and increase the political price of belligerence. See the logic?

    Critics who treat Trump’s approach as incoherent are often reading intentions without seeing incentives. They assume that because the rhetoric is muscular, the endgame must be militarized. But policy is a transaction between ends and feasible means. Trump’s approach always aims to maximize leverage while minimizing open-ended commitments. That is not a cautious liberal policy of benign persuasion; it is a hard-nosed transactionalism that prefers calibrated coercion to costly conquest. By contrast, Biden relied too much on goodwill and “good gait” diplomacy – noble on paper, disastrous in practice.

    Trump’s policy welds legal cover, domestic political salience, asymmetric pressure, and an appreciation for resources into one instrument. The risks are real: escalation through miscalculation, the entanglement of law enforcement and low-intensity military force, and the moral hazard of normalizing extraterritorial strikes. But proceeding with prudence – not cowardice – has great potential. As Trump fans love to say, “trust the plan.” 

  • Trump’s strike on the Venezuelan ‘narco terrorists’

    President Trump has authorized what he called a “kinetic strike” from a US warship that destroyed a boat allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela bound for the US, killing 11 so called “narco terrorists” aboard.

    The action by a US naval task force in international waters in the southern Caribbean is the first since the President threatened armed intervention against narcotics smuggling by Venezuela’s drugs cartels in January. Trump said that the attack was aimed at members of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua drugs cartel which the US branded a terrorist organization in February, and which it claims is controlled by Venezuela’s socialist Maduro regime.

    The US Department of Justice has called Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro “the world’s No. 1 narco terrorist” and has put up a $50 million reward for information leading to his arrest on drugs trafficking charges.

    For his part, Maduro has vowed vengeance on any “empire setting foot on the sacred soil of Venezuela” – and called out his paramilitary Bolivar militia to guard the country’s borders. Thousands of Venezuelans queued at the weekend to register their membership in the force. Maduro has denied any links with the Tren de Aragua cartel, claiming that the gang was completely destroyed in a prison battle in 2023.

    Coincidentally or not, the Tren de Aragua gang’s rise coincided with the coming to power of Nicolas Maduro. Founded in 2014, the cartel spread across the Americas, ironically aided by the flight of millions of Venezuelans escaping the social and economic misery created by the Maduro regime.

    The cartel was founded by a gangster called Hector Guerrero Flores, known as Nino Guerrero. He and other leaders of the gang were jailed in Venezuela’s Tocoron prison, which became the cartel’s de facto headquarters under the gang’s control.

    Maduro’s security forces stormed the jail in 2023 and claimed that they had destroyed the cartel, but their power continued to grow, and US cities were flooded with fentanyl and other drugs trafficked by the organization.

    In March, President  Trump invoked the 18th-century Enemy Aliens Act, a wartime measure, and ordered the deportation of cartel members living in the U.S.  He compared the cartel to Al-Quaeda and other foreign terrorist groups. After some deportations were delayed by “lawfare” in US courts, Trump’s missile strike against the drugs boat represents the opening of a new front in the campaign against the flood of drugs originating in Venezuela.

    The US war against drug dealing Latin American dictators has a long history. In 1989/90 President George Bush senior ordered Operation Just Cause against Panama, a full scale invasion of the Central American state designed to extradite the country’s dictator, General Manuel Noriega, to face trial on drugs trafficking charges. Although Noriega had worked as a CIA agent of influence and had helped the US backed Contras fight the left-wing Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, this did not save him from deportation to the US and a 17-year stint in a Florida jail. He later served a jail sentence in France for money laundering and died in Panama of a brain tumor in 2017.

    Trump briefed reporters at a news conference in the White House Oval Office on Tuesday that he had ordered the strike to prevent the narcotics reaching the US. “…an awful lot of drugs on that boat,” he added. Later the President wrote on TruthSocial that the strike should “serve notice on anyone even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE.” A video posted by the President on the platform showed the boat exploding.

    Tension between the US and the poverty stricken socialist ruled state has ratcheted up in recent days after Trump sent a naval task force of seven warships and a nuclear powered submarine towards the Venezuelan coast. 

    Tuesday’s strike is the first time that the Trump administration has taken armed action against a Hispanic neighbor, and will revive memories of US interventions under previous administrations against states deemed to be harming American interests like Cuba, Panama and Grenada.

    The Maduro regime is now almost certain to take action against the US in revenge for the strike, though what form such action will take is not yet clear. The Venezuelan President, a former bus driver, was re-elected to office a year ago in a poll widely condemned by observers as rigged. Maduro is likely to try to revive his flagging popularity by appealing to Venezuelan patriotism and traditional Hispanic anti-Yankee nationalism.

    Since Maduro succeeded the charismatic Hugo Chavez in 2013, around eight million desperate people – an estimated one third of the entire Venezuelan population – have fled the country to escape rampant hyperinflation, widespread unemployment, and shortages of food and basic goods. Many of the refugees reached the US under the Biden administration, and Trump has been deporting those living in America illegally.

    Venezuela has enormous oil deposits which have been mismanaged by Maduro’s far-left government. Instead, the regime has derived much of its illicit income from the illegal trade in drugs which has been wreaking crime and chaos in America’s cities, and which Trump has pledged to halt. Now the President has acted on this pledge.