The Social World

Tag: Nicolás Maduro

  • Trump’s big Bolivia opportunity

    Trump’s big Bolivia opportunity

    After nearly two decades of reign over Bolivia, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party was banished at the ballot box on August 17. Its fall is a dramatic political realignment to the right for Bolivians, and a rare opportunity for the United States to reform relations with a geopolitically critical nation. As one expert, Leonardo Coutinho, told us, “The Trump administration can not only contribute to the restoration of democracy but also play a central role in dismantling a fully functioning narco-state.”

    Despite its 25 percent inflation rate and a 93 percent debt-to-GDP ratio, Bolivia is rich in natural resources, boasting some of the world’s largest lithium reserves, making it an attractive target for both American and Chinese grand strategies. Until now, the incumbent socialists aligned Bolivia with the anti-US alliance of China and Venezuela and created a lawless environment for cartels and criminal gangs to prosper. President Trump can reverse this to secure US supply chains and wound anti-American influence in a heavily contested theater.

    Mining developments have stalled under MAS mismanagement and red tape. Backed by Beijing and its broader strategy to dominate technology-critical supply chains, Chinese firms greased the palms of MAS legislators to secure privileged access to more than a billion dollars’ worth of lithium. Regulations restrict American investors, forcing them to form joint ventures with state-owned firms, strangling American-capital inflows. Hypercentralized China, meanwhile, with its ability to deploy large sums of capital with little regard to short-term costs, has constantly secured billionaire investments. Competition for mining bids long shaped Bolivia’s political system, encouraging mass corruption in a nation reliant on mining for income. This has empowered China and stalled US growth. 

    Bolivia’s ousted socialist government had also long extended its hand to Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela. Worse yet, Venezuelan criminal elements have infiltrated Bolivia’s weak borders, turning it into a transit center for illicit activity, which has empowered the presence of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang that the US Department of State rightly designated a foreign terrorist organization this year. Evo Morales and Luis Arce also transformed Bolivia into a hub of cocaine production by enacting laws that expanded coca cultivation. The resulting drug trade has not only fueled smuggling into the United States but has also undermined stability in Brazil, Argentina, and across the continent at large.

    America First Policy Institute’s Melissa Ford Maldonado, who served as an electoral observer during the Bolivian election, told The Spectator that “This moment is not unique to Bolivia, but a part of a larger shift across our hemisphere.” She went on: “From Argentina to Ecuador, and now Bolivia, with elections ahead in Chile, Honduras, Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil and beyond, people are turning away from the false promises of socialism and authoritarianism, and demanding real sovereignty, accountability, and change. The fight for democracy in the Americas may not be easy, but it is winnable, and it’s already happening.”

    Leonardo Coutinho, the executive director of the western hemisphere-focused Center for a Secure Free Society adds that the US has the unique opportunity “to support Bolivia in a process of institutional reconstruction that frees it both from the ideological legacy of Bolivarianism and from the capture exercised by narcotrafficking across different dimensions of national life, ranging from the illicit economy to the presidency itself.” Coutinho warned, however, that the MAS leader Evo Morales “remains a relevant political force.”

    To seize this opportunity, Trump must prepare a trade deal with Bolivia. In such a deal, Trump can leverage a current 15 percent reciprocal tariff, American development financing and access to the US market in exchange for US firms being allowed to acquire and operate mines in Bolivia.  

    Both viable MAS alternatives – Quiroga and Paz Pereira – appear open to this path. The task for Trump is simply to extend his hand while exerting the pressure needed to make it real. Coupled with this effort, the Trump administration can encourage renewed investigations into China’s lithium deals – leveraging the Bolivian case in its wider competition with the most formidable competitor the US has had in history. 

    The US’s diplomatic offensive, for which we still need a Senate-approved ambassador, should also push for renewed security partnerships to fight transnational terrorist organizations. Here, Trump can enlist the support of Argentine president Javier Milei, also the president of a once-leftist country leading a US realignment. 

    Such an approach would strengthen US credibility across South America and anchor Bolivia within a broader network of partners – providing a much-needed counterweight to the region’s socialist bloc.

    Trump has the chance to pull Bolivia back into America’s orbit and set the stage for shared prosperity. With decisive action, he can lock down lithium supply chains, break the grip of cartels and open a new chapter for the region – one in which the US proves it can lead not only by putting itself first, but also by lifting its neighborhood with it.

  • Will Venezuela crisis spill into conflict with US?

    Will Venezuela crisis spill into conflict with US?

    The authoritarian left wing regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has mobilized his ruling Socialist party’s paramilitary militia in response to US President Donald Trump sending a task force of warships into Venezuelan waters as part of a US crackdown against alleged cocaine trafficking by the poverty-stricken country.

    Declaring that “no empire will touch the sacred soil of Venezuela “ Maduro sent his militia to reinforce the country’s borders with neighboring Colombia, who he has accused of collaborating with America in a pincer movement against his country.

    Trump has charged the Maduro regime with drugs trafficking on a massive scale, and the US Department of Justice has recently increased the reward it is offering for Maduro’s arrest and detention to $50 million, describing him as the “ world’s biggest narco trafficker”.

    Maduro, a former bus driver and Trade Union official, took over the Presidency in 2013 after the death from cancer of his charismatic but dictatorial predecessor Hugo Chávez. Together, the two men’s far left Socialist party has brought the oil rich but badly misgoverned state to its knees, a humanitarian crisis which has seen almost 8 million people flee the country for foreign destinations since 2014.

    That exodus represents a staggering one third of Venezuela’s total population of 29 million. The refugees have chiefly crossed the border into Colombia to escape hunger, unemployment, hyperinflation, and an acute shortage of basic food and goods: an economic and social catastrophe presided over by Maduro’s government which rules by dictatorial decrees rather than law.

    Only a year after taking office, Maduro used violence to put down widespread rioting by protesters against the economic chaos, and since then he has ruled by repression rather than consent. Only a year ago, Maduro “won” his third Presidential term in a contest widely condemned by international monitors and media as rigged. The opposition candidate, former diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez, fled to Spain in fear for his life after Maduro unilaterally declared himself the winner.

    The US and other western allies regard Maduro as an illicit dictator who only remains in power through a mix of cheating, corruption and repression, but although most members of the Middle class have long since left the country, Maduro still retains some residual support among the poorer masses.

    Thousands of such people lined up this week to register with the regime’s so-called Bolivaran militia, after Maduro charged Trump with interference in Venezuelan internal affairs and seeking regime change by sending in the naval task force.

    For his part, Trump is reacting against the double danger of desperate Venezuelan migrants flooding into the US, and the ravages caused by drugs made in Venezuela in US cities. As the US warships near the capital Caracas, this is clearly a crisis that could spill into violence.

  • Will Trump go to war with the cartels?

    Will Trump go to war with the cartels?

    President Donald Trump has signed off on a secret directive that, if activated, would let the US military hunt Mexican drug cartels the same way it once hunted al-Qaeda. Cartels branded as Foreign Terrorist Organizations could suddenly find themselves in the crosshairs of US drones, special forces and the full arsenal of counter-terror laws. Sinaloa, CJNG, Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua and even Nicolás Maduro’s own Cartel de los Soles are on the list.

    In Washington, the move is framed as a clean break with decades of failed “law enforcement” tactics. No more just DEA stings or financial sanctions, this is now a national security war. Marco Rubio put it bluntly: “We can’t continue treating these guys like local street gangs. They have weapons like terrorists. In some cases, they have armies; in many cases, they control Territory.”

    But here’s the catch: while the US postures about cartels as if they were ISIS, it’s also quietly negotiating with them.

    Courtrooms in New York and Chicago have told a very different story from the one emerging from the Pentagon. Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán was given life in prison without the death penalty because prosecutors promised Mexico he wouldn’t face execution. His sons, the Chapitos, are brokering plea deals that shave decades off potential sentences. Remarkably, some of his family members have received visas to live in the US.

    Other traffickers – men Washington brands as “terrorists” in press releases – end up in federal court trading testimony for lighter sentences, sometimes slipping into witness protection with new names and safe suburban lives. Washington will tell the public it doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. The reality? It does, when the terrorists happen to move cocaine and fentanyl instead of flying planes into buildings.

    President Claudia Sheinbaum insists: “Our territory is inviolable, our sovereignty is inviolable, our sovereignty is not for sale.”

    It’s a defiant stance rooted in history. US military interventions in Latin America rarely end without scars. But Mexico’s political class has another reason to keep Americans out. The cartel-politician nexus runs too deep. If US counter-terrorism teams start digging, they won’t just find stash houses in Sinaloa, they’ll find politicians fronting shell companies based in the US. For now, Sheinbaum’s drawing a hard boundary: They stay in their territory, we stay in ours. But Trump’s move shifts the power dynamic. Mexico is now being asked to cooperate in a framework that gives the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies more direct access to cartel Targets.

    Sheinbaum is drawing a line in the sand, but Trump’s directive shifts the power dynamic.

    Washington can now apply military, legal and financial pressure without formally crossing the border. Mexico is being cornered into cooperation, whether it admits it or not, leaving a wide-open back door for American intelligence operations.

    Once Washington slaps the “terrorist” label on a cartel, the rules change. What was once a cat-and-mouse chase run by the DEA turns into open season under the Pentagon’s counter-terror mandate. Suddenly, US special operations forces can treat cartel figures like battlefield targets.

    Surveillance drones circling over Baja California would no longer be limited to intelligence-gathering; they could be armed, authorized to strike. Special forces raids, once reserved for al-Qaeda camps in Yemen or ISIS safehouses in Syria, could theoretically land in the mountains of Sinaloa.

    The courtroom becomes another front line. Under the Anti-Terrorism Act, families of victims are given the right to sue cartel bosses in American courts even decades later. The family of Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, the DEA agent kidnapped, tortured, and killed in 1985, is already pushing such a case forward. The precedent is powerful: cartel leaders could now find their fortunes tied up in endless litigation, with victims’ families clawing at the offshore accounts and front companies that have shielded their wealth. What once looked like impunity shifts to exposure.

    The financial arena is just as critical. Washington has long wielded the Kingpin Act to sanction traffickers, but the terrorist designation broadens its reach. Now, entire financial ecosystems can be dismantled from shell corporations in Panama, to real estate holdings in El Paso neighborhoods, even US banks that turned a blind eye. The US has already tested this kind of economic warfare against Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela, sanctioning Cartel de los Soles figures and seizing assets tied to the regime. Now, cartels don’t just risk arrest anymore; they risk having their political patrons and money men dragged into the open.

    Perhaps the most consequential shift is reach. Once branded as terrorists, cartel leaders are no longer fugitives ducking DEA indictments; they have become international targets. US law now follows them wherever they go. If a Sinaloa lieutenant turns up in Spain or a CJNG broker tries to do business in Canada, extradition isn’t just a matter of slow diplomacy; it’s counter-terror enforcement. The precedent here is Panama in 1989: Manuel Noriega, a sitting head of state with deep ties to cocaine trafficking, was captured by US forces in a military operation and hauled into a Miami courtroom. The message was simple then, and it echoes now: no corner of the globe is beyond reach when Washington decides to treat a trafficker as an enemy combatant.

    What Washington is signaling with the terrorist label is that the gloves are finally coming off.

    The cartels are no longer just drug syndicates; they are enemy networks, and the United States is prepared to dismantle them piece by piece, even if it means rewriting the rules along the way.

    But the contradiction is unfortunately glaring. In public, the US says cartels are terrorists. In private, prosecutors strike deals that let cartel lieutenants keep their lives, their families, sometimes even pieces of their fortunes.

    El Chapo’s wife, Emma Coronel, convicted of helping run his empire, served just three years before walking free in Los Angeles. Compare that to Guantanamo detainees who have been rotting for decades without trial. Who gets treated like a terrorist?

    The hypocrisy isn’t lost on Mexico. When Americans talk about hunting cartel leaders like jihadists, Mexicans see the headlines. When Americans cut sweetheart deals with those same leaders’ families, Mexicans see the footnotes in court documents, and, coupled with the immense loss these very figures have inflicted on Mexican society, it is a blatant slap in the face for the countless victims.

    This war is no longer just about fentanyl or border security. It’s about what happens when the US decides to treat a criminal empire like a terror network but still plays by the old backroom rules of plea bargains, immunity and political convenience.

    For Washington, it’s a double game: sanctions and indictments for some, green cards and plea deals for others. For Mexico, it’s a nightmare. If the US ever stops negotiating and starts treating the cartels like ISIS, the fallout will be catastrophic. If it keeps playing both sides, the hypocrisy will eventually boil over.

    One way or another, sparks are starting to fly. And this time, they won’t just land on cartel strongholds in Sinaloa or Jalisco. They’ll land in the halls of power in both Washington and Mexico City.