On Monday, President Trump announced the U.S. bombed a boat in international waters, killing three people. The attack was the second to target what the Trump administration claims are drug smugglers from Venezuela. A previous strike on another boat killed 11 people. In a third incident, the U.S. Navy raided a fishing boat in Venezuelan waters, detaining nine fishermen for eight hours. This escalating U.S. military action follows a secret directive that Trump signed approving the use of military force in Latin America and an ongoing buildup of U.S. military presence in the Caribbean.
“We have a very clear example of political theater, an attempt at provocation, an ongoing effort at regime change, and the strategy of trying to use the military to interdict drug trafficking, which has failed incredibly in Mexico, Colombia, everywhere else the U.S. has applied it,” says Venezuelan historian Miguel Tinker Salas, who adds the Trump administration is “misleading the public in indicating that these were drug traffickers with no evidence whatsoever.” He says its attempt to manufacture a crisis in Venezuela is reminiscent of the lead-up to the U.S. war on Iraq.
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
On Monday, President Trump announced the U.S. bombed another boat in international waters near Venezuela, this time killing three people. He claimed the targeted boat was carrying drugs from Venezuela, posted video of a speedboat erupting in flames from an apparent airstrike.
Two weeks ago, the U.S. bombed another boat in the region, killing 11 people. Trump also claimed that boat was carrying drugs, though some have speculated the passengers, 11 people on board, may simply have been migrants.
In a third incident, the U.S. Navy recently raided a fishing boat in Venezuelan waters. Personnel from a U.S. warship reportedly boarded the boat, then detained nine fishermen for eight hours.
The escalating U.S. military action against Venezuela comes after President Trump signed a secret directive approving the Pentagon’s use of military force in Latin America, supposedly to target drug cartels. On Monday, War Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a warning to drug cartels, writing on X, quote, “We will track them, kill them, and dismantle their networks throughout our hemisphere — at the times and places of our choosing,” Hegseth wrote.
In recent weeks, the U.S. has sent multiple warships to the Caribbean. The U.S. military has also been carrying out military exercises in Puerto Rico. Last week, Hegseth and Air Force General Dan Caine, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a surprise visit to Puerto Rico. Trump has also ordered the deployment of 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico.
We go now to California, where we’re joined by Miguel Tinker Salas, emeritus professor of history at Pomona College in Claremont, California, the author of The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture, and Society in Venezuela, as well as the book Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know.
Professor Miguel Tinker Salas, welcome back to Democracy Now! What does everyone need to know about one attack after another on Venezuelan boats, at this point killing — what? — 11 people in the last few weeks?
MIGUEL TINKER SALAS: Well, we have a very clear example of political theater, an attempt at provocation, an ongoing effort at regime change, and the strategy of trying to use the military to interdict drug trafficking, which has failed incredibly in Mexico, Colombia, everywhere else the U.S. has applied it. So, if we look at this in the context of what’s going on right now, undermining — underscoring most of it is attempt at regime change, some tensions within the White House or within the administration between realists, who want to actually engage with Venezuela and exchange oil, as we saw with the Chevron license, and others, led by Marco Rubio, who have taken us back to the Cold War and violent regime change in Latin America.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Miguel, could you talk about particularly the role of Rubio in this? Because, obviously, with two top posts, as secretary of state and national security adviser, he is a very influential person in the Trump administration. And obviously, this doubling of the reward for Maduro and the accusations by the U.S. government that he’s the head of the so-called Cártel de los Soles, it reminds us all of what happened with Noriega decades ago in Panama.
MIGUEL TINKER SALAS: Well, it also reminds me of Iraq and, again, the whole notion of weapons of mass destruction that weren’t there. In Venezuela, the use of Cártel de los Soles can actually be traced back to 1993 and the role the CIA played in trafficking over a ton of cocaine from Venezuela with several Venezuelan generals, before Chávez, into the U.S. as an effort to try to track Colombian cartels, which was a complete failure.
And again, it reminds us that Marco Rubio plays a fundamental role, because he also represents, in large part, the Venezuelan opposition in South Florida. And here we have a case of someone like Ahmed Chalabi, in the case of Iraq, informing U.S. policy, indicating that there’s going to be pressure or an explosion in Venezuela if Trump does these actions, and it hasn’t happened. But they are nonetheless looking for cracks within the Venezuelan military. They’re looking for fissures. But Rubio plays a key role as an interlocutor between the right wing in Venezuela and the U.S. administration in an effort at violent regime change.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you, as well, about this, these attacks on boats. The first boat that was attacked, where 11 people were reportedly killed, there had been reports in The New York Times and other media that this boat had actually turned around and was headed back, after it noticed that there was a — U.S. planes were tailing it. Your response to these, in essence, extrajudicial killings?
MIGUEL TINKER SALAS: Well, this is, again, where the Trump administration established itself as judge, jury and executioner. There is always a lot of traffic between Sucre, the state of Sucre in Venezuela, and the island of Trinidad. Many of these individuals were trafficking between the two countries. To think that drug traffickers are going to put 11 people on a boat, where that space is critical for actually trafficking other materials, illegal materials, or drugs, is absurd. So, more than likely, they were trafficking undocumented immigrants going to Trinidad, as they have historically since the 18th and 19th century. So, in this context, it was an extrajudicial killing, where there’s been no evidence. And even if there was evidence, the case of trafficking does not merit execution. As the Coast Guard has done in previous occasions, they interdict, they board the ship, they arrest the individuals, they provide the evidence. Here, we have no evidence.
And the notion that trafficking from Venezuela, it runs against the very notion that the U.S. military assessment of April of 2025, where it said that less than 5 to 7% of drug trafficking occurs through Venezuela. While Trump is putting the military in the Caribbean Sea, most of drug trafficking, over 90%, takes place in the Pacific. So it’s illogical to think that a flotilla off the coast of Venezuela is going to stop drug trafficking, whether it’s cocaine or otherwise. And again, to Trump’s point yesterday, Venezuela does not have a source of fentanyl. Fentanyl is the domain of the Mexican cartels. So, again, he is misleading the population. He’s misleading the public in indicating that these were drug traffickers with no evidence whatsoever.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And finally, your assessment of the continued claim of the United States that this, the so-called gang in Venezuela, Tren de Aragua, is a terrorist organization?
MIGUEL TINKER SALAS: Well, I think the calling drug traffickers or any gang “terrorists” has a political purpose. If you label them terrorists, then you lay the groundwork for a political intervention, military intervention or an effort at regime change. We saw that in the case of Panama. We saw that in the case of other countries. We saw that debated in Mexico, where Trump told Mark Esper that he wanted to launch cruise missiles into narco laboratories. Again, the notion of attacking a sovereign country, attacking its citizens, is contrary to international law, to the law of the sea, and it’s a direct violation of principles held for over several decades.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, a judge recently ruled that because we’re not at war with Venezuela, they can’t just wholesale, the Trump administration, deport or remove Venezuelans. Do you think that President Trump is trying to provoke Venezuela into doing something so the U.S. will be at war? And do you see this as a distraction, perhaps from the Epstein files or whatever President Trump doesn’t want us to focus on at home?
MIGUEL TINKER SALAS: I wrote about that in an op-ed last week with a colleague in La Jornada, in which I argued — we argued that the loss at the 5th District Court puts the Trump administration in a bind. They wanted to deport 650,000 Venezuelans. They used the Enemy Aliens Act as the pretext. The court rejected it. So now he has the choice of going back to the 5th District or the Supreme Court.
It’s a case of Wag the Dog, if we all remember the movie in 1997, where you create a war, you create a conflict, in order to distract attention from what’s happening in the U.S. So, there is a national component, a U.S. component, to this conflict. There’s a Venezuelan component. But they dovetail nicely around the issue of the deportations, as Trump seeks to distract attention from the Epstein case and from the economy and from other issues that are occurring in the U.S.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Vice President JD Vance dismissed accusations that the first attack on the boat, that killed 11 people, may have been a war crime if civilians were on board. Vance wrote on X, “I don’t give a” — it rhymes with “hit” — “what you think,” he said. “I don’t give a [blank] what you call it,” using the expletive. He was responding to Republican Senator Rand Paul criticizing Vance’s comments, saying, “What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial.” You have 10 seconds, Professor Tinker Salas.
MIGUEL TINKER SALAS: Again, the U.S. puts itself above the law, above international law, and places itself as a judge, jury and executioner, without ever providing any evidence.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Miguel Tinker Salas, emeritus professor of history at Pomona College in Claremont, California. You can go to our website for our interview with him in Spanish at democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, for another edition of Democracy Now!