POLITICS: Venezuela is where Trump aims to annihilate our adversaries

Venezuela is swiftly becoming ground zero of President Trump’s America First reshaping of US foreign policy.

The United States seized the oil tanker Skipper off the country’s coast Wednesday, capping off months of heightened tensions. The sanctioned vessel has carried crude for Iran and had an estimated 1.1 million barrels on board.

On the surface, the pressure’s been over ridding Caracas of illegitimate President Nicolás Maduro.

Ditto ending government-sponsored narco-terrorists using Venezuela as a transit hub and safe haven to smuggle Colombian cocaine and other illicit drugs to North America and the Caribbean.

But confronting Maduro is far more about Team Trump reasserting US dominance in the Western Hemisphere.

Trump’s intended recipients?

Beijing, Tehran and Moscow.

His message?

Hands off.

Trump signaled his reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine was coming just days before taking office in January. While the mainstream media obsessed about his comments about Greenland and the Panama Canal, they missed his point.

He was warning about China’s short- and long-term intentions to create economic and military strangleholds on the Americas.

This includes President Xi Jinping’s designs to dominate the Northern Sea Route by declaring China a “Near-Arctic State” in 2018. Nominally, the declaration was about “developing shipping, carrying out scientific research and exploiting the region’s oil gas, minerals, fisheries and other resources,” as The Wall Street Journal reported.

But it’s really about Beijing boxing the United States out of the Arctic, especially as its sea lanes open up due to polar warming. Hence Trump’s emphasis on the importance of Greenland in defending the NSR and his welcomed October announcement the Coast Guard is purchasing 11 new icebreakers.

Xi is playing the same strategic game in the Panama Canal. Chinese companies control the key Pacific and Atlantic ports of Balboa and Cristóbal. Under the Trump administration’s aegis, a memorandum of understanding was signed in March for US-based BlackRock to acquire the ports.

Beijing, however, has delayed the closing, citing national security interests. And at the end of the world in South America, Xi is seeking to acquire port facilities in Punta Arenas, Chile, to dominate the Drake Passage.

Team Trump essentially seeks to end any great-power competition in the Americas — particularly China’s efforts to militarily dominate sea passages in the Arctic, Panama Canal Zone and Antarctica.

Given the National Security Strategy’s proclamation of the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, we now know how America intends to check and eventually end Chinese, Russian and Iranian malevolent activities in the Western Hemisphere.

It aims to preserve freedom of navigation in the Americas; eject crippling Chinese Belt and Road Initiative investment in Latin America and the Caribbean and replace it with American capital; and marginalize malign actors such as Maduro in Venezuela while rewarding US allies.

It’s a heavy lift. Through 2024, cumulative direct Chinese foreign investment in Latin America and the Caribbean stood at $8.53 billion, per Enrique Dussel Peters at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

China’s Development Bank and its Export-Import Bank had lent the regions more than $120 billion as of 2023. Notably, Venezuela tops that list at $59.2 billion.

Brazil — a founding member of Beijing-dominated BRICS — is next at $32.4 billion, with Jamaica the largest Caribbean recipient of Chinese bank loans at $1.6 billion. Significantly, Jamaica is a major “hot spot” of trafficking illicit drugs from Venezuela to the United States, Mexico and Canada, per the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Team Trump views confronting Venezuela as the best means of countering growing Chinese influence in the Americas. Caracas is Beijing’s crown jewel in South America. Eighty percent of Venezuelan oil exports “went directly and indirectly to China through little-known intermediaries,” Reuters reports.

That’s code for shadow oil fleets. Such as Skipper, the oil tanker seized falsely flying Guyana’s flag. The United States sanctioned the vessel in 2022 for transporting oil for Iran to support Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force.

Iran is undeterred and doubling down on defying Trump in Venezuela. Petroleos de Venezuela and the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company signed a deal to improve fuel output at the Paraguaná Refining Center to end Caracas’ “reliance on US refinery technology,” Reuters reports.

Russia lurks in Venezuela as well. President Vladimir Putin — hypocritically, given his complaints of NATO aid to Ukraine in his backyard — has supplied the country with military aid, training and investment since the days of Hugo Chávez in the early 2000s. The two countries signed a 10-year Treaty on Strategic Partnership and Cooperation in October.

Putin reaffirmed his support for Maduro in a telephone call Thursday. The Kremlin is not ready to capitulate to Trump in Venezuela.

Nor is Maduro, who appears to believe he can outlast Trump despite the largest buildup of US forces in the Caribbean since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and new Trump administration sanctions on him, his family and business cronies.

Maduro’s obstinance could cause the standoff with Washington to become kinetic. US military strikes on Venezuelan ports, army bases and airports used in staging and trafficking illicit drugs may be in the making.

Trump’s newly enshrined Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine hangs in the balance. It’s unlikely the president will stand down. Maduro is overestimating his position and underestimating Trump’s resolve.

María Corina Machado, who escaped Venezuela last week to accept her Nobel Peace Prize, stands at the ready to succeed the corrupt Maduro as president.

The question is: When do US demonstrations translate into action?

Trump cannot allow Maduro to stand in the way of Washington reestablishing strategic security in the Americas. Venezuela is the necessary first step. Diminishing Beijing, Tehran and Moscow throughout the hemisphere is the worthy goal.

Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy. Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as a military intelligence officer and led the US European Command Intelligence Engagement Division from 2012 to 2014. They are the co-founders of INTREP360.