President Trump announced major strike on Venezuelan dock facility.

 

President Donald Trump. BBC/Reuters. 

President Donald Trump announced a major strike on a Venezuelan dock facility suspected to be involved in drug smuggling. BBC. Trump was cagey on the details, and did not reveal where the facility was, who had hit it, and when the attack occurred. Venezuela has not responded to the incident either. Trump had made threats to attack the Venezuelan mainland to deal with drug smugglers and the attack would be the first one targeting Venezuelan territory directly. Trump has launched major strikes against narco smugglers in a campaign to curtail fentanyl trafficking. The campaign, which has included taking Venezuelan oil tankers, is putting pressure on Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro to step down. 

My Comment:

Not a lot of details on this story, but it's worth covering as it's a major escalation in the battle against the drug smugglers. This is an obvious step up from the campaign against drug boats, which has been a low intensity conflict. Blowing up a smuggler dock in Venezuelan territory (assuming that is where it is, details are lacking) is a new step in this conflict. We don't know if it was an air strike or some kind of CIA op, but in either case it would be an escalation. 

I hate the hedging the news with these strikes. It's very clear that these are all drug boats and drug smugglers getting blown up. They want people to think that Trump is just blowing up a bunch of fishermen or something. Fishermen don't tend to run speed boats with no fishing equipment.

I am guessing the same thing will be said about this strike as well, and in this case the lack of transparency will help the media out. We don't know very much about these strikes, or even where they happened. This is going to give the media a lot of room to speculate as to what happened. In previous strikes they released video to show exactly what happened. Sure, the media tried to spin it anyways, but with the video it could be clearly seen by anyone who wasn't a rabid partisan that the vessels were indeed drug boats. They should absolutely do the same thing here, and I wonder if Trump jumped the gun a bit, announcing the strikes before video was ready. 

As for the Venezuela campaign, this probably won't actually change much. It's not like Venezuela can respond in any way. The most they could probably do is file a protest with the UN, which will be promptly ignored and won't change anything regardless. Venezuela's military is a joke and they cannot respond to attacks like this. 

I also don't think this will do a whole lot to increase the pressure on Nicholas Maduro. There were rumors that he was considering leaving the country, but I don't think one strike on a drug dock is going to be the thing that pushes him out of power. The blockade of sanctioned oil tankers is going to be a lot more effective as it will directly effect the bottom line of the Venezuelan government for every oil tanker that doesn't make it to delivery. 

But I do think it was a good warning for Maduro. The strike does show America's unquestioned military supremacy over Venezuela. We were able to strike a drug facility with impunity so that also means we could do the same thing to Maduro, assuming we had the intelligence to find out where he is. That has to be in the back of Maduro's mind and it may contribute to him leaving power voluntarily.