Operation Against Venezuela: A Third Purpose?

There’s a third motivation to explain the operation against Venezuela, one that is usually never addressed.

Two other reasons have been previously analyzed: either to achieve "regime change" in Venezuela to end the Bolivarian Revolution, or also as a smokescreen to cover up the situation within the US, especially to avoid the potential disaster of revealing Jeffrey Epstein's files and much more, regarding the domestic reality.

The third, perhaps the most important, seeks to divert public attention to the territory where drug trafficking is low, to avoid prying eyes on the routes, both sea and land, through which the majority of the flow of illegal drugs to the US passes.

That is, to present as if they're doing something against drug trafficking, in a "the show must go on" mode, but strictly speaking, to encourage it to operate freely.

To better understand the issue, it's worth answering several questions.

Is drug trafficking a profitable business in the US? Yes, the largest global demand and the bulk of the international financial movement it generates are concentrated here.

Who really governs the US? Trump and the two-party system in general are the visible heads, the ones who act before the political crowd, but those who rule are the highly concentrated military-industrial/financial complex.

Does this banking/warlike ecosystem participate in or "profit" from drug trafficking? Obviously, nothing is foreign to them in that country, much less if it’s potentially colossal.

So, why would the current government in Washington want or be able to put an end to this business? The answer doesn't support the basic logic that they can't, nor do they want, to end drug trafficking.

Of course, but the problem lies in the disaster that drug trafficking causes, from a social perspective, with its spillover into politics. Therefore, no electoral project in the US can reasonably prosper if it doesn't at least raise the banner of the "war on drug traffickers," and if they are narco-terrorists, even better, kill two birds with one stone.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff

Thus, reality is, Trump assumed that something had to be done according to these precepts. And that's what the Secretary of State was there for, who has on his personal agenda the elimination of any revolutionary project, for example, Venezuela, and says that Cuba will follow, and at the same time, guarantee the vitality of this enormous business in the US, without undermining the electoral promises Trump made regarding drug trafficking.

The first thing to establish is that the most "popular" drug in the US is fentanyl, not cocaine, and obviously the former does not originate in the Eastern Caribbean, nor is it produced or flows from Venezuela.

The numbers are eloquent. For example, deaths from fentanyl in the US in 2023 rounded the 79,000 people, higher than the estimates for cocaine, with 29,000 deaths on the same date.

But there's another issue at play. Fentanyl is not only the most lethal drug, but above all, the most profitable. It costs pennies to produce and sells for hundreds of dollars, up to $20 million per kilogram, in addition to being easily managed for transportation and distribution.

Cocaine, whose trafficking supposedly justifies the deployment of air and naval forces in the Caribbean, requires more costly and complicated logistics, as cocaine base is cultivated and then transported from South America, converted into cocaine, and then introduced and distributed in the US.

Once the business is up and running, how do you manage the multi-billion dollar amount of money it generates? Well, that's the job of the major US banks, such as JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo, the four largest banks in the country. Conservative and logically inaccurate estimates suggest billions of dollars laundered annually, just from fentanyl trade.

But don't think this is obvious—not at all. Given the public exposure of these aforementioned financial institutions, the laundering of drug dollars has been redirected over time this century, concentrating in "regional" banks, mostly located in states bordering Mexico such as Arizona, New Mexico, and California.

Although formally these "regional" banks are not branches of the major banks, in practice they obey the rules imposed by the highly concentrated financial capital in the US, with the sole advantage, convenient for the entire system, that they can better evade public and federal scrutiny.

The issue doesn't end here. A relationship has been established between drug trafficking, and drug laundering, and the hypermarket for weapons. One feeds off the other; the two businesses are like inseparable siblings; they often operate in unison. A "simple" exchange for Americans: I give you US-made weapons, and in return, I receive drugs that I sinisterly convert into "clean" USD cash, and everyone is happy and prosperous.

At this point, another curiosity emerges, consistent with the one highlighted above.

There are the large corporations of the US military industry, which cover the entire spectrum of sophisticated weapons, guaranteeing the nuclear sword of Damocles, aerospace, cyberattacks, and other elements of the high-profile US war machine.

However, it turns out that none of these large conglomerates produce so-called small arms, the most commonly used by drug cartels and their associates, such as the .50-caliber Browning machine guns, AR-15 rifles, and Barrett .50 rifles, Glock and Colt pistols, which come from companies like FN America, Sig Sauer Inc., or Smith/Wesson, to name just a few examples.

And following the organizational pattern, FN America and Sig Sauer Inc. also have a structure that is less visible on the big screen and is intertwined with the aforementioned "regional" banks, which, as we saw, ultimately answer to the large banking institutions.

This symbiosis, highly sophisticated and ultimately effective, serves to render completely opaque those military and financial businesses that generate popular rejection or are "ethically" questionable, such as the production of small firearms, readily marketed in the country, and which often face revulsion when a shooting occurs, when an innocent child is murdered in a school, to mention something terrible but all too common.

Above all, the large investors who dominate this military-industrial/financial complex; some are even well-known, like BlackRock or Vanguard, advertised as investment managers for funds of diverse origins that manage trillions of dollars in assets and shares of thousands of global companies, including those profiled here, both large and "regional," whether banks or the arms industry.

An expert on these matters compared this effective architecture to a monumental tree. The leafy, visible leaves are Bank of America or Citigroup; the roots are in BlackRock or Vanguard, which support branches hidden by those leaves, such as small arms manufacturers and "regional" banks.

And just in case, the tree necessarily conveniently branches out into politics, with another network of lobbies deployed in the antiquated halls of Congress, the judiciary, or the federal government, and of course in the mainstream media, where they are usually owned by the media and by Hollywood, which never singles out these shareholders in its blockbuster action movies about drug trafficking.

So, you know, those who had hoped that the tragedy of drug trafficking, of the deaths from fentanyl or cocaine use, could end or decline, thanks to the brilliant idea of Mr. Rubio and "his operation" in the Caribbean, are warned that they have been miserably deceived.

As the Apostle José Martí said, "In politics, the only truth is what is not seen"; it's as if he said it to allude to this situation. However you look at it, none of the three reasons presented are acceptable; the solution has never been to attack Venezuela. Denouncing the dark sides of this plot is at least the first thing that must be done. That's what we're working on.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff