"Cartel de los Soles": The Psychological Warfare Operation to Attack Venezuela

The international media machine is reproducing without question an accusation as serious as it is unfounded: that President Nicolás Maduro is the head of the alleged "Cartel of the Suns," a criminal organization dedicated to drug trafficking. This narrative, promoted from Washington, circulates as established truth despite lacking a single piece of material evidence to support it. For academic and international analyst Fernando Casado, this is a deliberate psychological warfare operation designed to fabricate a pretext to justify a U.S. military intervention in Venezuela.

"There is no evidence linking the Venezuelan government to drug trafficking. Not a gram of drugs. Not a single element that proves the existence of this alleged cartel," states Casado. "What we are seeing is the media construction of an enemy to evade any accountability before the U.S. Congress."

Fabricating the Pretext

The legitimization of these accusations ignores, according to Casado, the opinion of specialists in narcotics trafficking—even those with editorial lines critical of Venezuela—who do not grant credibility to the U.S. allegation. Organizations such as InSight Crime have expressed skepticism about the claim that Maduro leads a narco-criminal structure.

Even more revealing is the acknowledgment from within the Venezuelan opposition itself that the accusation functions primarily as an "international political tool, rather than the result of an independent judicial investigation."

For Casado, this recognition exposes the true nature of the operation: "All the involved actors are aware of the lack of legal basis. The media act as accomplices to a narrative without rhyme or reason, while subject-matter experts maintain a complicit silence in the face of the madness of asserting the existence of a non-existent cartel."

The United States is seeking, according to Casado's analysis, to justify a potential military action against Venezuela without notifying its Congress, thereby evading any internal control or accountability. Pinning the alleged leadership of a phantom cartel on Maduro allows the administration to act without having to provide explanations to its own legislature.

"This strategy sets a dire precedent for a region where U.S. military interventions and the application of the Monroe Doctrine—which considered Latin America its 'backyard'— seemed to be a thing of the past," warns the analyst.

The Complicit Silence

The international community, including bodies such as the United Nations, is acting in a "timid" manner in the face of this escalation, laments Casado, who attributes this inaction to the "budgetary blackmail" exercised by the United States. This context is aggravated by decisions such as the closure of USAID, which generated massive unemployment in the field of international aid and left many organizations more vulnerable to pressure from Washington.

"That the international community lends itself to this farce is a disgrace," Casado states. "We are facing a strategy of harassment and takedown, an attempt to provoke the illegal overthrow of President Maduro. And everyone knows it."

The analyst concludes that what is at stake transcends the political fate of Venezuela: it is about the return to an interventionist logic that the region believed was overcome, where powers fabricate pretexts to act outside the bounds of international law. A psychological war that turns media into trenches and truth into its first victim.