Even as Donald Trump crisscrosses the globe, bringing his purported peacemaking skills to parts of the world that did not even know they were at war, his administration has openly been preparing for militarised regime change in Venezuela. Neighbouring Colombia too isn’t safe.

There is nothing new, of course, about the United States’ designs against what has often been designated as its backyard. The region’s 20th-century history is replete with instances of unwarranted US interventions and regime-change operations, not all of which succeeded. Those in living memory stretch from 1954’s Guatemala coup to the Bay of Pigs in 1961, the 1973 Pinochet putsch in Chile and the invasion of Panama in 1989.

The last of these has frequently been referenced as the most likely model for tackling Venezuela, after Trump indicated the CIA had been given the go-ahead for ground operations. For the past couple of months US military forces have been targeting small boats mainly in the Caribbean, claiming without evidence that they were drug-smuggling vessels. No corroborating evidence has been offered and, when a couple of sailors survived an attack on a submersible, they were rapidly repatriated to Ecuador and Colombia instead of being detained and tried as drug smugglers.

Latin America has long served as a key supplier of the seemingly unfathomable urge among Americans to blot out reality, but Venezuela has never been a major culprit. By almost every account, it has little or no role in the stateside fascination with fentanyl, supposedly a far more formidable drug than heroin. Designating Nicolas Maduro as the head of a cartel, that according to most experts does not even exist, comes across as a fairly hollow excuse for regime change, but it helps to disguise the ideological motivation behind the endeavour.

Trump’s concern with certain drugs may indeed be genuine — who can really tell? — but the basic demand/supply formula appears to have escaped his attention. No drug lords in Latin America or anywhere else would bother establishing supply chains to the US in the absence of constant demand. Just like mass drug addiction in any other country, the opioid crisis in the home of the brave and the land of the free is primarily a symptom of societal dysfunction. Disrupting one or two supply trails might make a temporary difference, but other sources will inevitably emerge as long as the demand largely remains intact.

That’s why previous American wars on drugs have mainly ended in failure. But the current belligerence against Venezuela has little to do with drugs. Back in the first Trump term, his short-lived national security adviser John Bolton — now indicted for storing and disseminating secret information, a few years after a spectacular falling-out with Trump — was keen to invade Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Back then, Trump demurred. And even in his second term, he was not impressed by Marco Rubio’s arguments about human rights violations or electoral malpractices. After all, anyone who indulges in such practices comes across as a kindred spirit. Hence Rubio — the offspring of unhinged anti-Castroites, and the first person since Henry Kissinger to concurrently serve as NSA and secretary of state — leapt upon the drug trade as an excuse, and Trump was suddenly convinced. He called off negotiations in which Maduro had allegedly expressed a willingness to share Venezuela’s substantial mineral wealth (it sits over the world’s largest oil reserves) with the US, and to effectively end trade relations with China and Cuba.

Maduro has served for the past dozen years as a frequently disappointing and occasionally disturbing successor to Hugo Chavez, whose socialist vision stretched far beyond Venezuela and its Caribbean neighbourhood. His endeavour to lift the poorest Venezuelans out of poverty — not least through bringing education and healthcare to neglected parts of the population — was enthusiastically supported by Cuba, and Fidel Castro was instrumental in reversing the US-backed neoliberal coup that briefly toppled Chavez in 2002.

Chavez won several internationally authenticated elections until he succumbed to cancer in 2013, but his chosen successor has strayed from the Bolivarian impulse in ways that many supporters of Chavismo see as a betrayal. For some of them, the manipulation of the 2024 election was the last straw. The allegations about his desperation to win Trump’s favour only add to the chargesheet – although it’s perfectly possible that his standing will improve in the face of naked US hostility.

That hostility has lately extended to Colombia — traditionally a leading source of cocaine for the American elite — whose president, Gustavo Petro, has been among the most vociferous supporters of Palestinian rights. His US visa was revoked after his no-holds-barred speech to the UN General Assembly last month, and sanctions have lately been invoked after he responded angrily to the extrajudicial execution by America of more than 40 people in the Caribbean – apparently Venezuelans, Colombians and even Trinidadians. No evidence has thus far been presented to support the accusation that they were drug smugglers. Dealing with any such charge should surely be left to a court, instead of it being adjudicated by a maniacal administration desperate to play judge, jury and executioner.

As the largest American warship, the USS Gerald Ford, heads towards Venezuela, the Trump regime’s actions and intentions have domestically been questioned by both a bunch of Democrats and a handful of Republicans, the latter mostly concerned about the threats to isolationism implied by the America First impulse. After all, an invasion of Venezuela would suggest a continuity with the neocon tendencies that some of the MAGA crowd despises. Trump might relent if someone whispers into his ear the obvious fact that blatant warmongering in the Caribbean will diminish his chances of obtaining the Nobel Peace Prize he desperately covets – apart from doing little or nothing to disrupt the flow of fentanyl into the US. But he’s notoriously capricious, and might see an advantage in adding to the US treasure chest of South American scalps.

Trump has yet again betrayed his ignorance of even recent history in describing Colombia’s Petro as “the worst president they have ever had – a lunatic with serious mental problems”. His obscene language is par for the course, but perhaps he should take a good look in the mirror before hurling accusations that fit his own image.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.