US President Donald Trump on Monday issued an executive order declaring the drug fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction. He has also accused Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro of narco-terrorism and involvement in trafficking drugs towards the US.
More than two decades earlier, President George W Bush announced the US invasion of Iraq aimed at toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein. In a televised address in March 2003, Mr Bush said that the “people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder”.
There are startling parallels between the rhetoric of the Bush administration in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, and the recent language from the Trump administration towards Venezuela.
In a recent interview with Politico, Mr Trump said of Mr Maduro: “His days are numbered." This was the same thing then-defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld said about Saddam's regime, right after the US launched the Iraq war.
Mr Maduro, like Saddam, has been accused of being an autocrat who routinely hijacks elections and jails and murders dissidents. The Daily Show comically pointed out last week that Saddam and Mr Maduro, with their burly frames, thick black moustaches and penchant for waving ceremonial swords around, even look alike.
The similarities between 2003 and 2025 are telling. Mr Trump, who vowed to end forever wars, seems to be approaching Venezuela with the same playbook that bogged the US down for 20 years in Iraq.
Invasion preparation?
The term “narco-terrorism” has become more common in Washington after Mr Trump's designation of several cartels – including Venezuela-linked Tren de Aragua – as foreign terrorist organisations over the past months.
The US in November designated the nebulous Cartel de los Soles – an umbrella term describing criminal networks within the Venezuelan military – as an FTO and Mr Maduro as its leader. Washington also doubled to $50 million an existing bounty on Mr Maduro for alleged drug-trafficking and narco-terrorism.
Over the past several months, American forces have been carrying out strikes on boats belonging to alleged criminals ferrying drugs towards the US. The strikes have resulted in about 90 deaths.
Given the strikes and the military build-up, as well as the long history of US interventionism in the region – both covert and military – concern has been growing throughout Latin America that the Trump administration is preparing for an invasion.
Drugs and WMDs
In February 2003, before the US launched its full-scale invasion, then-secretary of state Colin Powell addressed the UN Security Council, holding a blue-capped vial and claiming that Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction.
“Every statement I make today is backed up by solid sources,” Mr Powell told the chamber. “What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions. Clearly, Saddam Hussein and his regime will stop at nothing until something stops him.”
A UN panel later released a report saying it had found no evidence that Iraq was stockpiling or producing WMDs. The so-called Iraq Survey Group – the US mission to find and disable those WMD programmes – admitted to Congress almost a year after the invasion that the claims made by the Bush administration “were almost all wrong”.
Before the executive order this week, the Trump administration and allies frequently referred to fentanyl as a WMD.
In January this year, Trump ally Congresswoman Lauren Boebert introduced a bill to have the Department of Homeland Security treat the drug as a WMD. A few months later, US Attorney General Pam Bondi said drug dealers were “flooding our cities with a weapon of mass destruction, fentanyl”.
Regardless of its dangers, Venezuela – like Iraq with the WMDs – is not a major source of fentanyl, and criminal groups linked to the country are not known to deal much in it. By far most of the drug that makes its way to the US comes from Mexico, with the ingredients coming from China.
Still, “fentanyl” and “Venezuela” have been repeatedly, although indirectly, linked over the past few months, with Mr Trump claiming that the fast-boats being struck in the Caribbean are carrying the drug and others, and that the vessels were a direct threat to the US.
“President Trump has also made very clear he’s not going to allow the United States to continue to be flooded with cocaine and fentanyl and other drugs coming from different places including Venezuela, which is a common route,” John Kelley, political counsellor at the US mission to the UN, told the Security Council in October.
“We are going to put an end to the drug cartels that are flooding American streets with their product and killing Americans.”
The oil connection
When the US invaded Iraq, accusations were levied at the Bush government that the main reason behind the action was to take advantage of Baghdad's vast oil reserves.
The war did open up major business opportunities for American businesses, particularly with regard to Iraq's oil reserves. The invasion and subsequent occupation also stymied what the Bush administration viewed as Saddam's goal of using those oil reserves to bolster future military activity – or support that of terrorist groups and adversarial nations.
Dick Cheney, Mr Bush's vice president, said of Saddam in mid-2002 that “there is no doubt that his aggressive regional ambitions will lead him into future confrontations with his neighbours – confrontations that will involve both the weapons he has today, and the ones he will continue to develop with his oil wealth”.
The US has accused Venezuela of running a shadow fleet to export its sanctioned oil to China – which Washington is eager to push out of the region – and other countries.
Last week, the US seized a tanker it said was carrying illicit oil on behalf of Venezuela and Iran. As many as 18 sanctioned oil-laden ships are in Venezuela's waters, and the US has said it will continue to seize them.
While regime change in Venezuela, which has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, would undoubtedly benefit American companies, the goal is also likely to be focused on countering Caracas's regional influence operations and its ties to US adversaries.
Spain's ABC news agency, quoting leaked documents, reported that Venezuela has redirected billions of dollars in oil revenue to long-time ally Iran in a bid to help sustain Tehran's nuclear programme and allied military networks.
The tanker seized of the Venezuelan coast had an alleged role in smuggling oil on behalf of Iran and Hezbollah. Lebanon-based Hezbollah has long-standing ties to Venezuela, with the group known to operate a network of criminal enterprises in the country.
'Coming out of nowhere'
Joe Stieb, assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said the big difference between the lead-up to the Iraq war and the current stance on Caracas is that the aggression against Venezuela seems to have come out of left field.
“There was … 12 full years of tension with the Iraqi state that we just haven't had with Venezuela,” he told The National. “It hasn't been a major focal point for previous administrations, so it really feels like it's coming out of nowhere.”
Mr Stieb described growing support among the American public for the invasion of Iraq as a “constructed” and “manipulated, created thing”, explaining that the Bush administration had to get Americans to make a “logical leap” between the terrorist attacks of September 11 and Saddam's regime.
According to a November Reuters/Ipsos poll, the Trump administration has yet to bring the American public onside with the Caribbean strikes, with only a third of those surveyed approving of using the US military for extrajudicial killings of suspected drug traffickers.
Drumming up support at the UN and among allies against the regime, Mr Stieb said, was also critical to gaining that backing from the American public and among allies.
This approach could prove challenging in the current case of Venezuela, as the Trump administration has alienated the UN and many allies in recent months, pulling out of multilateral pacts, slashing foreign aid, and publicly criticising the world body and former close partners.
As to a potential invasion of Venezuela, Mr Stieb views it as unlikely, with both sides of the political spectrum largely against further efforts at nation-building or democratisation.
“It's definitely going to be harder [to convince Americans to support an invasion],” he said. “Americans are really still burnt by Iraq and Afghanistan.”
