Tropic Thunder: Understanding US Interventionism in the Caribbean

Welcome to Tropic Thunder, a five-part short series by Levant Time designed to help you understand the different reasons behind the current U.S. interventionism in the Caribbean.

This series was completed 48 hours before the American attack on Venezuela.

Marco Rubio, U.S. Secretary of State, Quito, Ecuador, September 5, 2025:
“Nicolás Maduro is a drug trafficker charged in the United States and a fugitive from American justice.”

This accusation, repeatedly hammered home by Washington for several years, is currently Donald Trump’s main justification for the operations carried out in the Caribbean Sea. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is also under U.S. sanctions, accused in particular of leading an organization recently designated as terrorist by the United States: the Cartel of the Suns.

A name that may evoke, in the collective imagination, the same reality as other organizations such as the Medellín Cartel led by Pablo Escobar in Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s, or the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel in Mexico. However, the structured and hierarchical nature of the Cartel of the Suns has never been proven. It is above all a journalistic expression that emerged in the early 1990s to describe the system of endemic corruption and clientelism in Venezuela, which intensified under the Bolivarian Republic starting in 1999.

It is worth recalling that Venezuela has been governed since 1999 by a government stemming from the Chavista movement founded by Hugo Chávez, which claims a socialist identity and nationalized certain key sectors, such as oil. Since Nicolás Maduro came to power in 2013, the regime has maintained this ideological line while facing a severe economic, political, and social crisis, worsened by international sanctions and internal tensions.

But let us return to the accusations of drug trafficking against Venezuela, labeled a narco-state by the United States:

Since September 2025, the United States has conducted a military campaign in the Caribbean and the Pacific targeting vessels described as “narco-boats,” with at least 30 boats attacked and more than 100 people killed, including at least one case of a double strike intended to kill survivors. Washington claims these vessels are linked to drug trafficking, but no public evidence has been provided to substantiate these accusations: neither geolocation coordinates nor lists of the names of those killed.

International law experts and some U.S. officials have denounced these operations as potential extrajudicial killings, pointing to the lack of transparency and possible violations of international law, while some allied governments have expressed concern over the absence of concrete evidence.

The designation of Venezuela as a narco-state is itself problematic: international data significantly qualify this narrative. According to the UN World Drug Report, Venezuela does not rank as a significant global producer of cocaine, unlike Colombia, which accounts for the majority of worldwide production and trafficking. The “narco-state” accusation rests mainly on claims that Venezuelan territory is used as a transit route, but this corridor would represent less than 5% of total cocaine flows to the United States, according to the same UN sources.

Independent analysts emphasize that most shipments destined for the United States first pass through Colombia and then Mexico, and that the Pacific route is in fact far more heavily used—something international reports have confirmed for years.