A quiet march toward regime change in Venezuela

By Michelle Goldberg / The New York Times Company

On Monday, the United States formally designated Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his allies in government as members of a foreign terrorist organization called Cartel de los Soles, a group that doesn’t exist.

“There’s no such thing as the cartel,” Phil Gunson, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, said by phone from Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, on Monday. Cartel de los Soles, or Cartel of the Suns, is a pejorative Venezuelan term for corrupt figures in the armed forces who take money from drug traffickers; the name is a reference to the sun insignia on their uniforms. It was coined more than 30 years ago, Gunson said, as journalistic shorthand, “and it hung around as a kind of jokey label.” It’s as if President Donald Trump classified the “deep state” as a criminal gang.

Declaring this fake cartel a terrorist organization could have real-world consequences. “I think it’s intended to send the message to Maduro that you are now considered a terrorist, and therefore, you might suffer the same fate as Osama bin Laden,” Gunson said. It’s at once a threat and a rationale for a possible regime change operation, a military adventure that would be utterly preposterous but also looks increasingly likely.

No one knows if we’re about to start bombing Venezuela, but the administration’s demagogy about the Cartel de los Soles is just one of many alarming signs. For months now, the United States has been committing extrajudicial killings of suspected drug runners, many from Venezuela, in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. As The New York Times reported, the administration is justifying these strikes by claiming that America is in a state of armed conflict with drug cartels. Now the administration seems ready to expand this armed conflict into Venezuela.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/goldberg-a-quiet-march-toward-regime-change-in-venezuela/