Doubt is plaguing Trump’s Venezuela game

Donald Trump reportedly had a surprise phone conversation with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro last week. Days later, the U.S. State Department formally designated Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles a foreign terrorist organization and, furthermore, declared that Maduro is the head of that foreign terrorist organization.

Therefore, since the Cartel de los Soles is “responsible for terrorist violence throughout our hemisphere as well as for trafficking drugs into the United States,” the first claim puts war with Venezuela on the agenda, and the second puts a coup against Maduro right there too.

There is just one problem: the Trump administration is having trouble convincing its own agencies and closest international partners of either claim. Nor has the administration convinced them that Venezuela is a “narco-terrorist” state, or that Trump’s solution to the problem — bombing small boats allegedly carrying fentanyl and other drugs into the United States — is legal.

The problem with designating the Cartel de los Soles a terrorist organization is that there is no such thing as the Cartel de los Soles in the way that the Trump administration claims. As The New York Times reports, “Cartel de los Soles is not a literal organization” but “a figure of speech.” It is a three-decade-old mocking reference to the sun insignia Venezuelan generals wear and to military officials who were corrupted by drug money.

“There is no such thing as a board meeting of the ‘Cartel de los Soles.’ There is no such animal. The organization doesn’t exist as such,” Phil Gunson, senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, told The Times.

Moreover, said Jeremy McDermott, the co-founder of InSight Crime, a think tank that focuses on crime and security in Latin America: “The Cartel of the Suns became a catchall phrase for state-embedded drug trafficking, but these are not integrated — the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. It is absolutely not an organization, per se,” he said, adding, “If you are going to go to war, the language matters.”

Moreover, intelligence analysts don’t agree that Maduro is the “head” of any cartel, much less one that doesn’t exist.

A Feb. 26 “sense of the community” memorandum on another Trump terrorist designee, the Tren de Aragua (TDA) crime syndicate, which pulled together the findings of the 18 agencies in the U.S. intelligence community under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, concluded that TDA “was not acting at the direction of the Maduro administration and that the two are instead hostile to each other.”

Apparently, according the Times, the office of the Director of National Intelligence told a senior intelligence analyst to do a “rethink” of that February analysis and offer a new assessment. The new memo, dated April 7, “confirmed the intelligence community’s original assessment” and continued to contradict the administration’s claim about Maduro, concluding that “the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States.”

The intelligence community maintained in that memo that it “has not observed the regime directing TDA.” Instead, the memorandum finds that “Venezuelan intelligence, military, and police services view TDA as a security threat and operate against it in ways that make it highly unlikely the two sides would cooperate in a strategic or consistent way.”

The new memo, however, added a more nuanced view of the FBI position which agreed with the assessment but dissented by saying that some elements of the Venezuelan government help facilitate TDA gang members’ migration to the U.S. and use them as proxies to advance the regime’s goals.

Weeks after the second report, Michael Collins, the acting chair of the National Intelligence Council, and Maria Langan-Riekhof, his deputy, were fired. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has denied that it had anything to do with the memos and would only say “the Director (Tulsi Gabbard) is working alongside President Trump to end the weaponization and politicization of the Intelligence Community.” However, a person familiar with the situation told Reuters that “it's clear that Collins got axed for just doing his job.”

The U.S. has had no more success convincing its partners that Venezuela is even a significant source of fentanyl or other drugs coming into the United States.

Current and former U.S. officials say that most of the boats struck by the U.S. military were in the passageway between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago — a passage used neither to transport fentanyl nor other drugs to the United States. Marijuana dominates with 80% of the drugs that flow through that passage, and most of the rest is cocaine. And those drugs are headed not to the U.S. but to West Africa and Europe.

According to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, 90% of the cocaine that transits into the U.S. enters through Mexico, not Venezuela. And Venezuela is not a source of fentanyl. The 2025 UNODC World Drug Report assesses that Venezuela “has consolidated its status as a territory free from the cultivation of coca leaves, cannabis and similar crops” and that “[o]nly 5% of Colombian drugs transit through Venezuela.”

To date, there have been at least 20 strikes on boats allegedly carrying drugs, and 80 people have been killed without being charged or tried. There are serious internal concerns regarding the legality of those strikes. Hegseth is in hot water this week over whether not he had ordered second lethal strikes on a boat, killing survivors.

On October 16, Admiral Alvin Holsey, head of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees all operations in Central and South America, announced that he was stepping down amid reports of “real policy tensions concerning Venezuela” between the Admiral and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Current and former U.S. officials say that Holsey “had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats.”

The Washington Post reports that the Trump administration has “repeatedly steamrolled or sidestepped government lawyers who questioned whether the provocative policy was legal.” Like the military and intelligence officials, many lawyers and officials who were concerned “left government or were reassigned or removed.”

Many of America’s key allies are no more convinced. The U.K has stopped sharing intelligence with the U.S. about suspected drug trafficking boats off the coast of Venezuela because they believe the strikes “violate international law.” The U.K. is one of America’s closest allies and most important intelligence sharing partners. They have many intelligence assets based in the Caribbean.

And the UK is not the only close ally to act on its concern. Canada, which has traditionally helped the U.S. interdict drug traffickers in the Caribbean, has also notified the U.S. that it does not want its intelligence being used to help target boats for deadly strikes. Canada says their intelligence sharing in the region is “separate and distinct” from these strikes and that Canada "has no involvement" in the U.S. strikes on Venezuelan vessels.”

Jean-Noël Barrot, France's foreign affairs minister, has also said that France is concerned because the strikes “violate international law.” And Dutch officials had previously restricted intelligence sharing with the U.S. over concerns that the “politicization of intelligence” could be used in “human rights violations.”

Colombia has also stopped sharing intelligence with the U.S. “because we would be collaborating with a crime against humanity.”

If you cannot convince other nations — and your people — of your right to use military force, you may be wrong to use military force. It appears that Trump has a lot more convincing to do.