 "US President Donald Trump (left) and former US President George W. Bush.")
The spectre of 2003 hangs heavy over the Caribbean. As President Donald Trump’s administration moves from naval blockades to a full-scale seizure of Venezuela , critics and historians alike are drawing an unmissable parallel. Is “narco-terrorism” the new “weapons of mass destruction”?
In 2003, George W. Bush’s administration justified the invasion of Iraq by insisting Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), a threat that was later proven to be non-existent. Today, Trump has framed the removal of Nicolás Maduro as a law enforcement necessity, labelling Venezuela a “narco-terrorist state."
While Bush used the fear of nuclear fallout, Trump has used cocaine as his casus belli, claiming Maduro was “deliberately deploying cocaine as a weapon of mass destruction to destabilise the US”
A blueprint for regime change
The similarities are more than rhetorical. Just as the Bush team vastly exaggerated Iraq’s threat to American soil, Trump has inflated Maduro’s narco-reach to justify military intervention. Following the dramatic capture of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on January 3, Trump’s true intentions became clearer. Abandoning the pretense of a simple drug bust, Trump declared, “We are going to run Venezuela” until a “safe transition” occurs, explicitly mentioning plans to “tap” and sell Venezuela’s oil reserves.
Selective justice
The “war on drugs” justification falls apart under the weight of political selective memory.
While Trump has ordered lethal strikes on Venezuelan vessels—killing over 100 people since late 2025—he recently issued a full pardon to former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández.
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View AllHernández was convicted in a US court in 2024 for facilitating the shipment of 400 tonnes of cocaine. Trump’s defence of Hernández, whom he claimed was “persecuted very unfairly by Biden,” suggests that drugs are only a “problem” for Washington when the leader in question isn’t a political ally.
Another ‘forever war’?
The strategic risk is immense. Venezuela is roughly 912,050 square kilometres more than twice the size of Iraq (438,317 square kilometres). While the Trump administration calls this a “rapid strike,” the occupation of a country this size, especially one with a deeply ideologically driven military, threatens to become a massive quagmire.
As Trump moves to monetise the world’s largest oil reserves under the banner of “stability,” the world is left asking if America has learned anything from the sands of Iraq, or if it is simply opening a new, tropical chapter in the history of “forever wars.”