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By Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com
President Trump on Saturday declared that the airspace “above and surrounding” Venezuela is to be closed, a sign that he might soon launch an attack on the country with the aim of ousting President Nicolas Maduro.
“To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,” the president wrote on Truth Social.
It’s unclear if the declaration means that the US will impose a no-fly zone on Venezuela, which would be an act of war. Such a step or any military strikes on Venezuela would be illegal without congressional authorization, per the US Constitution.
The order came after the president said that he may “very soon” expand the bombing campaign against alleged drug-running boats in the region to strikes on Venezuelan territory.
The New York Times reported on Friday that Trump spoke to Maduro by phone last week and discussed the possibility of meeting in person, but it doesn’t appear that the conversation did anything to slow the US military buildup in the region and push toward the US launching a regime change war.
The Times report said Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has been leading the campaign against Venezuela, joined Maduro and Trump in the phone call. They spoke a few days before Rubio’s State Department declared the Cartel of the Suns, or Cartel de los Soles, a group that doesn’t actually exist, a “Foreign Terrorist Organization.”
The US claims that Maduro is the leader of the Cartel of the Suns, a term first used in the early 1990s to describe Venezuelan generals with sun insignias on their uniforms who were involved in cocaine trafficking and were actually working with the CIA at the time.
Today, the Cartel of the Suns is used to describe a network of Venezuelan officials allegedly involved in the drug trade, but it doesn’t exist as a structured organization. The Trump administration appears set to use the designation as a pretext to launch an illegal war, one that Americans overwhelmingly don’t want.
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Dave DeCamp
Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.
