Getting Venezuela And Cuba Right

Author: A retired senior CIA officer with long experience in Latin and South America.

President Trump deserves the gratitude of all American patriots. He has singlehandedly stopped the slide towards chaos that Obama and Biden worked so hard to achieve; he was kneecapped in his first administration by disloyal, treasonous bureaucrats and Democrat Party extremists bent on destroying what generations of Americans have built.

Like any other leader, the president is not all-knowing and all-seeing. While most of his supporters enjoy his humor and his readiness to boldly confront our enemies, foreign and domestic, there are times when somebody must speak bluntly to him when he is about to slip on a banana peel. This is one of those times.

Since January of 2025, it has become apparent that Trump intends to impose a radical overhaul on American foreign policy. He wants to end the Ukraine war, he wants to checkmate (though not fight) China, and he has concluded that our traditional allies in Europe are probably past the point of no return economically, politically, militarily, and, worst of all, demographically. Sadly, in some cases, such as the United Kingdom, but with glee in others, such as France, Germany, and Spain, he intends to cut them loose from Uncle Sam’s apron strings. He wants a peaceful Middle East, without an Iranian nuclear weapon. Trump is determined to dismantle the Globalist scheme, something any sane person must support. The idea of crackpots like Klaus Schwab or Ursula von der Leyen running the world should make your bowels churn.

One of Trump’s projects, which has not received the attention it deserves, is his return to the foreign policy first formulated by John Adams, our second president. The late Angelo Codevilla explained this in his masterful book, America’s Rise and Fall Among Nations. The primary role of our foreign policy must be to ensure that we (and our neighbors) are secure in the Western Hemisphere. Our role is not to dominate, but to lead. And first, to look after our own core interests.

The president views with contempt the “Project for the New American Century” worldview that produced the Iraq War and the humiliation of Afghanistan, to name just two disasters. He understands that not only is it foolish for the United States to try to dominate the entire world, but it is also unnecessary. We can enjoy peace and prosperity in the Western Hemisphere, together with our neighbors to the south and, hopefully, to the north.

In fact, the current government of Canada is treading a very dangerous path in thumbing its nose at Trump. It is no part of his plan to allow a Europhile, socialist, hostile state to welcome in an overwhelming horde of Chinese, Muslim, and Indian immigrants who fully intend to transform Canada into something unacceptable to the United States. Mr. Carney may find himself packing his bags in the middle of the night and praying that the Canadian Defense Forces, such as they are, still have a working helicopter.

Trump’s first move to secure the hemisphere was his Greenland caper. Resembling at times a SNL skit, his ultimate goal was in deadly earnest. Denmark, a loyal NATO ally (and vigorous participant in both the Cold War and the Afghan War), was offended and horrified by Trump’s brash announcement of his intention to buy or seize their giant island territory; so were many Americans, including many Trump supporters.

It soon became clear that Trump was not going to send the Marines storming into Nuuk, or whatever ice-bound village passes for Greenland’s capital. His real intent was to ensure that Denmark and the rest of NATO ponied up the cash and military power to checkmate any Russian or Chinese designs on the place. He knew, of course, that the existing treaty with Denmark gave the U.S. all the authority it needed to defend Greenland (and Denmark) from unwanted foreign suitors. He was laying down a marker that nobody – Denmark included – was going to let the Chinese or Russians go romping into Greenland. Of course, if the Danes wanted to sell….and the local people were surely told to forget about cutting side deals with anybody we did not approve of.

Trump’s second bold move was the arrest of Nicolas Maduro, the illegitimate “president” of Venezuela. The regime of Hugo Chavez, a sinister, madcap stereotypical Latin American colonel from the cast of Moon Over Parador, was followed by that of Nicolas Maduro, a hulking, dull-witted former bus driver; Maduro was a constant source of amusement to Venezuela’s much more sophisticated Colombian neighbors, who laughed at his seeming inability to grasp the Spanish language.

The Colombians stopped laughing when Maduro’s “socialist” (Read: Communist) economic policies drove more than 90 percent of the population into dire poverty and then drove millions across the border. At first, the Colombians blathered on about Latin American solidarity and welcoming their “hermanos.” That lasted until they got a good look at the Venezuelan underclass. Violent, uneducated, and usually lacking in the innate charm and courtesy of most Colombians, the residents of Colombia’s cities were stunned by the savage crime wave unleashed by the Venezuelans, and that is saying something. Even the local prostitutes were driven out of business. Here in the United States, we got just a taste of what Venezuelans –like the gangsters of the Tren de Aragua – are capable of.

The Chavez/Maduro regime was the usual “socialist” disaster in economic terms, with the usual brutal repression, the expropriation (theft) of the property of the upper and middle classes, and the blind stupidity, followed by the usual flight to Miami by anybody who could buy an airline ticket. Chavez wrecked the engine of Venezuela’s economy by firing the American-trained engineers of PDVSA, the national oil company, once one of the best in the world. He replaced them with oil field roughnecks who might be able to operate a rig, but who had no idea how to plan, design, or manage maintenance and exploration. The Cubans, by now down to one pair of underwear themselves, provided useful advice on how to run the economy. Trainwreck does not begin to describe the result.

Had this been all Chavez/Maduro did, it would be a pitiful national tragedy for Venezuela and its neighbors forced to take in a tidal wave of often criminally inclined paupers. But this was just the beginning.

Chávez adored Fidel Castro and became his faithful acolyte, after an earlier flirtation with none other than Lyndon LaRouche. He imagined himself as the Second Coming of Simon Bolivar; Bolivar, an aristocrat himself, would have been stuck with horror at the thought of the lumpen thug Chavez ruling his native country.

The Cubans, evil but no fools, had been scheming for years to gain control of Venezuela’s oil and finally reached their goal. Cuban special forces guarded Chavez and Maduro night and day; Cuban intelligence officers managed the Venezuelan passport and cedula systems (the national identity cards), Cubans instructed the locals on how to dissolve Venezuelan democracy. Masters of torture and oppression themselves, they found the Chavistas to be avid students.

With the Cubans came the Chinese, Russians, Iranians, and, to a surprising extent, Hezbollah. The Colombian Communist guerrillas, the FARC, and then, after the dubious 2016 “peace treaty”, the “dissident” FARC, and the Cuba-backed ELN, used Venezuela as their supply dump, rest and recreation area, and launching pad for attacks inside Colombia.

Pride of place, however, went to the Colombian drug cartels. The “peace treaty” negotiated in Havana between the FARC and the administration of former Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos gutted a decades-long U.S.-supported counternarcotics effort and led to an explosion of cocaine production in Colombia, controlled jointly by the narcotics traffickers and the guerrillas. One can be sure that Santos did not turn his country over to the narcos as an act of charity or merely to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

Venezuela became the clearing house and transshipment point for the Colombian cocaine trade, which generated billions of dollars, of which the Chavez/Maduro gang took a generous cut. Much of this cocaine went to Africa, and then Europe and Asia, but plenty went to the United States, often via Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Some pundits, completely ignorant of Latin America in general and Colombia and Venezuela in particular, have snorted at the administration’s accusations against Maduro, claiming Venezuela does not produce cocaine. True enough, but why should they? The Colombian narcos are perfectly capable of supplying it. The Colombians, an industrious people, hardly need the lazier Venezuelans to do the job. As for the drug boats Trump has been blowing up, New York-based twits who have never been closer to Latin America than a Pedro Pascal movie, say that these relatively small craft can’t reach the U.S. Again, true. They don’t go to the U.S. They go to the DR, Haiti, Jamaica, or Cuba. The cocaine is then forwarded to the mainland.

The truth is that Venezuela was converted into a gigantic safehouse for every enemy the U.S. has and for every criminal syndicate one can imagine. It was and is an ulcer and a cancer in the region. President Trump was not only within his rights to act against the Maduro regime, but it was also in every sense the geopolitically correct move to make.

Up to the point of Maduro’s arrest, Trump’s actions were entirely justified and competently executed by our military. The deaths of the Cuban security forces guarding Maduro were a useful signal to the Cuban regime. The audacity of the operation astonished the world.

Unfortunately, it appears that President Trump is relying on and listening to advisors on Latin America who are either ignorant, sympathetic to the Latin American left, or have a personal commercial interest in the outcome of his policies.

Thanks to many years of flawed, naïve, or frankly treasonous analysis coming out of our intelligence community, Washington policymakers in general have a warped view of the strength of the extreme left in Latin America, the damage it has done to the region, and the threat it poses to President Trump’s plan to build a democratic and prosperous Western Hemisphere.

His decision to maintain Delcy Rodriguez and the rest of the Maduro cabal in power was probably the right call in the short term. Unfortunately, for reasons which remain unclear at this point, Trump decided that he could “work with” Rodriguez and his accomplices.

The reasons are unclear, perhaps, but the sordid rumors circulating bring no credit upon Trump, the CIA, or others who have been advising him. If true – and all Trump supporters should hope they are not – the president has put himself and the hopes of the American people in grave danger.

According to reports now surfacing across Latin America and the world, Trump agreed to a bargain with the shifty rulers of Qatar, the Chevron oil company, and a greasy retired Chevron oil executive, Ali Morisi, an Iranian. Rodriguez is accused of complicity in the capture of Maduro. If confirmed, it was a theatrical production if there ever was one, and one that would reveal the character of Rodriguez and the rest of Maduro’s thugs.

In his eagerness to secure America’s energy supplies, a laudable goal, Trump may have allowed himself to be rolled by a coalition of unreliable Arab merchants, an intelligence community distracted for too long by Middle Eastern issues, a cynical American oil company, and the men standing to make a fortune from maintaining the Venezuelan regime in place. Lost in this are the hopes of the Venezuelan people for a legitimate government and a prosperous future, our own long-term interests in Latin America, and the moral authority of Trump.

Contrary to what the president’s advisors from the CIA, State, and elsewhere might have told him, there is not and never will be any possibility of “working” with the remnants of the Maduro regime. The Venezuelan regime is not a comic opera banana republic operation. Its senior members are bitterly anti-American Marxist extremists or outright Communists, starting with Delcy Rodriguez and those closest to her. They have been groomed for years by the Chinese, Russians, and Iranians to be inveterate enemies of the United States. They are also criminals who helped manage the largest drug trafficking network in world history and crushed Venezuela’s democracy and rule of law, as fragile as those might have been.

The U.S. government’s analytical community for Latin America has long been under the control of officials sympathetic to the extreme left, thanks to the policy of the CIA, State, and other elements of the intelligence community of recruiting from purportedly “elite” universities and think tanks which are fact puppy mills for left-wing activists. We have reaped a bitter harvest from foolish confidence in these institutions and their graduates. Ana Belen Montes, the senior Cuba analyst for DIA until she was revealed to be a Cuban spy, and the recently arrested Cuban spy Manuel Rocha, the former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia (and earlier assigned to the then U.S. Interests Section in Havana), and Kendall Myers, are only three of the most important Cuban spies to be captured. There can be little doubt that dozens, if not hundreds, more lurk in the CIA, State, the FBI, the military, universities, and Washington think tanks.

The senior CIA intelligence officer for Latin America, now retired and teaching at a prestigious Washington, DC university, was almost certainly a witting agent of the Cubans. Under suspicion for years and even denounced in Congress, nothing was done.

From 1999 to the present day, our intelligence community analysts have constantly downplayed the threat posed by the Venezuelan regime. To be sure, it was impossible to entirely ignore the blatant drug smuggling, support to extreme leftists across Latin America, the presence of Cuban and other hostile military personnel in the country, the support to Colombian guerrillas, and the collaboration of the Venezuelans with the Cubans in their anti-American activities, but they tried.

The U.S. has reacted to the Venezuelan threat, but in a half-hearted and largely ineffective way. A coup attempt in 2002 collapsed in hours, a farce that only strengthened the regime. There can be little doubt that the entire absurd affair was managed by the Cuban intelligence services with the aid of their many friends in Washington. While it failed to oust Chavez, it certainly helped the Cubans and Chavez identify and eliminate the most important members of the domestic opposition to the Chavez agenda.

Other U.S. actions taken against Venezuela were almost invisible compared to the damage the Venezuelans were doing to their own country. In the end, until Trump acted, American pressure on Venezuela amounted to little more than hot air. The lack of effective action was not an accident or due to simple incompetence. It will eventually be shown that key figures in Washington, Miami, and elsewhere were quite content to avoid any real moves against the regime. Some were motivated by ideology, but most were on the take. The conviction of Secretary of State Rubio’s former “best friend”, David Rivera, on charges of taking a huge bribe from the Maduro regime to “lobby” for them in Washington, is the tip of a very large iceberg.

There are strong indications that the collaboration with the Cubans in propping up the Chavez and Maduro regimes may have had roots in even darker motives, which reached up to the top levels of the Obama and Biden administrations.

President Trump’s focus on Venezuela’s oil reserves is understandable – up to a point. That resource would play a key role in implementing Trump’s overall plan for the Western Hemisphere. It has the bonus of denying it to China. So far, so good.

Where the ball has been fumbled is in failing to move quickly to wrap up the Maduro regime and send its senior members either to Federal prisons or Madrid, with or without their stolen money. Trump’s public embrace of Delcy Rodriguez and her “government” is inexcusable. The only circumstance that could justify it is a deep-laid plan to suddenly pull the rug out from under her and move to purge the Venezuelan government and military of the worst of the Chavez/Maduro crowd. To date, there are no signs that this is the case.

American oil companies and a crowd of shady “businessmen” already have their arms in the Venezuelan cookie jar up to their elbows. For the ordinary Venezuelan, nothing has changed, nothing. The same government-supported “Colectivo” criminals dominate the streets, the Colombian guerrillas and narcos have not even broken their stride, and the same torturers and thieves infest the halls of government. The economy remains a basket case.

Those on the inside of the “deal” with Delcy are making fortunes, however. It is an open scandal that a number of Americans are in bed with the Qatari’s and others friendly to Delcy and have struck gold through dubious deals for Venezuela’s oil and other resources, while the hapless patsy Maduro sits in a New York prison. I wonder if Maduro thinks Delcy is such a wonderful person, worthy of the praise being heaped on her.

And Delcy? She trusts Trump as far as the end of her nose and has no intention of ever losing her grip on power. She knows Trump and the people around him have a pathetically false understanding of the situation and assumes she can charm and outmaneuver them at will. She is right.

The most recent shoe to drop in this sordid saga is the astonishing idea of making Venezuela the 51st state. As a person who has strongly supported the president, I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that this is just another “Trumpism”, like so many before, designed to confuse, enrage, and baffle our enemies. There are claims, however, that Trump and Rubio recently met privately in the Oval Office with Maria Corina Machado, by rights the true president of Venezuela, and informed her that she would soon be the governor of the newest U.S. state. We can only pray that she was able to maintain her composure in the face of this lunacy. As for Rubio, either he knows this is just a joke, or he is pretending to support the idea, which would make him one of the most cynical men ever to hold high office, no mean accomplishment considering the competition for the title. Rubio knows that even suggesting such a thing is crazy.

Venezuela is a country that won its independence in a grueling, cruel war against Spain. Already a backwater of the Spanish Empire, the war left it a smoking ruin. Intractable racial and social divisions wracked the country well into the 20th century. Miserable poverty, disease, and ignorance were the lot of most Venezuelans. Conditions for most of them were grim even by the standards of other Latin American countries. The book Venezuela’s Collapse, by Carlos Lizarralde, should be required reading for anybody who thinks Venezuela could be or should be a U.S. state. It makes for sobering reading.

Despite this history of poverty, oppression, corruption, and military rule, Venezuelans love their country, are proud of its heroes and culture, and hope for better days, but not as U.S. citizens. A joke or not, the idea should never have been floated. Ordinary Venezuelans of all political stances would consider supporters of such an idea Quislings and would likely hang them from the lampposts in front of the Miraflores palace.

And what about the millions of Venezuelans who have supported and benefited from the Chavez/Maduro regime? They will not go quietly into the night. They will be a constant source of agitation and violence. Make no mistake. Once a real government is established in Venezuela, extremely harsh measures will be required to break the back of the resistance by the extreme left.

What we have today is a Sad Sack former Venezuelan “president” and his wife in jail, and a committed Communist in Caracas playing us along and buying time, with the regime intact and absolutely no relief for the long-suffering Venezuelans. Our friends in Latin America are not fooled by Trump’s claims that the Venezuelans are “happy”. Neither are our enemies. They look upon what has been done with contempt, and further proof that their beliefs about the greedy, unprincipled, lying Yankees are correct.

It is past time to deal a knockout blow to the Maduro/Delcy Rodriguez show. Exit stage left.

There is no question that our officials in Caracas are doing all they can to make the best of a complex and daunting situation. Now we must throw down the gauntlet to Delcy and her crew.

The military and security services need to be purged of their worst elements. A plan for new elections has to move forward. The Venezuelan judiciary has to be reformed. All political prisoners must be released immediately. A provisional government needs to be formed.

As soon as the military, National Guard, and police are well in hand, they need to move decisively against the illegal “Colectivos”, disarming them and seizing their damn motorcycles (anybody familiar with Caracas will understand this stipulation). Then the Venezuelan military has to draw up a plan with their Colombian neighbors to eradicate the ELN, the “dissident” FARC, and the cartels from the Colombian/Venezuelan border.

The Venezuelan intelligence service needs to be compelled to give up’ any and all’ information they have on their cooperation with the Chinese, Cubans, Russians, and Iranians. Only then can we begin to assess the damage that has been done since 1999. You can be sure that there will be plenty of folks sweating it out in Washington if this is done.

Cuban, Chinese, and Iranian officials not engaged in legitimate diplomatic or commercial activity need to go home. Hezbollah needs to be expelled from the country, with particular emphasis on their base on Isla Margarita. The DEA needs to have a robust presence.

The members of Tren de Aragua and other criminal gangs need to take up residence in the Hotel Bukele in El Salvador.

Corrupt operators who have collaborated with the Maduro regime should be put out of business.

It may well be that this is the president’s real plan. If so, good on him. He gets it, and God bless.

Now, Cuba.

John Ratcliffe, the CIA Director, has just been in meetings with senior Cuban officials. We can assume that Ratcliffe delivered a stern and unnuanced message to them. It is over, time to move on. You have ruined your country. We will help, but first the Communist system must be dismantled.

Anybody familiar with Communist thought knows that holding on to power is not just important to Communists. It is the only thing. It must be made crystal clear that the road forward can only be built when the current regime is tossed in the dustbin of history. 67 years is enough. The Cuban Communists will fight tooth and nail against this. They will play for time, lie, cheat, and beg to stay in power. “Changes” and “reforms” are a non-starter. The diehards must leave the island forever, and not to a comfortable retirement in Miami. Equatorial Guinea is said to be a welcoming place. Pyongyang is an option as well.

You have to talk to somebody to effect a transition, and there are many Cuban officials who silently wish for that transition. Almost all of the rest of the population wants it. They know their grandparents were tricked into accepting a pig in a poke and sold a bill of goods. None of them believes the fairy tales today.

Mr. Ratcliffe has to grasp that the true end of the regime is the only acceptable outcome of any negotiations. It will be necessary to take it step by step, but the end goal can’t be in doubt. The only people who want merely “change” and “reforms” are the Cuban Communists and the characters (many of them, unfortunately, exiles in Miami) who hope to maintain the regime in place in some form so they can slice up the juicy Cuban cake without outsiders cutting in on their action. The United States has not maintained its position against this criminal regime for 67 years to allow those responsible for it a soft landing or to facilitate the return of a handful of Cuban exiles to the island as billionaires.

Any transition process in Cuba must have two guiding ideas. Freedom for the Cuban people and the interests of the United States of America

The senior Cuban Communists can’t be allowed to remain in Cuba. As for the Castro family, a wide-body jet should be able to accommodate them in the flight to their new home in North Korea. The idea of leaving them or their important collaborators in power in Cuba is simply absurd and a betrayal of both the Cuban and American people.

The Cuban Communist Party must be banned as a criminal organization, like the Mafia or the Ku Klux Klan. Castro loyalists who attempt to agitate or undermine the new government should be jailed or permanently exiled. They have had their day in the sun, and now it is over.

The last thing we need is a disorderly collapse in Cuba. A gigantic Haiti is in nobody’s interest, least of all the Cubans and the people of Florida. As distasteful as it may be, a deal with the Cuban military may be the best short-term bet. The military will survive the end of Communism. The Cuban Communist Party, the oppressive security services, and the intelligence service will not. They know there will be no place for them in the new Cuba.

The U.S. government must also ensure that there is no Oklahoma Land Rush by greedy businessmen hoping to make a killing in prime beachfront property, new hotels, infrastructure, or franchise operations. Anybody thinking they have the McDonald’s or KFC business locked up should be rudely informed that any such agreements or contracts reached before a new government is formed are null and void.

Ditto for those who will appear as if by magic to “claim” property allegedly owned by their grandfathers or great-grandfathers. To be sure, legitimate claimants need to have their property restored or be paid compensation. An impartial, independently audited commission should be formed to separate genuine claims from those of fortune hunters.

Any transition must include the disbandment of the Ministry of Interior security forces; a professional police force will be needed immediately. The military should be reorganized. The intelligence services must be obligated to deliver their archives to the U.S., and former intelligence officers must be interviewed by a multi-agency task force. Cuban agents in the United States and Latin America must be identified and exposed; let the chips fall where they may. Those who have collaborated with the Cuban Communist regime must be made to pay a price for their treason and folly.

Ratcliffe is reportedly discussing such things as intelligence sharing with senior members of the regime. Even if our proper goal is the dismantling of the Communist system and the complete end of the regime, we need to start somewhere, and talking with the Cuban intelligence services is the logical place to do it.

Nobody should be under the illusion that these people will “work with us” in good faith on anything but a few secondary issues. We also have to accept that the Cuban intelligence service is one of the best in the world. Their clandestine agents and witting collaborators in CIA, FBI, DIA, State, and Congress will keep them informed in real time about every move we make and every policy under discussion. Anything to do with Cuba must be tightly held, with bigot sheets attached to each document relating to the negotiations with Cuba. Our counterintelligence elements (such as they are) need to be alert to all indications of leaks to the Cubans. And these leaks will come from spies inside our government, not “technical penetrations.” The Cubans have been adept for years at convincing gullible American CI officials that such leaks are technical. A few may be, but the vast majority are from their agents.

It goes without saying that substantial humanitarian aid will have to be on the table.

Latin American Communists have much to answer for. Beginning in 1959, Cuba was the main driving force behind guerrilla warfare and terrorism in the region. The armed part of this movement was perhaps the least important element. The extreme left political parties across Latin America have wreaked havoc with economic growth, civil society, and social conflicts. The drug trafficking scourge owes much to the disorder fostered by the Communists. Resources that should have gone to development were instead spent on counterinsurgency and counterterrorism campaigns in almost every Latin American country. With Venezuela and Cuba neutralized as the sponsors of this activity, the entire region can begin to breathe again.

The extreme left will not disappear, but it will be reduced to an irritant.

President Trump has a golden opportunity to end a tragic cycle that began in the 1920’s with the first Soviet agents arriving in Latin America and expanded when Fidel Castro rode into Havana. He must seize the moment.

A new era of peace, prosperity, democracy, and the rule of law in the region depends on him.