Venezuela and the Geopolitics of Crime

The United States’ unlawful capture of Nicolás Maduro was the most emphatic statement to date of President Donald Trump’s vision of US hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, in which energy and resource security, coercion and transactional deal-making will often take precedence over democratic principles, respect for sovereignty and international law. While much attention will focus on how developments in Venezuela reshape regional geopolitics, US–Latin American relations and Venezuela’s future, the operation may also have important effects on domestic and international crime. They could ultimately compromise regional security and undermine the very ‘war on drugs’ that the Trump administration has cited as the primary justification for the intervention. Countering transnational criminal networks requires coordinated transnational responses. The current US approach is eroding the trust on which such cooperation depends.