Gordon Carrera

Its main role seems to be a transshipment point for cocaine, which is coming out of Colombia.

And interestingly enough, it's after the Medellin cartel was being dismantled in the early 90s.

We covered that in our Escobar series.

They were looking for new routes and they start to come through Venezuela.

But again, here, if you look at the detail of it, most of the cocaine flowing through Venezuela is actually thought to be heading to Europe, not the United States.

So again, it doesn't quite stack up, this sense that drugs are the justification for it.

So I guess it then...

Yeah.

I mean, it allows you to kind of paint a target on his back effectively, which is what they were doing.

There is also that slightly awkward fact that the former president of Honduras, who'd been sentenced to 45 years in prison for drug trafficking, was recently pardoned by President Trump.

So the idea that, you know, going hard after drug trafficking, narco terrorist state leaders, you know, is slightly undermined by that.

And I think what you get a sense of is that the drugs are definitely there, but it feels like a justification for a policy which was being sought for other reasons and a useful legal basis.

to go after Maduro personally.

But I don't think it explains, does it, the kind of wider issue.

So maybe let's look at the next reason and the one that I think it's really surprising that it comes up quite explicitly, and that's oil.

I mean, it's a kind of old cliche about US wars for oil and that the US always kind of fighting wars for oil.

And I remember in Iraq in 2003, everyone was saying, oh, you know, not everyone, but some people were saying, you know, this is a war about oil.

And actually, I never thought it was.

I don't think it was.

And so it became a kind of cliched accusation.