TEHRAN – Paul Pillar, a former CIA official and current senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies, told the Tehran Times that the Pentagon’s attack on a Venezuelan ship in the Caribbean, under allegations that it was trafficking drugs to the United States, reflects President Donald Trump’s return to the “gunboat diplomacy” of the 1920s and 1930s, when the U.S. military intervened. in some countries in Latin America.
Questions are mounting over the legality of a series of U.S. attacks on alleged “drug ships” in the Caribbean that have killed more than 80 people since September.
As the BBC reported on December 5, UN experts warned that the “coordinated” nature of the strikes “raises serious concerns about the potential for international crimes.”
It has become clear that the Trump administration supports obedient leaders in South America.
The United States appears determined to drive President Maduro out of Venezuela. According to reports, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently floated the idea of allowing Maduro safe travel to Qatar.
In announcing a new national security strategy on December 5, 2025, the Trump administration stated, “America’s diplomatic elites have become convinced that America’s permanent domination of the entire world is in our nation’s best interests.”
Foreign Policy magazine said in an analysis that President Trump’s refocusing of U.S. influence in its own neighborhoods had been foreseen for months, including earlier this week when the administration announced “Trump’s reasoning” for the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, which states that “the people of the United States, not foreign countries or globalist institutions, will always control their own destiny in our hemisphere.”
Below is the text of the interview with Paul Piller.
So far, the United States has taken extreme actions such as targeting Venezuelan fishing boats in the Caribbean and ordering President Maduro to leave the country. Do these actions and statements indicate that President Trump wants to restore the Monroe Doctrine in South America?
Although the Monroe Doctrine has always been primarily opposed to interference in the Western Hemisphere by powers outside the region, it has been at least implicitly part of U.S. foreign policy for two centuries. What President Trump is doing is a return to the “gunboat diplomacy” of the 1920s and 1930s, which involved American military intervention in several countries in the region, an approach that has become widely discredited.
What do these ultimatums for Venezuela mean for the world?
They convey a sense that the United States under the Trump administration is an imperialist power.
In general, don’t you think these actions are reckless and dangerous?
Mr. Trump supports authoritarian regimes that represent his variety of right-wing pseudo-populism.
Of course, it also comes with recklessness. Key risks include the risk of a major war between the United States and Venezuela. There are also negative consequences within the United States, in that many of the attacks on small vessels reflect a further erosion of the rule of law under the Trump administration.
Statements from US officials openly indicate that a Pentagon attack on Venezuela is imminent, alleging that the Maduro regime is an accomplice in drug trafficking to the US. Is the Trump administration pushing the fragile world order further toward anarchism, especially since President Maduro’s involvement in drug trafficking remains unproven?
The broader anarchist impact will depend on the extent to which the Trump administration uses ever greater military force against Venezuela, particularly in direct attacks against Venezuela. The issue with drugs is not whether President Maduro is innocent of his involvement in the drug trade, but rather that blowing up small boats in the Caribbean is hardly the most effective way to curb the drug trade, especially any part of the trade that harms the United States. The Trump administration’s policies on drugs have also been inconsistent, highlighted by Trump’s pardon of a former Honduran president who was convicted in a U.S. court of large-scale human trafficking. The amount of cocaine entering the United States.
Given the US president’s great love for oil and disdain for renewable energy, some argue that President Trump’s political, economic, and military pressure on Venezuela is aimed at controlling Venezuela’s oil resources. what is your opinion?
President Trump’s pressure on Venezuela is rather a matter of exercising power for the sake of exercising power.
Oil is less of a consideration in this issue than it was before hydraulic fracturing technology increased oil production in the United States. Perhaps for Trump, pressure on Venezuela is more a matter of wielding power for the sake of wielding power.
Is President Trump sending a message to leftist governments in the Americas by dispatching the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald? R. Ford off the coast of Venezuela?
Such displays of military capability have long been used to send a message to adversaries. The specific message is that the targeted country may be subject to military attack. In this case, the Cuban regime is probably as much a part of the target audience as Cuba’s ally Maduro regime in Venezuela.
If the United States wants to bring democracy to Venezuela, as Mr. Trump and some Republicans claim, then there are autocratic rulers in the world who are friends with Mr. Trump. If this claim is true, how can these disputes be reconciled?
Of course, this issue has been around for a long time, even before President Trump, but they can’t reconcile it. This characterized many of the relationships the United States built during the Cold War, when the overriding concern was whether the administration would side with the United States or the Soviet Union. The twist under President Trump is that he is showing favoritism to authoritarian regimes, especially those that exercise pseudo-populism on the right.