It was a sentence that struck like a detonator in the history of American foreign policy - casually spoken, but with tectonic force. "I authorized it," Donald Trump said Wednesday in the Oval Office when a journalist asked whether the CIA was actually operating in Venezuela. No denial, no evasion. Just a cool confirmation that the president had ordered the foreign intelligence agency to carry out "actions" on Venezuelan territory - a statement that, even in the long history of American interventions, is remarkably blunt.
Trump confirmed on Wednesday that he had authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct covert operations in Venezuela - if the CIA operates in Venezuela without the consent of the local government, it violates Article 2 of the UN Charter, which protects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other states. Such an operation is therefore a violation of international law unless it can be justified by a UN Security Council mandate or by self-defense under Article 51 - which is clearly not the case here.
Trump’s justification sounded, as so often, like improvised ideology: Venezuela had "emptied its prisons into the United States," and "a lot of drugs come from Venezuela, mostly by sea." Two sentences that reveal more about the president’s thinking than about the reality of a South American country that has been suffering for years under a humanitarian, economic, and political catastrophe. What Trump portrays as national self-defense is in truth the beginning of a secret war, waged without debate, without oversight, without a defined goal - and without moral restraint.
Since early September, according to official statements, U.S. forces have destroyed at least five boats in the Caribbean, allegedly carrying "suspected drug smugglers." Twenty-seven people were killed, four of the boats are said to have come from Venezuela. No independent investigation, no evidence, no names. The Pentagon speaks of "preventive measures to secure American borders," but the numbers and locations tell another story: these are targeted military operations outside U.S. territory, without a declaration of war, based on a legal gray area that gives the executive branch almost unlimited power.
The CIA has rarely been squeamish when it comes to Latin America. From Guatemala in 1954 to Chile in 1973 to Nicaragua in the 1980s - wherever Washington sensed an ideological threat, money, weapons, and shadow armies followed. But what Trump has now openly confirmed marks a new stage. Not because it is the first intervention, but because it comes without any rhetorical camouflage. No talk of "democracy export" or "humanitarian responsibility," no fine-sounding phrases about freedom. Just naked power politics, justified by drugs and migrants.
In doing so, Trump once again fundamentally shifts the logic of American foreign policy. Where previous administrations sold their covert operations as "national security interests," Trump elevates them to an act of personal vengeance. His narrative is that of a threatened homeland defending itself against invaders and toxins - a militarized fantasy he has cultivated for years in his speeches. Now it is taking operational form.
Trump’s spontaneous admission that the CIA had officially been authorized to carry out covert actions in Venezuela also exposes the decay of the secrecy culture that once served as a shield for American power politics. The fact that a president openly admits to having ordered the foreign intelligence service to intervene in a sovereign state is not only diplomatically explosive but almost unprecedented under international law.
Because the authorization of such operations falls under what is known as a "covert action finding" - an order that the president personally signs and that normally remains classified. It allows the CIA to take actions that are "not solely for the purpose of gathering information," such as sabotage, influence operations, arms deliveries, or the support of armed groups. Congress must be informed in a secret session, but a public confirmation - like the one Trump just gave - is virtually unheard of. The fact that these words come at a time when Washington’s relations with Latin America are already at their lowest point is no coincidence. The wave of migration stretching from Venezuela through Colombia to the United States has long since become political fuel. Trump’s team is using it to justify a military presence in the Caribbean - and to demonstrate strength domestically. The drug in this narrative is not cocaine, but fear.
Venezuela’s government reacted with predictable outrage. Foreign Minister Yván Gil spoke of a "blatant violation of international law" and warned of "terrorist acts under the guise of drug enforcement." But the reactions from Europe remained, as always, weak, the UN stays silent. Washington’s military dominance in the region is too overwhelming for anyone to risk dissent. The fact that Trump, in the same breath, is considering "land operations" in Venezuela shows how fluid the boundaries between covert and open war have become. What begins today as an intelligence mission could tomorrow become a military operation - without Congress ever voting on it. The lesson from Afghanistan and Iraq, that interventions rarely end with a clear goal, seems to play no role in this White House.
In the background, a machinery is running that has long since slipped back into the mode of the 1980s: covert financing, cooperation with exile groups, information wars. Washington’s old recipes, only this time under a president who has no qualms about saying them out loud. The most dangerous thing about this new openness is its normalization. When a president, without evidence, defames entire countries as sources of drugs and crime and derives from that the right to act militarily there, the threshold of what is acceptable shifts. It is not only an intrusion into Venezuela’s sovereignty - it is an attack on the very idea of international order itself.
Trump’s words in the Oval Office sounded casual, almost bored. Yet in them lies the core of his power technique: the deliberate blurring of boundaries between domestic and foreign, between law and force, between fact and assertion. What is labeled as drug enforcement is in truth a demonstration of the principle that defines his presidency - that power does not need to be justified, only exercised. And while boats sink and people die in the Caribbean, while the CIA returns to the shadows, the question remains who actually controls this operation. Perhaps the answer is: no one. For when a president begins to wage the secret war openly, the real secret is no longer what is happening - but how long the world will keep pretending it has nothing to do with it and soothe itself with an emoji. What times these are.s geschieht – sondern, wie lange die Welt noch so tut, als ginge sie das nichts an und sich mit einem Emoji beruhigt. Was sind das nur für Zeiten.
To be continued .....
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