Down with the Ship: Evolving US Counternarcotics Policy

Tensions are erupting between the United States and Venezuela, and in the first few weeks of September alone, the US military conducted multiple deadly strikes on narcotrafficking-linked boats off the Venezuelan coast. But questions abound pertaining to both the legality and political implications of the strikes, and what the latest developments might mean for national security moving forward. On this episode of Straight from the Shoulder, Jack and Julia discuss the trajectory of Venezuela's turn towards organized crime and why Jack thinks it's the right time to take firm and definitive action against narcotraffickers south of the border.

Transcript

Julia 

Welcome back. Tensions are erupting between the United States and Venezuela, and in the first few weeks of September alone, the U.S. military conducted multiple strikes on boats off the Venezuelan coast that have killed over a dozen people. U.S. President Trump asserts that these boats were carrying members of Tren de Aragua, a transnational Venezuelan criminal group that the president has designated as a terrorist organization. But serious questions abound pertaining to both the legality and political implications of the strikes. And today, Jack and I are going to try to sort this out.

Jack Devine

I think we're in another cycle, a very dangerous cycle, of increased use of narcotics around the world. It's not just the United States; it's just everywhere. And it's in different forms. The one that is most troubling to me has always been fentanyl because of how much you can move in relatively small packages. So I think there's a national consensus about you've got to do something here in Des Moines or Chicago or wherever to fix this problem. We had that in the 80s. It came in and finally, when drugs started to hit the suburbs, then America got concerned about it as a nation. So I think there's a real political juice under this, amazingly, a bipartisan item. And then I think the second part is how President Trump views the use of American power.

Julia

And how is Trump angling for influence in Latin America right now?

Jack Devine

I don't know if angling for influence is really the historic framework that I would use. I was on the other side of the fence, always with the Latins saying, why doesn't America pay more attention to us? We've got problems, we're their friends, we love them. Can't we do more together? And we'd be worried about Iraq and Afghanistan and right in our backyard. And you know, I think the founding fathers decided the Monroe doctrine that, hey, Latin Americans are natural sphere of influence and friends. I think, actually, I think it's the opposite. Latin Americans want to make sure they're getting the fair amount of attention. Now, does that mean military attention? I'm not so sure that's what they have in mind. But I think the fact that Latin America is the top issue is not surprising and a healthy thing.

Julia

And within Latin America, Jack, something that probably does appeal to US President Trump in particular, Venezuela has a special economic claim. It has the world's largest proven oil reserves. And yet Venezuela, and this is your words, we were speaking earlier. How did Venezuela come to be one of the poorest rich countries in the world?

Jack Devine

Well, if you try the old phrase, communism and socialism, and you take it to the extreme, this is where you usually end up. You take your country. So this country was, you know, I remember passing through and it was 25 % more expensive than New York. And there was a big gap; you didn't have much of a middle class, which was a disturbing thing to me in terms of stability. I'll leave the politics out of it. But you had some very wealthy people. And the money was going to Miami; there wasn't enough infrastructure, fabulous houses, you know. And I always remembered coming up from the airport and then you have to drive through the mountains to get to Caracas. The hills were filled with what they called ranchitos. At first, I thought they had little ranches. They meant slum, no running water. And you say, how many people can live up there in those hills? And how can a country with such fabulous reserves? I mean, forget they're also they're existing, but they have huge reserves that you would have told me at that point, that Venezuela would be dry, the older wells would be dry. I'm exaggerating to make a point. That it wouldn't be one of the top producers of petroleum was stunning. And I actually collected information about this at different times about how much opportunity there was there. And boy, that did turn south with the arrival of Chávez.

Julia

Wow, Jack, I'm very interested in this history. But in terms of contemporary leadership, how is it that Nicolas Maduro is able to maintain power, given the fact that there is this wealth to be had and that it's not reaching the vast majority of people in his country?

Jack Devine

I'm personally not impressed with Maduro as a charismatic leader. He is not your usual dictator personality-wise, and I'm not a psychiatrist, but Chávez was. So he inherited something. So sometimes they'd inherit, know, Stalin is some inherited from the Leninist, you know, a government, they put a hard hand on it. Wouldn't say Stalin was charismatic, but he sure as hell was a difficult leader.

Maduro may be ham-handed and I'm not sure how politically sophisticated, but he's let the Cubans, he's let his country drift away. He's let it drift away. And I think he's the opposite of that capitalist formula where you create your own problems. I think he is that dictator that's willing to let his country go down the tube as long as he and his club have the wherewithal. And I don't doubt for a minute that he's well invested around the world.

Julia

Would you say that the United States has no partner to work with in Venezuela and that it would be impossible to cooperate with the Maduro regime to impact change in terms of narcotrafficking?

Jack Devine

Well, if you worked in my office, you would know that Jack Devine never uses no, never, always. There's a whole list of words that aren't allowed in the office. But since you're a rebel, I'll go there. I don't know if there's no, but I think you're darn close to no, right? I'd be tempted to use no. There's a certain point where you have an opportunity, and they dropped the opportunity. 

Chávez was actually put on a boat, and they were throwing him out. They were overthrowing him. He was got as far as being taken away. And the opposition could not get their leadership together and come up with an alternative government. So the military said, what are we supposed to do? He took them back and guess what? He learned a lesson real fast. No one's gonna put me on a boat and then put an iron hand. And he started down the road of a full-term dictatorship, handed off to Maduro, and the process, the economy collapsed.

And people left. Millions and millions of Venezuelans left. We know it in the United States, large the Venezuelan, but if you're in Colombia, I don't know what the numbers are, but there's certainly at least a million refugees there or people that have gone there. So it's hard to organize. In China, revolution, hard to organize revolutions in Russia. When you have a violent dictatorship or using force, and I'm not saying the Chinese, they do use force with the Uyghurs and something, but the...My point is this is a group where your life is at risk if you, there's no free speech in real terms.

Julia

Right. And how would you compare this, and sort of the US ambitions in Venezuela and with narcotrafficking, to what the administration is doing with the Mexicans?

Jack Devine

I think the administration is absolutely right in declaring narcotraffickers terrorists. They're killing more people, more Americans, way more than terrorism is killing Americans. So I think it's about time that we up the ante in terms of the force we're using. I was chief of the counter narcotics unit in the 80s, and I'm very proud of what the agency did in those days and our partners, American and Colombian partners, in using intelligence and technical capabilities, building elite units that were compartmented from corruption and what they were able to do, bringing down the cartels and Pablo Escobar. The problem, then, moved from the center of Colombia to Mexico. And over the past 20, 30 years, cartels have grown, powerful cartels.

In Mexico, they are so powerful at this point. I think the administration's correct, although I have a differential with them, an important one. And that is, I think you have to use force. You have to go after them as if they are terrorists. The big differential is the one of whether you go together with Mexico or unilaterally.

And my very strong view, I wrote an article in USA Today in the past month in which I addressed this problem and said that we really have great allies there. And what we need to give them is technology in the drone arena. And we need to go after them. It will not be a protracted war. They are not Ukrainians who fighting for the country. You go after them with the capabilities that we have and the targeting intelligence. They're packing bags and going to somewhere else. But if I had a bet, our last country discussion, will be their home, Venezuela.

Julia

And what might the use of force accomplish in Venezuela, and what might it not be able to accomplish?

Jack Devine

So if we transition to Venezuela, the question is, what applies there? Well, we don't have an ally. There's no ally, there's no team that work, they're so corrupt, where are you going to begin? However, you have a problem. So I think it's a different formula there. You're not looking for a partnership and you take on the drug traffickers.

And I think in the world we live in, there is a role for the military, and that is on the high seas and working with foreign governments and collection.

Venezuela, the policymaker is gonna have to decide how far do you wanna use it? But if the drug problem is there, I want to underscore it. I'm suggesting kinetic force against drug traffickers, not much different than what we're using against terrorists around the world.

Julia

Should we be worried about the public perception of what the United States is doing here? Are these strikes legal? Do we know we're getting the right targets?

Jack Devine

I'm very precise in that you don't pull the trigger. If there was a civilian on that boat, you don't pull that trigger on the boat. If you're not sure, you don't pull the trigger. In other words, there has to be certainty. If the drug leader is there and he's visiting a school, you don't hit it. So I'm saying there's a very high standard on the target. 

But I believe most Mexicans are going to say, bring it on, get them, get them, make my, like, you're heading towards a country where it's feasible to consider that the president, not the current one, but in the future could be a cartel leader. So I think most Mexicans, they don't wanna, necessarily step out and be shot by these criminal terrorists. But I think where you're at is the Mexican people, let's get rid of the drug, if you're gonna American people, what are they gonna say? Don't waste my time, go ahead and go get them. They're not gonna spend any time worrying about it. 

Now, Venezuela's a different problem, complicated problem. I think the people there would love to see Maduro gone. There's no free election. Even the people that are left wanna see this gone. So I don't think you're gonna see an uprising. 

And what will the world say? Someone may, on the court of something or another, not like it, but I'm just saying, I think it'll be received enthusiastically. Go after them, give them what they deserve, break the back of this thing as much as you can. I'll finish on this note if you weren't gonna finish on another. I don't fail to recognize the real problem is demand.

And there needs to be a major effort in the United States, ramped up much bigger than it is now, to deal with all the dimensions of the demand problem. Because they will go from Venezuela to Angola to wherever until we make a dent. So I'm talking today about the supply side. And I'm saying go kinetic, give them everything they've got. You're going to save lives. You're going to reduce the problem. But you really need to address this as a national issue. As we started to do, but I think we got distracted by so many other things. We've underinvested, grossly underinvested, in solving the demand problem.

Julia 

Thanks, Jack. We'll certainly be watching how things progress between Washington and Venezuela in the coming days and weeks. There's a new level of intensity where we have not just economic but physical attacks against the drug dealers.