A deadly strike marks a moment in Rubio’s long desire to confront Venezuela

Fort Lauderdale, Florida – The murderous strike of a boat said that US officials transported Venezuela drugs may have marked an astonishing change in countries relations, but the climbing of pressure on the South American nation defined a large part of the district of the secretary of the state Marco Rubio in politics.

President Donald Trump’s first diplomat, a former Florida senator, described Venezuela as a vestige of communist ideology in the Western hemisphere. Rubio has always been pressure for the eviction of his chief, Nicolás Maduro, pleaded for economic sanctions and even pleaded for an American military intervention.

“I think the American armed forces should only be used in cases of national security threats,” he said in a 2018 interview with Indivision. “I think there is a strong argument which can be underlined at the moment that the Venezuela and Maduro regime has become a threat to the region and for the United States”

Before joining the administration, Rubio had represented a more interventionist wing of the Republican Party which sometimes seemed in contradiction with the philosophy of Trump “America First”. While Trump did not promise more foreign wars, Rubio and other administration officials warned more operations against drug traffickers in Latin America, the climbing of pressure on a Rubio opponent has long sought to face.

“The president said that he wanted to wage war for these groups because they had been warning us for 30 years and that no one answered,” Rubio told journalists on Thursday.

Before being exploited as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, the Florida senator had already exerted an influence on American policy towards Latin America during Trump’s first mandate.

For Rubio, his interest in targeting Latin American leaders on the left was personal. His parents are Cuban immigrants who arrived in Miami in 1956, a few years before the Communist Revolution of Fidel Castro in 1959. He grew up in Miami, where many Cubans have sought refuge after the rise of Castro.

His constant criticism of communism helped to gain the support of thousands of members of the Venezuelan diaspora who made Florida their new home to escape crime, economic deprivation and disturbances under Maduro and his predecessor, the late Hugo Chávez, who took power in 1999 and began his self-written socialist revolution.

While the United States has tried to go beyond its legacy of the Cold War to interfere and destabilize governments in Latin America, Rubio often pleaded for more action, going against Chávez then Maduro. He linked the struggle of the opposition movement there to that of the Cuban exiles.

Now, “he sees an opportunity to move forward a much more aggressive American policy towards Latin America,” Geoff Ramsey, principal analyst at Venezuela, at the Atlantic Council in Washington.

Rubio shared some of the first details on the strike on Tuesday, although it is a military operation, displaying on social networks while Trump briefly announced it in the oval office. The White House says that 11 people were killed.

A day later, he said “it will happen again” and said Trump had the authority “in demanding circumstances to eliminate imminent threats to the United States”.

“What will stop them is when you explode them, when you get rid of them,” said Rubio on Wednesday, visiting Mexico.

The Ministry of Defense said Thursday evening that two Venezuelan military planes stole near an American navy ship, calling it “a very provocative decision” and warning the government of Maduro against other actions.

The reaction within the base of Trump Make America again to the American strike was quite silent, even in favor of this as an effort of drug trafficking, unlike the fracture which emerged on the American intervention in the Israeli-Iranian conflict.

After Trump beat Rubio during the 2016 GOP primary and he then took office in 2017, Rubio became a ghost advisor and was the main driver of sanctions against high -level Venezuelan officials for human rights violations and links with drug trafficking.

In the Senate, many Rubio television speeches and official statements have focused on Venezuela. In 2019, he said that there was a “convincing argument” according to which the situation in Venezuela presented a national security threat to the United States, citing the presence of the army of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The vast majority of Americans do not want Vladimir’s army in our hemisphere, and that is precisely what will happen if Maduro remains in power,” he said. “It alone is a national security threat to the United States.”

Many believed that Rubio was one of the voices that urged Trump to support an opposition leader to overthrow Maduro.

In 2019, when the Venezuelan forces repressed the troubles and that an opposition chief urged other countries to intervene, Rubio published a series of tweets showing images before and after reversed leaders such as the Moammar Gaddafi of Libya, which was killed by an invasion of the United States in 2011, and Manuel Noriega de Panama, American invasion in 1989.

“History is full of examples of tyrants who believe that they are invulnerable & Then faced with sudden collapse, “he tweeted later.

The United States are part of several countries that do not recognize Maduro as president of Venezuela, with credible evidence that he lost last year’s elections.

The Maduro head premium has also increased. After being charged with the Manhattan Federal Court in 2020 for narcoterism and conspiracy to import cocaine, the United States offered a reward of $ 15 million for its arrest. The Biden administration increased it later to $ 25 million – the same amount offered for the capture of Osama bin Laden.

The Trump administration has doubled this award at $ 50 million.

“Maduro is not the president of Venezuela and his regime is not the legitimate government,” Rubio published on X shortly before this announcement of August 7.

Maduro has described Rubio as the direct architect of American construction of warships in the region before this week’s strike.

“President Donald Trump, you must be careful because Marco Rubio wants your hands to be stained with blood, with South American blood, Caribbean blood, Venezuelan blood,” said Maduro to journalists this week.

The Venezuelan chief said that his government maintains two lines of communication with the Trump administration, one with the State Department and another with Trump’s envoy for special missions, Richard Grenell.

The Grenell team seems to adopt a more conciliatory approach, seen when the United States has enabled the petroleum producer Chevron to resume drilling in Venezuela and in the coordination of prisoner exchanges and expulsion flights with the Maduro government.

“I think the administration is divided internally on Venezuela,” said Elliott Abrams, who was special representative of Venezuela under Trump’s first mandate and said that Grenell pleaded for a softer position. “I think Rubio puts pressure on a hard line against Maduro, and he wins, and he loses it.”

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Amiri reported on the United Nations and Garcia Cano de Mexico.