The US Armada in the Caribbean Is After Maduro — Not Drugs
A US guided-missile destroyer at the Panama Canal, headed toward Venezuela.
Photographer: Enea Lebrun/Bloomberg
When I headed US Southern Command in the late 2000s, I spent a lot of time thinking about three things: stopping the flow of cocaine into the US; the guerrilla conflict in our closest South American neighbor, Colombia; and the despot of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez. I often asked — begged, frankly — the secretary of defense for more military capability to deal with these significant challenges.
Unfortunately for Southern Command — which is responsible for all military activity south of the US, including the Caribbean — we were regarded as an “economy of force” theater. The Defense Department’s big resources were earmarked for the “forever wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq, while I swept up the crumbs under the table. We had to make do with a few Coast Guard frigates, an occasional Navy destroyer, and a hospital ship.