School of War - Ep 243: Joshua S. Treviño—Is Trump After Regime Change in Venezuela?

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

Joshua S. Treviño, Chief Transformation Officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and senior advisor at the America First Policy Institute, joins the show to discuss the Trump administration’s military strikes on seaborne cartel traffic and its strategy in the Western Hemisphere. ▪️ Times 00:00 Understanding U.S. Military Strategy in Venezuela 02:26 The State-Cartel Synthesis: A New Paradigm 05:30 The Role of the U.S. Military in Drug Interdiction 08:39 Legal Framework and Controversies Surrounding Military Actions 11:46 The Broader Implications of Regime Change  14:26 Divisions on the Right: Perspectives on Foreign Policy 21:50 The Strategic Implications of Military Action Against Maduro 30:19 Assessing the Venezuelan Opposition's Readiness 33:53 Colombia's Evolving Relationship with the U.S. 37:00 The Complex Dynamics of U.S.-Mexico Relations 41:55 The Threat of Cartels and Their Impact on U.S. Society Follow along on Instagram, X @schoolofwarpod, and YouTube @SchoolofWarPodcast Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

Is Donald Trump pursuing a regime change strategy in Venezuela? What does our military buildup off of Venezuela's coast and our numerous lethal strikes on drug trafficking vessels in the area? What do these things mean about what's to come? Is it all legal? And what will it mean for America and the Western Hemisphere? We address these questions and more on today's School of War. Let's get into it. Summa 7, 1941, a date which will live in history.

A bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a state. We continue to face the great situation in grand. We'll fight on the beaches. We should fight on the landing ground. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War.

I am delighted to welcome back to the show, Joshua Trevino. is the chief transformation officer at the texas public policy foundation he's also a senior advisor at the america first policy institute where he runs international operations he is an expert on all things the border south of the border mexico the western hemisphere joshua thank you for coming back on the show aaron it's great to be back here on school of war i i think it was about a year ago or so that you were here we talked about mexico we talked about the history of the u.s mexico relationship and the policy challenges we were facing in the present. It was pretty grim, to be honest. It wasn't the sunniest conversation, though it was fascinating. Here we are October, late October, 2025.

A lot is happening in this part of the world. In some ways, if you talk about cross-border migration, for example, things seem to be a lot better and more secure than they felt a year ago. In other ways, there's a lot of open questions about what's happening and what's going to happen, beginning with, and where I would like to start is the American military posture, towards the cartels, towards countries like Venezuela and Colombia. We have a lot of assets in the Caribbean right now. Maybe, can we step back to the start of this year and the onset of the Trump administration, and you can give us some context as to how the Trump administration has shaped its policies towards the cartels and how we arrived at this current phase of things?

Yeah, absolutely. And I don't know if this conversation will be that much happier than the last but it's certainly, but it might be more interesting because quite a bit more has happened, as you know. At the beginning of this year, you know, in which I'll date to January 20th, honestly. So on day one of the Trump administration, the then new president set in motion a variety of interesting things, many of which have been in the works for some time, one of which, which I think is, I'll highlight three that I think are especially relevant to this conversation. And it's a trio of executive orders, one designating Mexican cartels, which was subsequently expanded to other narco cartels in the hemisphere.

As foreign terrorist organizations, another affirmed that there was an Article 1, Section 10 invasion underway at the southern border. And then the third one, which got overlooked, but I think is actually pretty important to understanding what's happening right now, asserted that the primary mission of the United States Armed Forces was to defend the territorial United States, so not just American interest abroad, but actually the American homeland itself. And that orientation, I think you're seeing a lot of that play out now. A lot of the premises behind what you're seeing in the Southern Caribbean, what you're seeing vis-a-vis Venezuela, and also in the Pacific now, as you know, the campaign's expanded now, so it's a two-ocean campaign, I think has its roots in the predicates that were required for those policy changes to come into being.

Number one being, and Aaron, we can take this conversation where you want it to go, but number one being the existence of the state cartel synthesis that you and I discussed with regard to Mexico in a previous show, but also exists in places like Venezuela, like Q, like Nicaragua, possibly including Colombia, depending on what level of government you're talking about. And my hypothesis is that what policy is unfolding now is actually directed toward that synthesis. So let's maybe spend a minute then on the state cartel synthesis. I mean, we did speak about it before, but let's remind everyone what that means to how real it is, how perhaps veryingly real it is depending on where you are. Yeah. You've spent a lot of time thinking about Mexico, so feel free to speak about that. But obviously, I think top of the list right now for everyone trying to understand what's going on in the region is how true is it in Venezuela? Like, what is the nature of the Venezuelan state in the Maduro regime? And what actually are there links to drug trafficking? I think that nature of the state is the fundamental question that drives the policy. You know, just to recapitulate, the idea behind this narco-state synthesis is this idea that you do have a formal state and you also have these transnational.

criminal cartels, which although we use narco as shorthand, but they're not really drug-dealing organizations as such. They traffic in narcotics, and illegal drugs and legal substances, fentanyl and so on, but they traffic in everything else, too. And so a much more accurate way to think of them is essentially evil Amazons. They're logistics firms, extremely sophisticated ones with multibillion dollar bottom lines, and they traffic people and drugs and goods and so on. And so what we've seen emerge, particularly in the past generation, is this state cartel synthesis. Again, Mexico is the one that I specialize in, but Venezuela is very, very similar, and that you have sort of a conscious and mutual exchange between the cartels and the state. And what I mean is this, the state provides cover, legitimization, operational base and sort of public service rent, for lack of a better term, to the cartels.

and what the cartels provide to the state varies according to what the state needs. Now, in the case of the Venezuelans, a lot of what the cartels provide is actually what I would describe as largely foreign policy goals, vis-a-vis Colombia, depending on how that relationship is going, which is always very fraught between the two countries, but also versus the United States. The same is true in Mexico. And the cartels will also provide, essentially, for lack of a better term, election muscle when needed. And, you know, we saw this in the 2021 elections and Senaloa in Mexico, and you see it also unfolding in Venezuela, particularly in the more rural areas where it's needed. And so this synthesis, what it does is it makes both the state and the cartels

indispensable to one another, and it also changes the nature of the cartels. So there's a framework in which we think of, you know, we think of organized crime in the United States. And by the way, any generality is going to be wrong in the particulars. So I just want to, I want to assert that up front. But their generalities for a reason. We think of crime as crime. Crime is not the state. And to the extent that crime infiltrates the state, it's something to be rooted out in excise. And it doesn't change the nature of the state. So the fact that there's a corrupt judge in New Jersey or a corrupt sheriff in South Texas, all of which happens, you know, too often actually does not de-legitimize American governance as such, right?

We understand that there's a, there's a restorative condition to which they be, to which they may return. That's not true of, I would say, the Moraine regime in Mexico. It's not true of the Maduro regime, the old Chavezza regime in Venezuela as well, to which the partnership with criminality is intrinsic to the nature of the regime and acknowledging that intrinsic nature and then realizing that states require state solutions, but at the same time there's a cartel component to it, I think gets you to this very interesting hybrid warfare, for lack of a better term, that we see off the north coast of South America right now. Yeah, or just, I mean, to be blunt, warfare. You know, I take your point about how it was perhaps overlooked.

the assertion that, you know, the fundamental mission of the U.S. military is the defense of the American homeland and how significant that is to what's going on right now, because I take it that in past administrations, to include the first Trump administration, you know, the kind of drug trafficking occurring, you know, at sea that's being targeted right now by the U.S. military, this would previously have been a principally a law enforcement concern to be handled by the Coast Guard or other similar agencies, not to say that there were never military interventions or covert actions we've all seen sacchario but those those were the exceptions rather than the rule the rule was law enforcement and here now we have the u.s military being put to work really in the narcotics

interdiction business with what seemed to me it's not just that there seemed to me and there's a degree of ambiguity sitting here we're recording this on october the 27th in the evening there's a degree of ambiguity as to what the campaign goals are we've certainly killed a couple dozen drug traffickers, or at least those, the administration asserts, or drug traffickers, I see no reason to reject the characterization, though. You'll tell us what you think. But just speak to what, we have a lot of assets now, a lot of high-end military assets to include reports. I think just today that we're sending an aircraft carrier to the region. What are we up to? The USS Gerald Ford, which is a big one. I mean, they're all big, but it's a significant

asset. Yeah, I saw, I saw a figure to the extent that something like one-seventh of U.S. naval power is now concentrating in the southern Caribbean in Southcom AOR, which is, which is pretty remarkable. I don't even know if that happened the last time we had significant operations in there, which is really December 1989. Look, I think there's a sweet spot of intersection of interests that are driving the policy right now. And I'll say up front that I don't have any info that's not in public. So, you know, there's always mind reading with the speculation. But to the extent that it can be informed, you know, I think I think we can understand a little bit of what's going on. One is that that reorientation of DOD or I'm sorry the Department of War

I'm sorry W. Thank you very much. I apologize. Yes, no, that was quite famous. I was actually, I was recently with some some DOW now and they and the first time if someone said it, it was it took me so by surprise. It was sort of so jarring. Yeah. We are, the Department of War.

It's been interesting. The appointees that I know their, their usage turned on a dime like there was no slippage at all or compared to me, right? So, so, but you know, it's. It's interesting to see that the stories of the former Department of Defense refusing to involve itself in counter-trafficking, counter-cartel activities are Legion. And if you talk with individuals, even in the Department of State, and even from Trump One, who tried, for example, one specific story I'm thinking of without betraying confidences is of a

Department of State official who was trying to get the U.S. Navy to, I believe, interdict on the Pacific side of Mexico, which is a fairly robust maritime route. And the Navy simply wouldn't do it, and they wouldn't do it because the institutional incentives were misaligned. I mean, all the, you know, nobody's making a career off of Guerrero, right? They're making a career off of Taiwan and open-Awan, things like that, all of which are important to U.S. security, but at the same time, do betray a misalignment between, you know, what's actually happening in the homeland versus not.

So I think, I think that's important. And if the campaign, as it exists right now, did nothing else, like if all it ever achieved was sinking drug boats. And I agree with you. I don't see any particular reason. to dispute the characterization of those of those boats, then that is, that is directionally worthwhile. It is directionally worthwhile to make sure that our war-making apparatus actually does have skin in the game and is willing to put itself on the line in the direct defense

of American communities, which is, again, empirically true. Even in Panama in 89, which, you know, you could argue it was the last time that we really went to war, so to speak, set aside Delta Force in Columbia, killing Pablo Escobar, which is, you know, a great achievement, but was, was much more, much more under the radar. Head away from Mark Bowden. Tell us what happened there. Great book. Yeah, it's a great book. It is a great book. All of us. Julian Pablo, for anyone interested. Yes, yes, yes. Since we're talking Bowden, his history of the Battle of Way is superlative. I haven't had the pleasure yet. I'm a bad man going back to Blackhawk down, but I haven't had, I haven't read the way book, which is, which is indefensible as a Marine as a Marine, as a Marine, Freddie Gonzalez, the native of South Texas, who laid down his life and earned the Medal of Honor there. And so anyway, I can't recommend it enough. Sorry to get off topic, but not all. Great book. Everybody should read it. You know, the, we invaded Panama,

actually, which was another example, kind of an early proto example of the state cartel synthesis under the Noriega regime in the 1980s. And what's interesting is that when you look at the events that trigger the invasion in late December, 1989, it is actually not because Noriega and his operations attack the United States. That's not the theory of action. It's because they attack the U.S. armed forces, which is a stupid thing for them to do. And sufficient casus bell in itself, nevertheless, is qualitatively different from what the Trump administration is having the Department of War do now. And I think that's just worth noting. That being said, I don't want to get ahead of you. I do think there's a larger framework at work here, but I do want to, I just do

want to make the point that if nothing else were happening, it would still be worthwhile, as is. Well, I do want to get to the larger framework. One thing I think we should address, though, before we get to what this all may be about, because my personal, my, I mean, I've not done the the full analysis of the order of battle and everything. But think if your goal was simply to sink boats here, small narco-trafficking boats here and there, we probably have more in the region than strictly speaking we need for that purpose. But we'll come back to the second. Because I want to address the legal framework, which is a huge subject of controversy right now in Washington and in the media. Unsurprisingly, administration critics on the left are not happy with all of this. But

there are voices on the right as well. Senator Rand Paul, I heard described these strikes. as extrajudicial killings recently. Talk about the legal framework for this and how troubled or untroubled you are by what the administration is up to. One thing that the administration has departed from vis-a-vis previous practice is the issuance of that traditional legal framework. And you typically, you typically will see it. So when you go back and you look at, I mean, we don't do declarations of war anymore, but when you see assertions of war-making powers is usually some kind of a either a DOJ or, again, former DOD memorandum that comes out and sets forth either a constitutional or statutory justification for what's being done. And there apparently

is one for Venezuela. I've been told that there is, and I've also been told that it's secret. And people that I know who have seen it, that's a very D.C. thing to say, for which I apologize. But people that I know who have seen it, at least on the conservative side of the ledger, have told me that it's thin. I don't know. I can't make that judgment because I, because I I haven't seen it, and I probably have a different definition of what's thin and thick than they do. My guess is that it's probably somewhat non-traditional. You know, looking at the just kind of the fact pattern at hand, if you accept, again, a lot of it depends on the predicates that you accept. If you think that these are mere drug smugglers, then there probably is an issue with the United States, you know, using military power to sync them on both a prudential and legal basis.

But they're not. And we note that the administration doesn't think they are specifically because of the characterization, that is brought to bear on Cartel de los Soles, Trind de Aragua, and so on, and the nature of the Venezuelan state. And so with that state involvement and with that political agenda that comes with it, it's pretty squarely in Article 2 authority. I believe that the president of the United States, you know, inherent powers of the commander-in-chief can do the things that he is doing. I don't know what the legal strategy is on the White House side. It's entirely possible. They're waiting for somebody to bring litigation, in which case I think they should, I think they'll

prevail if that happens because war powers are what they are. But in candor, there's a lot of, unknowns. But to kind of get to your question, I'm not troubled by the legal justification at all. I think it's, it seems to me that there's a fairly robust one, whether or not it's been constructed, I don't know. So moving to this question of the broader framework and what, what the capabilities we've deployed in the region suggests we may actually be up to, not so with the history of this administration's relationship with, well, Venezuela primarily suggests. This is also, of course, a topic of huge controversy at the moment. And in particular, you see people on the, people who might otherwise be supportive of the Trump administration on the anti-interventionist

or restrain or right in particular. It's sort of an irony here. People who would at least rhetorically say that they're thrilled by the focus on the Western Hemisphere because, of course, it implies or it seems to imply, I think in practice it's actually not implying it, but seems to imply that that means less emphasis on the rest of the world. I don't know. I've seen lots of Trump administration emphasis on other parts of the world so far in 2025. So that doesn't seem to be paying off. Nevertheless, in general, this is a group of policy analysts and journalists and writers and whatnot who normally would be pleased to be more focused on the Western Hemisphere, but now find themselves quite horrified at the prospect of regime change, that we may be regime-changing

Venezuela is the most sort of stark articulation of their fears. I don't, I genuinely don't know what's going on or what our goals are here. I know that, you know, this administration, and it's in the president's first term, had a pretty tense relationship with the Maduro regime and warm relations, more or less with the opposition. There are senior officials in this administration, Secretary Rubio, for example, long outspoken critics of regimes like the Maduro regime. Help us understand what's going on here, Joshua. With regard to the divisions on the right in the United States, I mean, it's a very complicated topic. I think one of the ways in which the MAGA movement writ large has been misunderstood is in the shorthand that it's isolationist.

And I don't think that was ever the case. It's certainly writ large, again, all generalizations being wrong, has a different point of view versus, I would say, traditional American foreign policy. So, you know, I'll highlight one difference that I have with a lot of my friends. And I do mean they're genuinely friends on the new right. I support aid to Ukraine. And a lot of these people, I think mostly virtuous motives, don't. And that's fine. It's a point of disagreement that we have.

It's not a point of alienation that we have. And I'll tell you one reason it's not a point of alienation is because almost everyone with whom I have vigorously disagreed on vis-a-vis Ukraine, I find we concur entirely on the use of force within the Western Hemisphere. And so what that tells me, and I think is a charitable and accurate description of them at large is that. is that they're not isolationist. What they are is they're in favor of a reorientation of American power. And, you know, for their reasons, which they can explain, they don't perceive a particularly direct threat to the United States for what's happening in the Donbass.

That's actually a point that should be contended with, I think, because it's a legitimate point to make. But they do see correctly that there is a direct effect on American communities with what's happening in Mexico and Venezuela and so on. And that is quite interesting. Now, the regime change point that you bring up is also very interesting. I have encountered good folks, long-time members of the movement, you know, individuals who are either adjacent to or within government, who are very uncomfortable on exactly that point. They'll say, well, you know, I'm in favor of punishing the Maduro regime. I'm in favor of killing the cartelman. I'm in favor of doing all these things. But as soon as regime change heaves into view, that's a non-starter for me. Now, again, this is something that I personally, you know, from a functional perspective, disagree with. I think it misunderstands how regime change was misused in the early 2000s and so on. And I also make the point that a Latin American civic culture is definitely not an Arab Muslim one.

And the differences are legion. And also that the U.S. actually has a much better record of regime change than I think we've been given credit for over the past 20 years. But setting all that aside, it's something that has to be contended with. That said, I don't think, if I can venture a political prognostication, I don't think that any of these reservations are going to have a bit of bearing. on what the president ends up choosing to do. And there's two reasons for that. One is that he is the leader of the movement. I mean, it's just how it is right now.

So what he decides is generally, we've seen this over and over and over again what the base is going to endorse and follow because they trust him. He is their heuristic. And then the other reason it's going to be fine is, I say it's going to be fine, I'm sorry. That betrays a value judgment on my part.

The other reason that I think they're going to follow along with it, actually is because of the example of the bombing of the Iranian nuclear facilities, which you're comfortable with value judgments on the show, just so you know. Okay, that's fine. We reject the back value distinction here on School of Fortune. Oh, fantastic. All right. Well, then I'm among friends.

That's good. Well, the reason I think it's going to be great when the president goes after Maduro in a direct way is because of the example of the bombing of the Iranian nuclear facilities, which if anything was supposed to break the coalition, it would have been that. You know, you saw Tucker Carlson saying it was going to cause World War III. saw all sorts of, frankly, hyperventilation about what it was going to do. And the president did it. It worked.

The coalition didn't break. A third world war didn't start. And we're still, you know, to a large extent, one United movement. That example is instructive. And I think it's predictive of what's going to happen vis-a-vis Caracas in the next several months. So, again, just to stick with trying to think through what might happen, I guess I find myself skeptical that, quote, unquote, full regime change. whatever you want to characterize it or whatever phrase you want to attach to it that the maximalist goal is actually the goal for the simple reason that impressive as the military assets we've put in the

region are and they seem significantly more robust than what you need for narcotics intradiction yeah they're actually not robust enough i think by a long shot not to occupy venezuela correct if you if you want to if you want to even if you just want to communicate to the maduro regime your regime is at risk not just we're going to mess with you, but your regime is at risk. Right. I don't, it doesn't seem to me, even with the Ford that we're, you know, we have an aircraft carrier in its group.

We've got some other assets. We've got some Marines. Yeah. Still, I mean, Venezuela's a big country. Caracas is a big place. They got a lot of money. They got a lot of drugs. So, you know, we are somewhere, it seems to me just sort of from the hip capabilities analysis,

we're sort of between two stools. And so that suggests to me that we are somewhere in the, we're going to mess with you, zone. and how that translates into, you know, orders that we have not seen and that we're not privy to in terms of what our actual strategic thinking is. Because I do think there is strategic thinking. That is to say this administration now has demonstrated on a few occasions. The Iran strikes are a great example, actually, that it's willing and capable of moving military assets into position and taking action without teleghing what it's going to do. And in fact, I've heard Secretary Hexeth make it to sort of speak about it as a point of pride. And there's no doubt military value to it.

There's a risk, of course, which is you have to ultimately keep the American. people on your side and we'll see we'll see how that proceeds but i just i'm i'm kind of curious your thoughts on what messing with the means like what what's your you know what what are we actually after here with maduro well here's where i get into the mind reading because because we don't know we don't know we don't know actually what the strategy is but we do know that the number i completely agree that the number of forces in the region is insufficient to to invade and occupy venezuela which is a gigantic i mean it's just gigantic it is a large large place terrible biography very difficult to move around. And honestly, I have said, I don't think this is going to happen,

but I have said, like, in a nightmare scenario in which the United States got involved in some kind of a Venezuelan counterinsurgency over a long period, the number one supplier of the opposition to us would probably breathe the Brazilians because they actually do have an arms industry and highways up through the Amazon and things like that. And so it's just not a situation that I see us getting into. And I don't see us getting into it because of that prudential concern and that resource constraint, but also because it's just not something that the Trump administration has shown any interest in doing anywhere over two terms now. And so I don't think Venezuela is going to be different.

Look, the force is not large enough to invade and occupy the nation of Venezuela. It is plenty large to go after Nicholas Maduro once they know where he is in Gennem. And honestly, I think that's what it's for. You know, so here's where we get into the grand theory, if I may, Aaron, of what's going on here. The Venezuelan regime is not a thing unto itself. Maduro is surrounded by reportedly a coterie of Cubans. So there's a tight link between Caracas and Havana. When you talk with security-affiliated security concern personnel who focus on Latin America for much longer than I have,

they will tell you that Caracas is now in the position that Havana used to be in, which is the epicenter of all the destabilization, Iranian activity, Hezbollah activity, Russian activity, Chinese activity in the region. So it's a significant hub. So that's one reason that there is an imperative to take it out, to take out their regime without occupying the country. Another thing, though, is that it is part of the... of a broader, you know, network of these narco states, call it Bolivarian, if you wish, although the Mexicans would object to that. But it includes Mexico City. It includes Havana.

It includes Managua and so on. You know, for a while, it included Ecuador and Bolivia, you know, elections have changed in those areas, too. But think about this, though. If you were, if you were a person, I've been involved in a war game on this that involves zero U.S. government personnel. So, you know, again, take that to take that for what it's worth, but on the think tank side. And if you wanted to game out how you could use the Department of War to solve the most pressing cartel state problem that the United States has, which is Mexico, not Venezuela, would you go straight into Mexico? I think the answer is no. Or would you start to circumscribe the Mexican regime's universe allied and friendly regimes, which matters a great deal both psychologically and pragmatically to that Mexican regime? the easy one to take off is not Havana.

It's Caracas, right? The easy one to start circumscribing that universe that the Moranistas in Mexico City exists in is actually by curbing or curb stomping, I guess, the Chavezza is in Caracas. The blowback is different vis-à-vis the U.S. homeland. The resource pull is different, and the politics are very different.

And so you start to see something on the periphery that's achievable that shapes the main end. And I suspect that might be what's happening here. You know, what's underrecognized about the Mexican regime in particular, not everything's about Mexico, by the way. I know that's my fixation, but I just want to, again, I want to illuminate why Venezuela might be on the menu, is that, is that Mexico actually is providing commodities and oil to prop up both the Venezuelan and the Cuban regimes right now. And so there's shipments of Mexican commodities, Mexican, I think, refined petroleum products that go to Venezuela that help sustain Maduro and his people. Of note, when Maria Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize, a few weeks ago, well-deserved, by the way,

she's been on the run in Venezuela for months and months, years and years. A very brave individual, someone who I've actually gotten to speak with on a couple of occasions, and so someone who I think is a very admirable person. When President Claudia Shinebaum of Mexico was told, and this is on film, that she had won the Nobel Peace Prize for her opposition to the Venezuelan dictatorship,

Scheinbaum's response was no comment. She had no comment on it. Now, this is somebody who was effusive with praise, for pretty much anybody else in Latin America. But in this particular case, it really betrayed the priorities of the Mexican regime. And so I think that if you, I think, rationally are concerned

about the fragility and the volatility of Mexico, which, after all, is a place you can walk to, especially from here in Texas, then Venezuela starts to make a lot of sense. And so from a bureaucratic perspective in Washington, D.C., you see a desire to, you know, provide a place for 8 million Venezuelan migrants to return to. You see a desire to establish precedent

and predicate for the Department of War, depending the American homeland, then you see a desire to reshape the psychological and political world in which the Mexican regime operates, and it starts to make a lot of sense to do the things the Trump administration is doing. So there's a few different places we might go from here. I want to go to Mexico in a second, but first, let's stick with your theory that there's some potential, it's not the invasion and occupation of Caracas or whatever, which I agree with you seems completely absurd. and I also think that President Trump has, I agree completely, has shown no interest in such things over now a pretty substantial number of years of providing evidence of what interests him and does not interest him in foreign affairs.

That said, let's go with your suggestion that potentially there's some sort of Maduro-focused operation afoot. How do you ensure is probably too strong? How do you maximize the odds that whatever follows Maduro is better than Maduro, which is sort of the same. is asking, how's the Venezuelan opposition actually doing? You know, could they actually run the country? What is the domestic situation? We have a bad habit here in the United States of being a little bit rosy about what, you know, the later phases of these things actually look like. How do you think about this? Well, full disclosure, you mentioned at the beginning I worked for the America First Policy Institute. We're recording on October 27th on November 7th. We are actually hosting a roundtable

with the Venezuelan opposition. That's going to be open to press. And so you're welcome to come, Aaron. Everyone should check it out. So, yeah, everybody check it out. But they will tell you. I don't want to, I'm not, they're spokesmen, but I can tell you what they've told me

and what they tell everybody that they can, is that they have a well-crafted plan for taking power on day one. And they've got plans for adjudicating what happens at the Army. They're not going to debatify. They're not going to turn out, you know, lose 400,000 individuals with rival.

under the streets and no paycheck, that they've learned the lessons. Now, they can say all that. And, you know, one might object that it's the exact same thing that the Iraqi National Congress said in 2003. So who knows? I don't know. You know, I think one thing, though, that I will say does give me, does give me some cause for mild optimism here is that Venezuela simply is not, it's not, the Middle East is in the back of our heads with all this. We think about Libya. We think about Syria. We think about Iraq. We think about Afghanistan and so on. And that's, you know, as somebody who has spoken at length on the heterogeneity of Latin America, this is going to seem a bit counterintuitive. But Venezuela and Latin America in general, certainly the upper tier of South America, is just not that.

And I don't mean that they're not diverse. And I don't mean that there's not a range of views. But they aren't clan based in the same way, if that makes sense. It's not the same sort of ready to fracture quick to violent society that you're going to see in other places. So I can't sit here and tell you or anybody else that the day after in Venezuela is going to be fine because I don't know. All history is contingent. But what I can tell you is that is it compared to Libya, compared to Afghanistan, compared to Iraq, compared to Syria, Venezuela is a much better bet than any of those places in which we did actually intervene. And moreover, unlike all of those places, Venezuela does have an opposition that has real credibility because it is won multiple elections in a row.

And I would suggest the real parallel there is to Panama, 89. So let's go to Mexico and Colombia. Let's talk about these ripple effects that you were alluding to earlier. The Colombians have caught a lot of heat, rhetorical and otherwise from this administration. Additionally, there is this question of Mexico as the sort of heart of darkness of cartel lands, as you seem to characterize it. They'll feel free to correct that wording. But, you know, I've also, so the Colombians have caught a lot of heat from this administration. The Mexicans certainly are in a perpetually rough place with the president over trade.

I have heard it said that cooperation on other issues has improved. Yes. The president has come into office. So speak about that as well. Like, how's all this playing out elsewhere in the region? If I may, let me address Colombia first and then I'll get to Mexico because Mexico is much more fraught, as always. Colombia, what's happened to the Columbia U.S. relationship under Veselopetro has an element of tragedy to it. You know, the Colombian U.S. security relationship goes back much further than

people think. It actually extends back, really, in a real way to the Korean War in which the Colombians actually, I think some viewer will correct me. I think they sent a battalion that actually acquitted itself fairly well in the latter phases of that war. And so that starts the integration of Colombia into kind of the Western defense sphere. And so Colombia ends up, you know, with the with the standing up Blanc Colombia in the 1990s, and we already mentioned, you know, Delta Force going and helping kill Pablo Escobar. Colombia ends up as a major non-NATO ally of the United States, and it's got a very good, very professional armed forces.

It's got a very robust civil society. Things start to go wrong in Colombia, really in the past 15 years or so, first with a very misconceived peace process that essentially rescues the FARC and the ELN from what would have been a pretty inevitable defeat or marginalization on their ends. And then with the election of Gustavo Petro, who is, I don't know how else to say it, I'll use the term of art. He's a lunatic.

Writes poetry on Twitter is very much of this sort of magical realism tradition in left populist Latin American thinking. And he has taken this half century plus of productive relationship, security relationship between the U.S. and Colombia, and essentially set it on fire. And he's done it through, unfortunately, greater toleration of a variety of left authoritarian movements, much more toleration of drug trafficking that's linked with a lot of these peristate guerrilla organizations. and then friendliness with the Maduro regime in Venezuela, which does not have Colombia's interest at heart in any way. Now, the saving grace for Colombia is that civil society is not dead there, and there's actually, you know,

Colombia's going to have two elections in March and May next year for the Congress and then for the presidency. And there's actually a reasonable chance that a conservative comes in. I hate to put it on left-right lines, but it really does fall along those contours. And so Colombia is not where Mexico is, where civil society is effectively crushed. It's definitely not where Venezuela is,

but it's it's an area of concern and I think a tragic fall so long as Petro is there. Now, you ask about, you have to forgive me, to refresh for me the question on Mexico because I've gotten exercised over Columbia and forgotten. I wanted you to address the fact that or what I take to be the fact. You're the expert. Ah, the cooperation. Relations are tense in particular over trade. Yes.

If there's improved cooperation, it seems, in other zones and just how that's going in general and how you think this Venezuela issue intersects with Mexico? So the official line on Mexico is that things are great, which is absurd. But that is what the State Department writ large has decided to tell us all. Now, I have heard, and one can hear a number of things. I have heard that inside of Mexico military-de-military cooperation is great. I don't particularly believe it, but it's possible that something interesting is happening. Sedana, which is the Mexican army, is traditionally one of the largest trafficking organizations in the country.

You know, here's what we haven't seen from Mexico, though. And this is what I've communicated over and over when we talk with individuals at state in USG, in DOW and so on, is that they can cooperate all they want. They can deliver up narcos all they want. And it's a good thing that they do. They have these extradition flights and they drop off, you know, 29, you know, aging narcos. And I mean, that's good. They should be doing those things. They could have been doing it all along.

Here's what we haven't seen from the Mexicans, though. We have not seen them deliver up any of the political class that has been at the, that has been the hinge and the inceptor of the state cartel partnership. Chief among them, the former president of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez, Urbador, who's probably been on the senior lower cartel payroll for decades, right? But not just him, people like Adana Gusto, the former secretary of the governation. You can go on and on and on, senators, congressmen, governors, and so on. That political class has been completely. completely protected 100% by the Mexican regime. And for some reason, we seem to be allowing it. We shouldn't because to the extent that they're able to get away with it, we're just going to simply face this same problem again in the future. The nature of the Mexican regime, which is fundamentally what needs to change, has not changed. So their cooperation with us, I would argue, is tactical rather than truly operational and strategic.

And we ignore that fact at our peril. Now, you asked how Venezuela intersects with it. Again, I mean, to kind of repeat myself, I think, I think Venezuela, is a way of getting at that political universe that is apparently off limits in some way. And it's something to the extent that that's true. It's something that I support because I think there's a reasonable chance that will have an effect. People watch and people take lessons from what the United States does in other places. Why do you think the Mexican question is off limits, but the Venezuelan question is not?

Oh, because, well, proximity, honestly. Mexico, I say this is somebody who is quite proud of my own Mexican heritage. But Mexico may be a country where they don't agree on what a stop sign means, but they have a great diplomatic apparatus. They really do. They have one of the top, I would say, they have one of the top diplomatic core in the hemisphere, possibly even better than our own. They're very, very, very good at doing the one thing that they must do for their nation, which is managed relations with the United States. You just see it over and over and over. And they're excellent at it. They also are aware that the fiscal interest in the United States, resultant from Mexican trade, are tremendous and will typically overrun. security arguments for holding the Mexicans to account. And so you see it, you just see it again and

again. You see a very finely tuned, a very professionalized, very good Mexican diplomatic apparatus that somehow finds its way into the good graces of almost any officeholder, Democratic and Republican in Washington, D.C. And you also see the trade groups who will remind you as quietly or loudly as they need to that, you know, you may have ambitions for holding the Mexican state to account for the fact that it is trafficked, you know, X million dollars in drugs and killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, but do you really want to jeopardize these billions in trade? And unfortunately, for, you know, for decades now, the answer has been, no, we probably don't, that that's got to change. That's the Mexican advantage. The Venice Wainlands don't have any of that. They don't have a

good diplomatic corps. They don't have meaningful trade relations. They don't have proximity. They can't cause us the same problems that the Mexicans plausibly could. So a final question for you, Joshua, I want to, I want you to illustrate the costs of these cartels being able to operate with impunity and their integration with countries like Venezuela before we close, because we've sort of glossed over it a bit so far in this conversation. But I want to put my own cards on the table and say, you know, you raised Ukraine a few minutes ago. And I, you know, when the Russians invaded Ukraine in 2022, I was annoyed at this talking point one heard on the right that why should I care about Ukraine's border more than the southern border?

I was annoyed at it because I thought, well, there's no reason you can't care about both. And there's no reason that you can't conclude after giving the matter some thought that actually both are relevant to our security. But that doesn't mean I reject the southern border question. That is to say, we have a lot of dead Americans because of the activities of these organizations and the countries that sheltered them. And it seems to me to be a totally legitimate use of American power to address this, even though it is what we've been talking about these last 40 minutes. I don't want to gloss over it. It's a dangerous game that could easily go awry in all sorts of we've, we've, we've, we've constantly. on a rye in comparable games in recent decades. And I pray that this team, you know, is going to act

with the prudence and judgment, the sort of strategic nimbleness that will be required to be successful here. Talk a bit about what we're actually talking about. Like, what does it mean that these cartels and the Venezuelans cooperate in America? What are the actual street-level consequences? The street-level consequences, given sufficient time, is the end of ordered civil society in the United States. That to me is, that to me is, is, is, is the cardinal threat. The threat is that, obviously, that they kill Americans through overdoses, through addiction, and so on. You know, the threat is that there is some violence attendant to it. But what I find very chilling, knowing how thin the veneer is between, frankly,

civilization and barbarism, and knowing as a native South Texan that that can go away pretty quickly at any moment, what disturbs me about cartel operations throughout the United States is that inevitably it supplants the formal state. It does. And that's partly through public corruption. It's partly through changing patterns of life. It's partly through subverting allegiances at the street level that become very, very, very, very serious. And what we've seen over and over is that what starts as, you know, quote unquote criminal activity, given sufficient time, becomes political activity as well. On the Mexican side, Morena, the ruling regime has party cells in most places in the United States. Mexican consulates are actively involved in thwarting ice rates, for example.

It goes on and on and on. And that's something that I don't think any state can tolerate in the long run. You know, as Lincoln said, it's got to be all one thing or all the other. And the all one thing that I prefer is U.S. sovereignty over U.S. soil. Joshua Trevino, this has been totally fascinating. I hope you will stay in touch with us and come back to help us understand this situation. As it unfolds, we're going to keep a close eye in it here at School of War. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Thank you, Aaron. Always appreciate it. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.