Recent controversy over U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s alleged involvement in a potential war crime is, in my opinion, wholly warranted. But it might also be too narrow. Instead, we should ask whether Hegseth’s actions are indicative of a deeper, more dangerous issue. 

Hegseth is accused of breaching international law by ordering a Sept. 2 airstrike on what a classified video may suggest were non-combatant survivors of an earlier strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean Sea. If Hegseth did order the strike, some have questioned whether his actions and the airstrike that killed shipwrecked innocents constituted a war crime. 

But there is perhaps a more compelling question: Why was Hegseth bombing boats in the first place? The answer stretches back to early 2025, when President Trump signed a secret directive authorizing the use of military force against foreign drug cartels. Trump has argued that drug smuggling causes the overdose deaths of Americans, which he equates to terrorism by the smugglers.

Then, on Oct. 1, Trump officially declared that U.S. military action against cartels allegedly smuggling illicit drugs into the United States constituted a non-international armed conflict. This allowed the Trump administration to bypass Congressional approval and to continue striking boats at will. 

All of this has understandably drawn massive amounts of international scrutiny and legal criticism. So why is the Trump administration willing to risk so much on Caribbean drug boats? The answer lies, I think, in another consequence of the new drug war: mounting tensions with Venezuela.

After the Sept. 2 strike, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, who has himself been indicted for “narcoterrorism” by the U.S. government, called the attack a “heinous crime.” The other heads of state whose citizens were killed in boat strikes openly condemned the attacks, including Colombian president Gustavo Petro; only Maduro has seen his country’s airspace closed under the threat of expanded strikes in its territory. Only Venezuela would see the U.S.’s largest aircraft carrier join a military buildup off its coast. And only Maduro would receive a call from Trump asking that he leave his country immediately. 

For all this fanfare, it seems that the U.S. counter-drug efforts would be better spent elsewhere, considering that Venezuela produces far less of the world’s cocaine than Mexico or Colombia and none of its fentanyl. Thus, some force other than efficient drug enforcement must be at play, and it must be strong enough to overshadow public scrutiny. That force, I would argue, is U.S. interest in regime change in Venezuela as part of a larger regional project. 

Recently, Trump has been strengthening U.S. relations with South American countries to thwart the influence of the China-backed economic alliance, BRICS. For one, Trump-backed Argentinian president Javier Milei announced in 2023 that he would cancel plans for his country to join BRICS, and has recently accepted a $20 billion U.S.-backed economic bailout of the Argentinian economy. And as recently as December 2025, Trump is back in contact with Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a key BRICS player, following tensions over U.S. tariffs on Brazilian goods in July 2025 and their removal in November 2025. Thus, Trump seems to be wrenching Latin American nations away from the influence of adversaries like China.

Given this trend, a bloodless deal with Venezuela — another Latin American ally of China — on similar terms would seem inevitable. And factions on both sides have indicated an openness to arranged American domination of Venezuela short of regime change. Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions Ric Grenell was reportedly working on a deal to open Venezuela’s nationalized oil fields to American companies and Maduro allegedly offered this in talks with U.S. diplomats.

But for others, perhaps including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, economic rapprochement was simply not enough, and Maduro’s offers were rejected. It then became explicit that the U.S. sought regime change, not problem-solving, in Venezuela when Trump told Maduro to leave the country altogether within one week during their recent phone call. 

Then why is Venezuela, a willing negotiator and negligible contributor to drug smuggling, being targeted so uniquely as a hostile “narcoterrorist” state? I’ll hypothesize that the aim is both geopolitical and ideological. 

On the one hand, it’s a way for the U.S. to re-establish itself as a regional power and block adversarial influence, but this could surely be achieved without toppling a head of state. Thus, a violent ouster of Maduro, the face of revolutionary socialist politics in the Western Hemisphere, is also a bold ideological statement. It would mark a revival of Cold War-era American intolerance for global dissent, a reminder that America, in the words of President George W. Bush, “does not negotiate with terrorists.”

But how is this any different from Bush’s widely criticized “War on Terror”? Emotional appeals to the fentanyl crisis mimic those made to 9/11, and the justification for waging undeclared war is the same, only terrorism has been renamed “narcoterrorism.” Who’s to say that violent intervention in Venezuela won’t be the U.S.’s next 20-year entanglement? Or worse, the germination of a global conflict?

If public outcry over recent boat strikes stopped at the Hegseth scandal, these implications would remain hidden. But they are arguably far more consequential. As the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential election approach, I think it behooves voters to look beyond surface appearances and think critically about the future of their country. It may be the only way to prevent global conflict.