Trump halts diplomatic talks with Venezuela’s Maduro government

US President Donald Trump has suspended all efforts to reach a diplomatic agreement with the Nicolas Maduro government and told his special envoy to halt the “dialogue.”

The move has fueled speculation that the US is considering a military attack on Venezuelan territory.

The order to cut off contact, first reported by the New York Times on Monday, came amid escalating tensions between the two governments and the largest US naval and air deployment in the Caribbean in decades, officially declared as a counter-narcotics operation.

Over the past five weeks, the US has attacked and sunk at least four speedboats allegedly carrying drugs off the coast of Venezuela, resulting in 21 deaths.

The operation has been condemned as a blatant extrajudicial killing. The Trump administration claims that each sunken boat prevents thousands of Americans from dying from drugs.

On Thursday, Trump sent a letter to Congress stating that the US is in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, providing him with a legal justification to continue the attacks.

Those who believe the ultimate target of the operation is Maduro himself point out that the administration has officially designated him a “narco-terrorist” and alleges he is the leader of two criminal organizations on the State Department’s list of “terrorist organizations” involved in drug trafficking.

In August, the US Department of Justice increased the reward to $50 million for any information leading to Maduro’s arrest.

The New York Times reported that Trump was “frustrated by Mr. Maduro’s failure to comply with American demands that he voluntarily leave power and by Venezuelan officials’ insistence that they had nothing to do with drug trafficking.”

The severing of diplomatic relations with the Maduro government indicates that within the Trump administration, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who advocates for a hawkish approach, has prevailed for now on the Venezuela issue.

Trump’s special representative for Venezuela, Richard Grenell, had adopted a much softer stance, holding a meeting with Maduro in Caracas in January as part of negotiations for the release of US prisoners in the country.

Grenell had always emphasized that the Trump administration was not interested in regime change. In contrast, Rubio has repeatedly stated that Maduro is both an “illegitimate” leader and a “criminal fugitive from justice.”

Maduro was indicted by a New York grand jury in March 2020 on charges of drug trafficking and other crimes.

Rubio, the son of Cuban counter-revolutionary immigrants, dislikes revolutionary governments in Cuba and Latin America. In 2021, as a senator for Florida, he described the governments of Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua as “the source of all evil in the western hemisphere.”

Trump apparently decided to change his stance during a meeting with senior military officials on Thursday. The New York Times quoted officials as saying that “the Trump administration had prepared numerous military plans for escalation.”

On Sunday, Trump said he was considering a ground operation against the cartels.

Trump stated, “In recent weeks, the navy has supported our mission to wipe the cartel terrorists off the water. We did another one last night. We can’t find any more now… so we will have to start looking on land.”