After Venezuela Assault, Trump and Rubio Warn Cuba, Mexico, and Colombia Could Be Next

This article was originally published in Common Dreams under Creative Commons 3.0 license. Read the original article. Contact: editor@commondreams.org

By Jake Johnson

US President Donald Trump and top administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, characterized Saturday’s assault on Venezuela and abduction of the country’s president as a warning shot in the direction of Cuba, Mexico, Colombia, and other Latin American nations.

During a Saturday press conference, Trump openly invoked the Monroe Doctrine—an assertion of US dominance of the Western Hemisphere—and said his campaign of aggression against Venezuela represented the “Donroe Doctrine” in action.

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In his unwieldy remarks, Trump called out Colombian President Gustavo Petro by name, accusing him without evidence of “making cocaine and sending it to the United States.”

“So he does have to watch his ass,” the US president said of Petro, who condemned the Trump administration’s Saturday attack on Venezuela as “aggression against the sovereignty of Venezuela and Latin America.”

Petro responded defiantly to the possibility of the US targeting him, writing on social media that he is “not worried at all.”

In a Fox News appearance earlier Saturday, Trump also took aim at the United States’ southern neighbor, declaring ominously that “something’s going to have to be done with Mexico,” which also denounced the attack on Venezuela and abduction of President Nicolás Maduro.

“She is very frightened of the cartels,” Trump said of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. “So we have to do something.”

Rubio, for his part, focused on Cuba—a country whose government he has long sought to topple.

“If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned, at least a little bit,” Rubio, who was born in Miami to Cuban immigrant parents, said during Saturday’s press conference.

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That the Trump administration wasted no time threatening other nations as it pledged to control Venezuela indefinitely sparked grave warnings, with the leadership of Progressive International cautioning that “this armed attack on Venezuela is not an isolated event.”

“It is the next step in the United States’ campaign of regime change that stretches from Caracas to Havana—and an attack on the very principle of sovereign equality and the prospects for the Zone of Peace once established by the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States,” the coalition said in a statement. “This renewed declaration of impunity from Washington is a threat to all nations around the world.”

“Trump has clearly articulated the imperial logic of this intervention—to seize control over Venezuela’s natural resources and reassert US domination over the hemisphere,” said Progressive International. “The ‘Trump corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine—applied in recent hours with violent force over the skies of Caracas—is the single greatest threat to peace and prosperity that the Americas confront today.”

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