21st-century socialism fails to protect the Cartel of the Suns with Venezuela's sovereignty.
By: Carlos Sánchez Berzaín - 28/09/2025
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The criminal power grab and the supplanting of politics have been collapsing since the United States designated the "Cartel of the Suns" as a terrorist entity on July 25, 2025, identifying Nicolás Maduro's regime as a criminal group that "profits from drug trafficking and destabilizes the hemisphere." The regimes of 21st-century socialism attempted to protect their dictatorship/narco-state by shielding it behind Venezuela's sovereignty and failed by exposing themselves as part of the drug trade.
The substitution of sovereignty by authoritarian regimes has transformed into its substitution by transnational organized crime. The expansion of the Cuban dictatorship with the oil resources provided by Hugo Chávez beginning in 1999 and the support of the Sao Paulo Forum under Lula da Silva, produced the political cover called 21st-century socialism, which disguises the most successful transnational organized crime group that effectively waged the "hybrid war" against the democracies of the Americas with forced migration, drug trafficking, terrorism, common crime, internal destabilization, assassinations, and all manner of crimes.
The dictatorships of 21st-century socialism quickly transformed into narco-states. Cuba was already one, thanks to Fidel Castro's partnership with Colombia's Pablo Escobar and Bolivia's Roberto Suárez Gómez, but with the control of Venezuela, it became the center of operations for cocaine production in Colombia with the FARC and the ELN, and in Bolivia with Evo Morales and his federations of coca and cocaine producers. The "Cartel of the Suns" is the expression of the narco-state established in Venezuela, owing its name to "the sun-shaped insignia worn by the Venezuelan generals" subordinate to Chávez and now Maduro.
A narco-state is a "country whose political institutions are significantly influenced by the power and wealth of drug trafficking, whose leaders simultaneously hold positions as government officials and members of illegal drug trafficking networks, protected by their legal powers." A narco-state is recognized by "the authorities' use of their governmental powers to participate in any phase of drug trafficking."
The establishment and operation of "narco-states" to wield power, immunities, and privileges of representation, occupy spaces in international organizations, and control narratives is how the dictatorships of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia granted organized crime impunity to operate drug trafficking and terrorism as weapons of "hybrid warfare" against democracies. Thus was born the "drug trafficking foreign policy," which aims to legitimize and legalize crime and criminals.
The democratic governments of the Americas and Europe know that their countries and their internal stability are under sustained attack from drug trafficking, terrorism, forced migration, and the various weapons of hybrid warfare that allow the aggressor to feign neutrality, innocence, or deny aggression. But identifying the instruments of aggression, specifically those involved in drug trafficking, transnational crime, terrorism, and other crimes, leads to the perpetrators: the dictatorships of 21st-century socialism.
The defense of national security for democracies in the Americas, such as the United States, Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Panama, and all others, requires the suppression of criminal activity in political power and by governments with a narrative of revolution, the left, progressivism, anti-imperialism, or whatever they use.
The crime is out in the open, and even para-dictatorial governments that owe their power to 21st-century socialism have serious difficulties defending drug trafficking. It's one thing to claim to defend the sovereignty of a free country or the continued existence of a legitimately elected government, and quite another to defend a drug cartel that has legal proof of well-known acts, international arrest warrants, and rewards for being brought to justice.
Crime has no sovereignty, even if it usurps power in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia. Sovereignty is the "supreme legitimate authority" of a political entity, and legitimate means fundamentally lawful. The Cartel of the Suns is an illicit, criminal entity that is also part of a larger one that presents itself as 21st-century socialism.
21st-century socialism knows that restoring freedom and democracy in Venezuela is the path to liberation for peoples also subjugated by the transnational organized crime system. That's why it has shifted to supporting it with state terrorism, seeking to simulate an international conflict between countries when in reality it's simply a matter of protecting one of its main criminal gangs.
*Lawyer and Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy
«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».