The United States, Venezuela, and the Port Royal Dilemma

By: Beatrice E. Rangel - 12/08/2025

In the 17th century, the authorities of France, England, and the Netherlands faced the imperative need to end the dominance that Port Royal exercised over trade between Europe and the American territories. Port Royal was a bustling haven for pirates and the richest city in the Caribbean, known for its debauchery and as a base for buccaneers and privateers. Port Royal was the product of misguided public policies on the part of these three European powers, whose reigning heads never accepted the Bull of Inter Caetera or the Treaty of Tordesillas, which assigned and delimited the territory of the Americas to Spain and Portugal. But since the pontiff was the distributor of divine right, open strife was inadvisable. So they adopted a form of unofficial intervention, arming citizens of dubious conduct to attack Portuguese and Spanish ships coming from the Americas. These men, who became known as pirates and privateers, seized a territory in Jamaica from which they launched their successful operations of attack and plunder not only against ships and vessels but also against Spanish and Portuguese ports, the latter located in Brazil. In short, the pirates and privateers became an independent force that forced their founders to issue an ultimatum or face the death penalty. Some negotiated, others died in the tsunami that sank Port Royal, while a fierce challenge to the three crowns was met with death.

Four centuries later, the United States faces a similar dilemma. Drug mafias have created value chains and occupied territories that threaten the development of international trade and put an end to the sovereignty of many states where they operate, such as Venezuela and, to a lesser extent, Mexico. And as Milton Friedman famously said, this is the result of public policies that, by criminalizing a product, create economic monopolies of such magnitude that they allow them to violate regulations and amass unimaginable fortunes. After decades of combating drugs, the business has not only grown from a billion dollars in 2000 to a trillion dollars in 2022, but has also diversified into human trafficking, product copying, and money laundering.

Until now, the issue had been handled through diplomatic channels, requiring the nations of the hemisphere to develop and implement plans to combat drug production and trafficking in their territories. These plans were a sine qua non for obtaining U.S. certification, without which any country lacking it was and is excluded from the international financial system.

Clearly, the Trump administration has decided to approach the problem as what it is: a matter of law enforcement, not diplomacy.

This approach proposes the execution of three steps that the United States is publicly and clearly implementing in the case of Venezuela. First, the criminal status of the country's leaders involved in drug trafficking crimes is made public. This stage has been completed by the United States making public the arrest warrants pending against at least three of Venezuela's leaders, based on investigations by the Attorney General's Office. Rewards are then offered for the capture of these leaders, who lack political legitimacy. And finally, the case is placed in the hands of the agencies competent to address law enforcement violations, which in the case of the United States are the FBI, the Marshall Islands, and the Army. Of these three steps, two have been completed. Only the order given by President Donald J. Trump to the United States Army to pursue drug mafias wherever they may be found remains to be executed. And of course, we will learn about this fulfillment through the news when it occurs. But the important thing to emphasize is that the paradigm shift in hemispheric relations will sooner rather than later affect the Venezuelan regime and, by extension, its partners: the Mexican cartels.

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