By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on August 28, 2025
Venezuela is the target of diplomatic, economic, and media attacks, including military deployment in the Caribbean under the pretext of combating drug trafficking. Photo: AFP
Early last Friday morning, armed agents raided the home of John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, in Bethesda, Maryland. Details about the raid were scarce, but initial reports suggested that officials were looking for evidence that Bolton had disclosed classified information to journalists in his 2020 memoir, The Room Where It Happened. Cameras and microphones, strategically placed in the exclusive neighborhood, turned the operation into a media spectacle rather than a judicial proceeding.
The background is political and personal. This is Trump’s revenge against those who challenged or ridiculed him during his first term, especially those from his own camp. In his now-famous interview at Mar-a-Lago with psychologist Phil McGraw, known as Dr. Phil, the then-candidate for the U.S. presidency for the second time acknowledged: “Sometimes revenge can be justified. Phil, I have to be honest: you know, sometimes it can be.”
Bolton, who became a scathing critic after leaving the administration in 2019, publicly accused him of incompetence and went so far as to describe his security failures in detail in a book that infuriated Trump. The fact that the raid was ordered under an FBI led by the president’s political allies reinforces the perception that this is a mafia-style settling of scores rather than an act of strict integrity.
Bolton, however, is no saint either. He was the mastermind behind self-proclaimed president Juan Guaidó in 2019 and the “maximum pressure” strategy on Venezuela. His famous yellow notebook, with the note “5,000 troops to Colombia,” showed the world what Washington officially denied: the threat of military intervention against Caracas was on the table. Years earlier, as undersecretary of state in the Bush administration, Bolton had accused Cuba of producing biological weapons on the eve of the invasion of Iraq. The accusation was refuted by former President Jimmy Carter in Havana, but it served to fuel a climate of hostility against the island, just as another great hoax was being fabricated, that of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.
That is Bolton’s true legacy: demonstrating how lies are the most universal recipe in U.S. foreign policy. With his aggressive rhetoric, he coined the category of “rogue governments” to designate countries that were uncomfortable for the White House. Under that label, sanctions, blockades, covert operations, and even wars were legitimized. The evidence was always secondary; the main thing was the propaganda effect that allowed public opinion to be shaped and aggressive measures to be justified under the guise of “global security.”
Today, the same recipe is being repeated in Latin America. Venezuela is the target of diplomatic, economic, and media attacks, including military deployment in the Caribbean under the pretext of combating drug trafficking. Washington has portrayed Nicolás Maduro as the head of a “drug trafficking gang,” even though the DEA’s reports from the last two years make no relevant mention of Venezuela, and the so-called “Cartel of the Suns” came out of nowhere and in a hurry, perhaps the product of some fevered mind at the CIA.
The same is true of Cuba. The island once again occupies a prominent place in the discourse of the transnational right, which, hearing the drums of war, fantasizes about a domino effect. But if during Trump’s first term it was Bolton who designed the strategy against Caracas and Havana, today that role is assumed by Marco Rubio, secretary of state, anti-Castro psychopath, and new architect of the threat to the region. His rhetoric repeats the old narrative of “hemispheric danger,” now combined with new sanctions, adventures in the Caribbean, and the brutal criminalization of the Venezuelan government.
The raid on John Bolton’s residence is a historical irony: the man who used lies as a weapon against other countries has now fallen victim to the same logic of manipulation and spirit of revenge. In Washington, the rule that truth is always the first victim seems to be confirmed, but then comes the settling of scores, even for old allies.
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English