On the first day in of­fice of his sec­ond term of of­fice, Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump signed 26 ex­ec­u­tive or­ders, 12 mem­o­ran­da and four procla­ma­tions.

The first ex­ec­u­tive or­der signed by Pres­i­dent Trump was a di­rec­tive re­vok­ing 78 sim­i­lar ac­tions tak­en by his pre­de­ces­sor, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden. But the cur­rent Amer­i­can pres­i­dent al­so signed or­ders with­draw­ing the US from the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) and an­oth­er that start­ed the with­draw­al of the US from the 2015 Paris Agree­ment, the pact which aims to lim­it glob­al warm­ing.

On that first day in of­fice, one of the ex­ec­u­tive or­ders signed by Pres­i­dent Trump was the des­ig­na­tion of cer­tain drug car­tels as for­eign ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions and per­sons as spe­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed glob­al ter­ror­ists.

That ex­ec­u­tive or­der signed by the US pres­i­dent stat­ed, “The car­tels have en­gaged in a cam­paign of vi­o­lence and ter­ror through­out the West­ern Hemi­sphere that has not on­ly desta­bilised coun­tries with sig­nif­i­cant im­por­tance for our na­tion­al in­ter­ests but al­so flood­ed the Unit­ed States with dead­ly drugs, vi­o­lent crim­i­nals, and vi­cious gangs.”

This, then, is the philo­soph­i­cal un­der­pin­ning of the de­ci­sion by the US to take the fight to the nar­co­traf­fick­ers in this re­gion, which be­gan with the blow­ing up of a ves­sel some­where in the Caribbean Sea on Sep­tem­ber 2.

It is use­ful to re­it­er­ate that this cat­e­gori­sa­tion of drug car­tels as for­eign ter­ror­ists took place on Mr Trump’s first day in of­fice, which must mean that his team of pol­i­cy ad­vi­sors had de­cid­ed that this was one of the poli­cies that should de­fine the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion and to which the pres­i­dent him­self had, quite lit­er­al­ly, signed on.

There are some who ar­gue that the Jan­u­ary 20 des­ig­na­tion of drug car­tels as for­eign ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions demon­strates that Pres­i­dent Trump did not whim­si­cal­ly in­vent a pre­text to go af­ter the ad­min­is­tra­tion of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro some­time at the end of Au­gust.

But those who hold that view would still need to quan­ti­fy the amount of il­le­gal drugs head­ing from Venezuela to Amer­i­can ports and why the US, the hege­mon of the West­ern Hemi­sphere, re­siled from its pre­vi­ous pol­i­cy of the US Coast Guard lead­ing the fight against nar­co­traf­fick­ers in this re­gion.

Seen in light of his Jan­u­ary 20 de­ter­mi­na­tion to crim­i­nalise drug car­tels, it is easy to per­ceive Mon­day’s des­ig­na­tion of the Car­tel de los Soles (Span­ish for Car­tel of the Suns) as a for­eign ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tion, and for the US to al­lege that this amor­phous group­ing is head­ed by Pres­i­dent Maduro and se­nior fig­ures in his gov­ern­ment.

The des­ig­na­tion al­lows the US to im­pose sig­nif­i­cant le­gal, fi­nan­cial and op­er­a­tional con­se­quences on mem­bers of the Car­tel de Los Soles, in­clud­ing as­set freez­ing, fines, de­por­ta­tion and in­creased scruti­ny of the mem­bers of the car­tel and its as­so­ciates.

But, of greater con­se­quence to T&T, Guyana and the en­tire Caribbean re­gion, the des­ig­na­tion of the Maduro in­ner cir­cle al­lows the US gov­ern­ment to em­ploy coun­tert­er­ror­ism tools, in­clud­ing mil­i­tary ac­tion and in­tel­li­gence op­er­a­tions, to dis­rupt the ac­tiv­i­ties of the Venezue­lan ad­min­is­tra­tion.

That pro­vides a dif­fer­ent con­text to Tues­day’s short vis­it to Port-of-Spain by the chair­man of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen­er­al Dan Caine, yes­ter­day’s vis­it to the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic by the US Sec­re­tary of War, Pe­te Hegseth, the mas­sive build-up of the US mil­i­tary in the re­gion, as well as the back-to-back train­ing mis­sions of the US mil­i­tary in T&T.

All the ev­i­dence is point­ing to a crescen­do, which may mean the US is about to launch a mil­i­tary ac­tion against Venezuela.