In his very public campaign for a Nobel Peace Prize, US President Donald Trump has frequently boasted, not only that he has ended so many “un-endable wars,” but that he is “the first President in decades who has started no new wars.” True or false, that may be about to change.

While the United States has been bombing small boats off the coast of Venezuela under the pretext of disrupting the flow of drugs into the country by drug cartels, US Special Envoy Richard Grenell said that he was continuing to talk to the administration of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. But on October 2, Trump called Grenell and ordered him to stop all diplomatic outreach to Caracas.

The end of diplomatic efforts, combined with Trump’s notification to Congress that the US is now in formal “armed conflict” with the cartels, and his insistence that Maduro is the head of the “Cartel of the Suns” (Cártel de los Soles) crime organization, seems to indicate that war and regime change in Venezuela are possibilities on the planning horizon.

The New York Times reports that the termination of diplomacy was partially motivated by the fact that “Mr. Trump has grown frustrated with Mr. Maduro’s failure to accede to American demands to give up power voluntarily.” American officials say that, as a result, “the Trump administration has drawn up multiple military plans for an escalation. Those operations could also include plans designed to force Mr. Maduro from power.”

This intensification fits within a long-standing pattern of US regime change efforts in Venezuela. Washington has for years justified its actions through the “narco-state” narrative—branding the Maduro government as a criminal cartel to rationalize economic sanctions, covert operations, and now open military aggression. These claims rest on unproven indictments and recycled intelligence from defectors and discredited sources, forming a propaganda framework that merges the “war on drugs” with renewed attempts at oil-driven intervention.

The US has already militarized the waters off the coast of Venezuela, having moved in Aegis guided-missile destroyers, a nuclear-powered fast-track submarine, P-8 spy planes and F-35 fighter jets. Those forces have already fired on and destroyed four small speed boats, killing 21 people the Trump administration claims, without evidence, were drug smugglers affiliated with the cartels the US has designated as terrorist organizations and were, therefore, “unlawful combatants.”

Recent coverage by the CBC has revealed a report by the peace research institute Project Ploughshares that strongly suggests that Canadian technology was used in the bombing of the first two boats.

The Ploughshares report, written by senior researcher Kelsey Gallagher, says that aerial footage of the first two attacks posted on Truth Social by Trump shows that “both operations relied on advanced electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensor systems built in Hamilton, Ontario, by L3Harris WESCAM.” The sensors “are designed to surveil below aircraft, identify potential targets, and coordinate airstrikes with precision.”

"There has to be more human rights oversight…. We are seeing Canadian weapons being misused." - @KelGallagh

A high-tech Canadian-made camera system was used as part of controversial U.S. strikes against alleged Venezuelan drug boats: https://t.co/VIDle3YDSw @ploughshares_ca

— Mark Kersten || @markkersten.bsky.social (@MarkKersten) October 7, 2025

American officials have not yet said what legal authority they had to destroy the boat and kill its crew. Designating “Tren de Aragua as a ‘foreign terrorist organization’ does not itself provide the authority for using military force,” says Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer and specialist in the law of war.

“The fact that US officials describe the individuals killed by the US strike as narco-terrorists does not transform them into lawful military targets,” Professor Michael Becker of Trinity College Dublin told BBC Verify. “The US is not engaged in an armed conflict with Venezuela or the Tren de Aragua criminal organization.” The attack on the boat, Becker says, “stretches the meaning of the term beyond its breaking point… There’s no serious argument that what the Trump administration has done here is legal. It basically amounts to the president of the United States handing out a licence to kill.”

And that raises the question of whether Canada is complicit in illegal military strikes because of the involvement of Canadian-supplied technology. Ploughshares points out that “Canada is legally bound to ensure that its export of military goods does not contribute to violations of international law.” Alexander Avina, associate professor of history at Arizona State University, told CBC that “International legal experts could make the argument that Canada is complicit in a way in the type of war crimes that the Trump administration has committed in the Caribbean basin.”

It is deeply concerning that Washington is contemplating war with Venezuela despite the absence of credible evidence linking the country or its leadership to the drug trade, and in clear contradiction of international law. The lack of evidence offered by the Trump administration has led many analysts to conclude that regime change is really about the desire to control Venezuela’s oil—it possesses the largest proven reserves in the world, estimated at 303 billion barrels.

Trump once told a Republican Party rally that when he left office, “Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over; we would have gotten to all that oil…. But now we’re buying oil from Venezuela. So we’re making a dictator very rich. Can you believe this? Nobody can believe it.”

Canada must take immediate steps to ensure that its technologies and policies do not make it complicit in another unlawful US military campaign.

Ted Snider is a regular columnist on US foreign policy and history, including at Responsible Statecraft. To support his work or for media or virtual presentation requests, contact him at [email protected].