The UK’s Ministry of Defence has cut some of its intelligence sharing with the United States, CNN has been told. This comes after months of US strikes and military build-up in the Caribbean Sea, off the coast of Venezuela.
The rare move against Washington is the first time the UK has outright challenged American military activity since the beginning of Donald Trump’s second administration.
In February, President Trump issued an executive order which designated several Latin American cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organisations (FTO) and Specifically Designated Global Terrorists. The groups “threaten the safety of the American people,” Trump claimed, also calling them “the ISIS of the Western hemisphere.”
Since Trump’s return to the presidency, warships equipped with Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles have been sent on unusual deployments to the Caribbean Sea. The nature of these missions had initially been to bolster the US Coast Guard in disrupting illegal narcotics smuggling operations.
However, August saw the military buildup escalate, with US Marines arriving in the Caribbean, along with more warships fitted with land-attack cruise missiles.
In September, a small boat was destroyed by US forces shortly after leaving Venezuela. The strike killed all eleven occupants, with America claiming that the vessel was connected to the Tren de Aragua cartel, which had been designated an FTO.
Strikes on boats have steadily continued, with the twentieth strike taking place on the 14th of November, bringing the number of dead to eighty.
Many dispute Trump’s claims that the military buildup is to combat the arrival of illegal narcotics into the United States. Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro is connected to several of the cartels which facilitate narcotics smuggling, in addition to being an ally of Russia, China and Iran.
The country also hosts large oil reserves, but it remains unclear which of these reasons has interested Trump in Venezuela, or how far he is willing to take his military campaign. Regardless, Maduro has begun to mobilise his military to prepare a defence if the United States escalates its campaign further.
At the end of October, the United Nations ruled that the strikes “find no justification in international law” and “violate international human rights law.”
Since then, sources reached out to CNN, reporting that the UK, a staunch ally of the United States, has withdrawn some of its intelligence sharing with the US over the strikes. Keen to avoid complicity in the military campaign, the Ministry of Defence ceased supporting the US-led counter-narcotics operation in the Caribbean.
The Royal Navy’s Caribbean patrol ship typically augments the US Coast Guard in its anti-narcotics mission; however, this may stop altogether as America’s military build-up continues.
Typically, the patrol ship is lightly armed and spends most of the year on standby to provide disaster relief to Overseas Territories during Hurricane Season. No further information has been provided by the Ministry of Defence to confirm the nature of the ship’s mission.
President Trump declared an armed conflict with the cartels in October. Since then, the US Navy has moved its Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group from Europe, where it was exercising with NATO, to the Caribbean.
Aviation enthusiasts have also been reporting American strategic bomber aircraft flying in mock attack patterns near Venezuela on civilian tracking websites. With the US also making significant investments in military sites in Puerto Rico and rumours of CIA operatives acting inside Venezuela, the crisis appears set to continue into the foreseeable future.
The keys to escalation, or deescalation, remain firmly in the hands of President Trump.