Venezuela: Performative purging

If you're on a boat full of cocaine or fentanyl or whatever, headed to the United States, you’re an immediate threat to the United States,’ said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week.

- Gwynne Dyer

So it’s perfectly reasonable for the US armed forces to kill everybody on that boat (including a “double tap” on any survivors in the water).That’s a good place to start unravelling what the Trump administration is really up to, because it is literally impossible for a motorboat off the coast of Venezuela to be heading to the United States. All 22 boats destroyed and all 87 people Killed by US missiles were going somewhere, or more likely many different places, but the United States was not one of them.

The shortest distance between the Maracaibo region of Venezuela and the Florida Keys, the nearest bit of the United States, is about 1,000 nautical miles (1,850 kilometres). Most of the boats are twin outboards of various designs, so their maximum fuel capacity cannot be much more than 757 litres.

Assuming that the boats have 125hp motors and are doing 20 knots (seems about right, from the drone footage), they will run out of fuel after something between 120 and 200 nautical miles. So they will need to stop between five and eight times to refuel. That's a major nuisance because it would mean many detours and many different customs to clear.