by
Austin BayOctober 29, 2025
The human "degrees of separation" theory contends any two people link through a chain of social connections, and most of us are no more than six individual links apart.
Twenty-first-century hybrid warfare is a vile and corrupted version of this theory of human relationship networks.
The sneaky war-waging state uses one or more degrees of separation from its proxy militias and terrorist killers to create what the spy world calls "plausible deniability." Plausible deniability means it's very hard to publicly tie the sneaky war-wager to its proxies and terrorists, at least at the mass media level of information.
I used the word "publicly" rather than "directly" because ultra-top-secret digital and human intelligence can often conclusively connect the bad guys to their proxies. However, if your State Department releases the specifics to media, then your intelligence agency likely loses the information source -- meaning the bad guys find and destroy bugs or capture and kill your human James Bond spy.
A dirty business. Iran got away with waging proxy war until its proxy Hamas started the Oct. 7, 2023, rape atrocity and hostage war. That ugly war ultimately collapsed Iran's Degrees of Separation strategy -- and cost Iran its nuclear weapons.
Which takes us to the Trump administration's expanding confrontation with Venezuela and what we may eventually call the Trump Correlative to the Monroe Doctrine.
President Donald Trump consistently suggests that shipping drugs like fentanyl into the U.S. is an act of war directed at the American people. China might agree. China suffered the outrage of the Opium War waged by Great Britain. Opium savaged imperial China.
According to the Trump administration, using U.S. military assets to destroy cartel speedboats smuggling drugs toward or into the U.S. is justifiable since the Opium War proves smuggling drugs is a form of hybrid warfare that promotes social and economic disintegration.
Fentanyl is one of the biggest weapons in the current drug war arsenal. Which nation is the largest maker of fentanyl and fentanyl precursor chemicals?
Communist China.
China, however, is several degrees of separation from Venezuela -- two oceans and three or four shipping container transfers.
Or at least it was until the Trump administration said, "No more."
President James Monroe issued the Monroe Doctrine in 1823. Once upon a time, it was a seminal U.S. foreign policy proclamation. Washington wouldn't meddle in European internal politics or interfere with existing Western Hemisphere colonies. However, the Western Hemisphere was now closed to further colonization.
France's 1861 foray into Mexico failed on its own. A century later, however, Russia-backed Fidel Castro seized Cuba. Ultimately, the Soviet Union (Russian empire under communism) built a submarine base in Cuba.
A very Un-Monroe Doctrine encroachment, that sub base.
In the 1980s, a reliable rumor said the USSR and the Ortega clan discussed building airbases for MiG fighter bombers in Nicaragua.
Enter Trump the disrupter. In an Oct. 27 Washington Times Online essay, Robert C. O'Brien argued that "China has been encroaching on the Western Hemisphere for decades."
But China's encroaching days are over. O'Brien added: "Reportedly, the (Trump) administration's proposed National Defense Strategy will emphasize protecting the Western Hemisphere from outside influences."
On Oct. 27 at least three U.S. Air Force B-1 bombers flew within 20 miles of Venezuelan airspace. The strategic bombers were participating in a "pressure campaign" directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's Chavista socialist-cartel criminal regime. The socialist, cartel and criminal descriptions are all applicable. Chavista? Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chavez, started the socialist, cartel and criminal mess.
Drugs aren't the only beef Trump has with the Chavistas. During the regime's reign of corruption and terror, over 4 million Venezuelans have fled the country. As noted in last week's column, Venezuela was once South America's wealthiest nation, at least in terms of per capita income. Not anymore.
Five days ago, the U.S. Navy announced that the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford will join the fleet cruising the Caribbean Sea. U.S. Southern Command is an economy of force theater -- a sector the Pentagon thinks it can patrol with minimal assets.
Assigning a nuclear carrier to SOUTHCOM is most unusual.
A nuclear super carrier is an offensive weapon the Pentagon would use to defend Taiwan or attack China.
Which takes us back to degrees of separation. Perhaps Maduro will conclude being a Beijing asset isn't a good idea.