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The United States is engaged in something regarding Venezuela. But what is it, specifically?
Since the start of September, the US armed forces have executed a minimum of five deadly attacks on civilian vessels within the Caribbean. The Trump administration asserts these vessels are operated by members of Venezuelan drug organizations, which the US government has classified as terrorist groups. These attacks reportedly resulted in twenty-seven fatalities. President Donald Trump has notified Congress that he has concluded the US is currently in a state of armed struggle with these cartels.
These attacks occur amidst an extensive expansion of US forces in the Caribbean, including approximately 10,000 personnel, guided-missile destroyers, F-35 fighter planes, MQ-9 reaper UAVs, and a clandestine vessel designed for the deployment of special operations teams. This represents greater combat power than the US dedicated to the Battle of Midway during the Second World War. According to the Washington Post, special operations helicopters have recently been operating within 90 miles of the Venezuelan shoreline.
This week, the New York Times revealed that President Trump has sanctioned clandestine CIA missions inside Venezuela. On Wednesday, Trump publicly acknowledged the report, rendering these operations no longer truly “clandestine,” and affirmed his consideration of striking ground targets inside the nation. On Friday, it was disclosed that the latest vessel attack yielded survivors for the first time. They were apprehended, thus becoming the initial prisoners of war in this recent clash. Also this week, Adm. Alvin Holsey, leading US Southern Command and overseeing the buildup, resigned from his post before completing a year in the position. While the reasons remain unclear, the timing has invited scrutiny.
Collectively, these events have triggered conjecture that the administration is devising a military intervention to oust President Nicolas Maduro, a longtime US rival, from his position. Maduro himself leveled this accusation in a televised address on Wednesday evening, stating, “No to regime alteration, which strongly evokes the never-ending, unsuccessful wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc. … No to CIA-organized coups.” Confronted with the growing peril, Maduro’s administration has been amassing troops and militias and augmenting its internal propaganda efforts.
During discussions with reporters on Wednesday, Trump neither verified nor refuted his consideration of attempts to depose Maduro, deeming it “a ridiculous question for me to answer.” The White House reportedly declined a proposal from Maduro, wherein he would relinquish his position in three years and delegate power to his vice president.
Trump’s focus on the nation has concurrently ignited optimism among the Venezuelan opposition. Upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize last week, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado dedicated the accolade “to President Trump for his resolute backing of our cause!” Machado has previously posited that Maduro would likely only cede power “when faced with a credible, impending, and significant threat of the utilization of force.”
As of Friday, it seems quite conceivable that the US military might initiate military action against purported cartel objectives inside Venezuela in the coming days. These could potentially encompass drug manufacturing facilities, airstrips used for cocaine transport, or encampments of armed groups that are supported by the government.
It is also at least conceivable — and the White House overtly intends for Maduro to perceive it as conceivable — that the US might directly target the Venezuelan government, encompassing senior officials or even Maduro himself.
Conversely, it appears equally probable that the administration might persist in its existing approach of destroying vessels in the Caribbean without broadening the scope of the conflict to involve ground assaults.
What factor will be the deciding element, directing the course Trump opts to take? And what is the ultimate objective of this endeavor?
Background
It’s not exactly surprising that the US would prefer a different administration in Venezuela. Interactions between Washington and Caracas have been poor since the epoch of Maduro’s guide and predecessor Hugo Chavez, who assumed control in 2000 and governed until his passing while in office in 2013. The left-leaning Bolivarian socialist government helmed by Chavez and subsequently Maduro publicly opposed US leverage within Latin America, lent support to militant factions internationally like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and sustained intimate ties with US adversaries such as Russia, Iran, and Cuba.
Over the past decade, Venezuela’s poorly handled, oil-reliant economy has been descending into disarray, undergoing hyperinflation and widespread joblessness. This has coincided with the government’s comprehensive assault on civil freedoms and opposition factions, a surge in violent offenses, and pervasive corruption. These combined elements have spurred more than 6 million Venezuelans to seek refuge in other countries, thus constituting the world’s most sizable refugee aggregate.
Deposing Maduro has been a chief concern for the Trump administration since its initial term. Subsequent to Venezuela’s heavily contested 2018 presidential race, the US formally recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as the nation’s rightful president, even as Guaido was compelled into exile. Guaido made an appearance as a guest during Trump’s 2019 State of the Union speech. At that juncture, the administration endeavored to expel Maduro from power through both manifest measures — sanctions and diplomatic strain — and surreptitious measures — cyber intrusions and espionage. In 2020, Maduro was accused in a New York court on allegations of narcoterrorism and cocaine trafficking. The compensation for his apprehension was recently elevated to $50 million.
Following Venezuela’s similarly questionable 2024 election, the Biden administration again acknowledged Maduro’s rival as the legitimate victor.
Nonetheless, upon Trump’s return to office this year, early indications of a warming in the relationship surfaced. Trump’s special missions envoy Ric Grenell initiated a negotiation process with Maduro’s government, which yielded some noteworthy collaboration. Venezuela set free several Americans who had been detained within the nation and brokered an accord under which it consented to accept repatriation planes carrying its deported nationals from the US. (Since attaining power, the Trump administration has rescinded legal protections for Venezuelans within America, exposing hundreds of thousands to the threat of deportation.)
But around April, the period of lessened tension began to dissolve, and proponents of “maximum pressure” took charge of the Venezuela policy within the US administration. The most prominent among these is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has advocated for more forceful measures against Maduro, encompassing potential military action, since his tenure as a senator.
Monroe Doctrine Comes into Alignment with MAGA
The Trump administration has championed a shift in US defense and diplomatic focal points toward Latin America, with officials regularly citing the Monroe Doctrine, the 19th-century foreign strategy designed to secure US supremacy within the Western Hemisphere.
Chris Sabatini, a senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House, characterized Maduro’s removal as “unfinished business” from Trump’s initial term, and the recent escalation as a perpetuation of its established strategies. The divergence this time, he suggested, lies not solely in the emphasis on military force, but in the manner in which the White House’s policy is “calibrated to resonate with the MAGA demographic.”
This involves foregrounding Venezuela’s nexus with two of the president’s paramount priorities: illicit substances and immigration. Specifically, Trump has set his sights on the Venezuelan criminal syndicate Tren de Aragua — which his administration recently labeled as a terrorist group — and has accused Maduro of effectively weaponizing gangs, narcotics, and mass migration to target the US. This week, Trump stated that he had authorized the CIA’s covert initiatives because Venezuela had “emptied their prisons into the United States of America.”
There is no substantiation that the Maduro regime is weaponizing migration or that it exercises control over Tren de Aragua. The majority of Venezuelans residing in the US have sought refuge from the government and the disorder it has incited.
In terms of narcotics, while Venezuela is not a leading producing nation, under Maduro, it has evolved into a prominent transshipment location for South American cocaine headed for the US and Central America, as well as West Africa and Europe.
During the summer, the administration issued a terrorist designation for another organization — the Cartel de los Soles, defined by the Treasury Department as a “Venezuela-based criminal group headed by Nicolas Maduro.” According to the Trump administration’s legal rationale, this renders Maduro the chief of a terrorist entity engaged in warfare with the US, and presumably, also consequently, a legitimate objective.
It is irrefutably accurate that Maduro and his top commanders maintain connections to drug trafficking and supplementary illicit undertakings. However, the Venezuelan president is not precisely comparable to Pablo Escobar, either.
“Cartel of the Suns,” named after the stars featured on generals’ uniforms, does not constitute a cohesive, hierarchical body. Rather, it’s a term used to portray a decentralized system of upper-tier Venezuelan military officers regulating a collection of illicit ventures ranging from contraband narcotics to illegitimate gold extraction.
Jeremy McDermott, co-director of Insight Crime, an organization that monitors organized criminality in Latin America, described it as a “feudal arrangement,” under which Maduro empowers subordinates with authority over particular geographic zones and the unlawful enterprises within them to ensure their allegiance.
“Maduro isn’t interceding to proclaim, ‘All right, take note: We are set to dispatch this consignment at this hour to the Dominican Republic,’” McDermott conveyed to Vox.
Beyond the precise configuration of the “cartel” in question, the Trump administration’s strategy — presently, the strikes on the boats, and even more pronouncedly if those progress to attacks on land — raises substantial lawful apprehensions. The administration maintains that its actions, which have not gained authorization from Congress, are legally defendable as an act of self-preservation resulting from the detrimental consequences of narcotics entering the US.
That methodology gives rise to the inquiry of whether “we regard trafficking and illegal drugs as a transgression or as an outright threat to the wellness and safety of our nation that mandates the military’s involvement,” James Saenze, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for counternarcotics within the Biden administration, disclosed to Vox.
According to Saenz’s perspective, while narcotics unquestionably inflict impairment on American society, characterizing them as a manner of hostility equivalent to terrorism disregards the reality that American citizens are the ones procuring the substances. Regardless of what actions the US armed forces undertake against the suppliers and producers of cocaine or related narcotics, “if you do not eradicate the demand, someone will perpetually emerge to fulfill that demand.”
Is a Transformation of Government in the Offing?
Opponents of the Venezuelan government voice optimism that directing focus toward the government’s illicit ventures is pivotal to ultimately destabilizing it.
“Narcotics trafficking and illegal economies represent the adhesive that sustains the unwavering allegiance of the high-ranking members of the Army,” declared Miguel Pizarro, a Venezuelan opposition figure currently serving as a senior aide within the Venezuelan opposition’s Washington, DC, office. “This regime’s configuration bears a stronger resemblance to finances, privilege, and malfeasance than to ideology.” Pizarro further conveyed that, in concert with strain on the regime, officials embedded within the regime who have not been party to its most egregious offenses must be offered security assurances and verification that “existence persists beyond power.”
Assuming economic and military strain fails to bring down Maduro from the inside, might the US embrace more assertive measures? The nearest parallel would be the 1989 US incursion into Panama, which deposed and apprehended dictator Manuel Noriega, who had, comparable to Maduro, been arraigned on narcotics charges within the US. Venezuela, however, is a notably larger nation in a considerably more brittle political condition.
Despite Trump’s notable intensification, specialists contend that the forces presently assembled in the Caribbean are likely inadequate for a full-fledged invasion — albeit this does not discount targeted strikes by drones or the deployment of special operations forces against Maduro or similar senior regime figures. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), a prominent congressional denouncer of the Maduro regime, recently implied that Venezuelan officials ought to contemplate the fate of Qasem Soleimani, the senior Iranian general eliminated in a US drone strike during the first Trump administration.
Nevertheless, regime transformation, however it unfolds, represents a high-stakes strategy, as Maduro was unequivocally attempting to impress upon the US citizenry by evoking prior US intervention failures.
“Merely displacing the uppermost echelons won’t result in a shift in the regime, and it is additionally improbable to provoke a democratic transition,” stated Chatham House’s Sabatini.
Pizarro, the Venezuelan opposition representative, repudiated analogies to Iraq or Libya, expressing that, notwithstanding the turmoil and intricacy of Venezuela following years of Maduro’s governance, the populace is largely unified in yearning for a substitute and improbable to plunge into civic strife if the US deposes him.
“The volume of pandemonium, disarray, and territorial disintegration that we are currently undergoing signifies, for us, the bleakest imaginable scenario,” he articulated. “Advancing beyond that scenario, we believe, is entirely achievable.”
Trump’s activities in Iran, Yemen, Syria, and elsewhere have validated that the aspiring Nobel laureate is decidedly not resistant to resorting to military force, but is wary of becoming ensnared in drawn-out ground offensives. In this instance, he might be especially preoccupied with the prospect of generating a power void that incites a greater exodus of Venezuelans fleeing the country for the US.
In relation to the deployment of the military, the president gravitates toward swift, unambiguous triumphs. Whether he escalates in Venezuela might pivot on whether he can be persuaded that realizing one there is on the table.
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Source: vox.com
