Ten thousand soldiers aboard 10 U.S. warships, including nuclear submarines, several destroyers and missile cruisers, are patrolling the southern Caribbean, marking the largest U.S. military buildup in the region in decades. At least seven ships believed to be transporting drugs were blown up and more than 32 people were extrajudicially killed. And now the US government is threatening Venezuela with direct military action. According to reports, the Pentagon is developing plans for a military strike inside Venezuela, and President Trump has authorized the CIA to conduct deadly covert operations in the country.
All of this is ostensibly aimed at removing President Maduro, who Trump claims runs a vast criminal organization. “Mr. Maduro is the leader of the Cartel de los Soles, a designated narco-terrorist organization, and is responsible for drug trafficking to the United States,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a longtime Venezuelan hawk, justifying the U.S. military posture in the region. The United States has also placed a $50 million bounty on the head of the Venezuelan president.
The official explanation is a fabrication. The existence of the Venezuelan government-run Cartel de los Soles, let alone its control of the cross-border cocaine trade from Venezuela, has been largely debunked. And while Torren de Aragua is a genuine criminal organization that exists across borders, it lacks the ability to operate in the way the United States suggests. It certainly pales in comparison to the power of cartels in Colombia, Mexico, and Ecuador.
Apparently, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment doesn’t even mention Venezuela. And a confidential National Intelligence Council report established that President Maduro does not control any drug lords. While it is undeniable that drug shipments do occur through Venezuela, the amount is small compared to the amount of cocaine currently passing through South America’s Pacific coast route. And Venezuela plays no role in producing or exporting synthetic drugs such as fentanyl or in the broader U.S. opioid crisis. Simply put, if the Trump administration actually intended to combat drug trafficking, Venezuela would make little sense as a target.
So what actually is US policy? And where will this dramatic escalation lead?
Initially, the US use of force off the coast of Venezuela appeared to be an exercise in political theater. President Trump is trying to project a “tough on crime” approach to a domestic audience that includes avid MAGAs. “If you smuggle drugs to our shores, we will stop you in the cold,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said last week. Crime remains one of Americans’ top concerns, according to recent polls.
Another interpretation was that President Trump’s rise was a political stunt aimed at placating neoconservatives in the administration, Washington’s foreign policy establishment, and radicals in the Venezuelan opposition, including new Nobel laureate Maria Colina Machado, a hardline opposition leader who calls for foreign intervention in her country. Unlike the more moderate Venezuelan opposition leaders, all of these parties are hostile to any perceived normalization with Venezuela and oppose President Trump’s recent granting of an operating license to Chevron. Seen from this perspective, the buildup looked like a classic Trump bluff: take a tough stance against Maduro and secure Venezuelan oil at the same time.
One possible scenario is that the escalation of rhetoric in recent weeks falls short of a direct attack on Venezuela, and that US extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean simply continue as they have for the past month and a half. In the absence of serious U.S. drug policy, particularly on the critical issues of consumption and money laundering, the satellite images of a small boat blown up in the Caribbean serve President Trump’s agenda well, even though it has tragic consequences for the unidentified boaters and their families.
But today, the sheer scale of the U.S. military buildup does not comport with the idea of a cynical political stunt, nor does President Trump’s decision to cut off all diplomatic back channels with the Venezuelan government and deauthorize special envoy Rick Grenell’s efforts to lobby President Maduro. The more we look at military deployments and Trump officials’ increasingly bellicose rhetoric, the more the pursuit of regime change by military means appears to be the most plausible explanation.
Of course, Mr. Rubio and his fellow Florida Republicans have long advocated passionately for a more aggressive approach to Venezuela. For Rubio, toppling the Venezuelan president, and perhaps, if he gained momentum, toppling the Cuban Communist Party, is a generational goal, more symbolic than strategic, and rooted in political passion and fantasies of payback and revenge.
Given that U.S. sanctions, an attempted coup, and parallel support for the Venezuelan government (all measures strongly supported by Mr. Rubio) failed to overthrow President Maduro in 2019, the Secretary of State appears to have concluded that direct military intervention is the only way to achieve this objective, an outcome that appears to be the focus of the administration.
But the prospect of the U.S. on the ground remains incongruous, especially given Washington’s many pressing geopolitical interests and President Trump’s repeated pledges, applauded by his MAGA base, not to drag the country into another “forever war.” But this is the Western Hemisphere, not the faraway Middle East. And in this new multipolar reality, even Rubio acknowledges, a return to traditional spheres of influence means that the United States will once again be wielding a big club in its hemisphere, openly returning to the gunboat diplomacy that so often rocked the Caribbean in the early 20th century, before the United States became a world power.
The extent of the asymmetry of a potential war between the United States and Venezuela and the ability of the United States to easily overwhelm Venezuela’s conventional forces cannot be understated. But it would be a mistake to think that the invasion of Venezuela would be a repeat of Panama in 1989-1990 or Haiti in 1994, the last time the United States occupied a country in the hemisphere. The 20th and 21st centuries were, of course, marred by America’s constant overt and covert interference in the national affairs of South American states. But unlike Central America and the Caribbean, where smaller, less powerful countries served as testing grounds for the rise of the Marine Corps, Washington has never engaged in overt military intervention on the South American continent. Venezuela’s population is approximately 28 million people, about the same as the population of Iraq in 2003 and more than ten times the population of Panama in 1990.
It is also important to keep in mind that even in its weakened state, Chavismo still has a sizable and passionate support base. Regardless of how the pro-government militias mobilized in the past few weeks ultimately act, opposition to U.S. military intervention will likely be fierce. A violent U.S.-backed regime change would almost certainly result in prolonged resistance and rebellion.
Given the high risk of a ground invasion, an alternative scenario that would involve air strikes but not an amphibious landing of U.S. troops on the Venezuelan coast seems more likely. President Trump would certainly prefer a one-off airstrike, similar to the June attack on Iran. But there is no reason to believe that such an attack would spark the large-scale uprising and military rebellion that Rubio and his allies had hoped for.
The Venezuelan military has so far demonstrated significant loyalty to the Maduro regime. It has survived two decades of regime change attempts, including a brief coup in 2002, Guaido’s debacle from 2019 to 2023, including an outright coup attempt in April 2019, and a reckless mercenary infiltration in 2020, each with fewer defectors than the last. Institutionally speaking, years of harsh U.S. sanctions and destabilization have strengthened Venezuela’s security state and fostered a resilience that surprised many.
Nor should we be surprised if supporters of regime change call for another attack, and then another, when the first attack fails to spark the promised uprising. Convinced that the government is in its final moments and needs another push, they will likely pressure President Trump to continue bombing, and perhaps help form some form of armed opposition, which does not currently exist in Venezuela.
Such a Libyan-style proxy war would flood an already volatile region with more weapons and money. It’s a nightmare scenario for Latin America, with criminal organizations and irregular armed groups already operating on Venezuela’s western border and beyond, in neighboring Colombia, thriving in the chaos, expanding their reach and profiting from arms and human trafficking.
More than 7 million Venezuelans have fled the country during the past few years of strict U.S. sanctions against Venezuela, which have contributed significantly to food, medicine and fuel shortages. This unprecedented wave of migration is having enormous repercussions within the region and beyond, including in the United States, where it influenced the 2024 election in President Trump’s favor. If US sanctions caused such an exodus, one can only imagine the scale of the refugee crisis that would result from an actual war. It is not surprising that Brazil and Colombia, Venezuela’s most strategic neighbors in terms of potential conflict, strongly oppose US military intervention.
The bitter irony is inevitable. Operations justified by anti-drug rhetoric create ideal conditions for drug lords to expand their influence. A military buildup off the coast of Venezuela is a slippery slope to an armed conflagration that could lead to far greater suffering for the Venezuelan people, potential political quagmire for the United States, U.S. military casualties, and catastrophic destabilization of much of the region.
