The U.S. military strikes this month on three boats that Trump administration officials have asserted were smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea have cast a spotlight on the sizable naval armada and aerial fleet of spy aircraft the Pentagon has dispatched to the region in what it says is a counternarcotics and counterterrorism mission.
Military officials, diplomats and analysts say a main purpose of the force is to ratchet up pressure on Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, as top figures in the Trump administration call him an illegitimate leader and accuse him of directing the actions of criminal gangs and drug cartels.
“We’re not going to have a cartel, operating or masquerading as a government, operating in our own hemisphere,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Fox News this week, adding that Mr. Maduro had been indicted in the United States and was “a fugitive of American justice.”
“There’s a reward out for his capture,” he said.
The heavy military presence in the Caribbean, including F-35 fighters in Puerto Rico, suggests the United States plans to do more than blow up small vessels, analysts said. But the scope of the operation remains unclear.
The 4,500-member force currently aboard eight warships is too small to invade Venezuela or any country harboring traffickers. And it is not operating in the main body of water to carry out a major drug interdiction campaign. That would be the eastern Pacific Ocean, regional experts say. The clandestine deployment of elite Special Operations forces suggests that strikes or commando raids inside Venezuela itself may be in works, experts note.
Administration officials refuse to say what U.S. military action might come next. Asked on Air Force One en route back to Washington from Britain on Thursday if he had discussed regime change in Venezuela with Mr. Rubio or any of his military leaders, Mr. Trump said no.
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