The US is up to something in Venezuela. But what exactly?
Since early September, the US military has carried out at least five lethal strikes on civilian boats in the Caribbean, alleged by the Trump administration to be piloted by members of Venezuelan drug cartels that the US government has designated as terrorist organizations. Twenty-seven people have been reported killed in these strikes. President Donald Trump has informed Congress that he has determined the US is now in a state of armed conflict with these cartels.
The strikes come in the context of a large-scale buildup of US forces in the Caribbean, including some 10,000 troops, guided-missile destroyers, F-35 fighter jets, MQ-9 reaper drones, and a secretive vessel designed to carry special operations forces. This is more firepower than the US committed to the Battle of Midway during World War II. According to the Washington Post, special operations helicopters have flown less than 90 miles from the Venezuelan coast in recent days.
This week, the New York Times reported that President Trump has authorized covert CIA operations inside Venezuela. On Wednesday, Trump acknowledged the report — making these operations not exactly “covert” anymore — and confirmed that he is considering striking targets on land in the country. On Friday, it was reported that in the most recent boat strike, there were survivors for the first time. They were taken into custody, making them the first prisoners of war of this latest conflict. Also this week, Adm. Alvin Holsey, the head of US Southern Command, who was overseeing the buildup, stepped down from his position less than a year into his tenure. The reasons are unclear, but the timing has raised eyebrows.
All of this has fueled speculation that the administration is planning a military operation to remove President Nicolas Maduro, a longtime adversary of the US, from power. Maduro himself issued that charge in a televised address on Wednesday night, saying, “No to regime change, which reminds us so much of the endless, failed wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and so on. … No to CIA-orchestrated coups d’état.” Maduro’s government has been mobilizing troops and militias and cranking up its domestic propaganda in the face of the growing threat.
Trump didn’t confirm or deny that he was considering attempting to overthrow Maduro when speaking with reporters on Wednesday, calling it a “a ridiculous question for me to answer.” The White House reportedly rejected a proposal from Maduro under which he would step down in three years and turn over power to his vice president.
Trump’s attention to the country has also raised hopes within the Venezuelan opposition. After she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last week, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado dedicated the award “to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!” Machado has said in the past that Maduro would likely only leave power “in the face of a credible, imminent and severe threat of the use of force.”
As of Friday, it appears very possible that the US military could take military action against alleged cartel targets in Venezuela within the coming days. These could include drug labs, airstrips used for cocaine shipments, or camps of the armed groups backed by the regime.
It’s also at least plausible — and the White House clearly wants Maduro to think it’s plausible — that the US could target the Venezuelan regime directly, be it senior officials or Maduro himself.
On the other hand, it seems just as likely that the administration could continue its current path of blowing up boats in the Caribbean without escalating its conflict to attacks on land.
What’s going to tip the balance, to set the course Trump decides to take? And what’s the end goal of this campaign?
How we got here
It’s not exactly news that the US would rather have a different government in Venezuela. Relations between Washington and Caracas have been dismal since the days of Maduro’s mentor and predecessor Hugo Chavez, who took power in 2000 and ruled until his death in office in 2013. The left-wing Bolivarian socialist regime led by Chavez and then Maduro vocally opposed US influence in Latin America; supported militant groups abroad like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia; and maintained close relations with US adversaries like Russia, Iran, and Cuba.
Over the past decade, Venezuela’s mismanaged oil-dependent economy has been in a tailspin, experiencing hyperinflation and massive unemployment. That has coincided with the regime’s all-out assault on civil liberties and opposition parties, an explosion in violent crime, and widespread corruption. All these factors have led to more than 6 million Venezuelans fleeing the country, making them the world’s largest refugee population.
Removing Maduro from power has been a priority for the Trump administration dating back to its first term. After Venezuela’s widely disputed 2018 presidential elections, the US formally recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s legitimate president, even as Guaido was forced into exile. Guaido appeared as a guest at Trump’s State of the Union address in 2019. Back then, the administration worked to push Maduro out of office through measures both overt — sanctions and diplomatic pressure — and covert — cyberattacks and espionage. In 2020, Maduro was indicted in a New York court on charges of narcoterrorism and cocaine smuggling. The award for his arrest was recently raised to $50 million.
After Venezuela’s similarly dubious 2024 election, the Biden administration again recognized Maduro’s opponent as the legitimate winner.
Despite it all, when Trump returned to office this year, there were some early signs of a thaw in the relationship. Trump’s envoy for special missions Ric Grenell opened a negotiating process with Maduro’s government that resulted in some notable cooperation. Venezuela released several Americans who had been detained in the country and struck a deal under which it agreed to accept repatriation flights carrying its deported citizens from the US. (Since it took power, the Trump administration has lifted legal protections for Venezuelans in America, putting hundreds of thousands at risk of deportation.)
But by around April, the détente was on the rocks, and advocates of “maximum pressure” had taken control over the Venezuela file within the US administration. Most notable among these is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has advocated for more aggressive measures against Maduro, including potential military force, since he was a senator.
Monroe Doctrine meets MAGA
The Trump administration has advocated shifting US defense and diplomatic priorities toward Latin America, with officials often invoking the Monroe Doctrine, the 19th-century foreign policy aimed at ensuring US pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere.
Chris Sabatini, senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House, called Maduro’s removal “unfinished business” from Trump’s first term and the latest escalation a continuation of its longstanding policies. The difference this time, he said, is not only the emphasis on military force but how the White House’s policy is “calibrated to appeal to the MAGA base.”
That means emphasizing Venezuela’s connection to two of the president’s main priorities: drugs and migration. In particular, Trump has targeted the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua — which his administration recently designated as a terrorist organization — and has accused Maduro of effectively weaponizing gangs, drugs, and mass migration to target the US. This week, Trump said he had authorized the CIA’s covert actions because Venezuela had “emptied their prisons into the United States of America.”
There’s no evidence the Maduro regime is weaponizing migration or that it is in control of Tren de Aragua. Most Venezuelans in the US have fled from the regime and the chaos it has unleashed.
As for drugs, while Venezuela is not a major producer country, under Maduro, it has become a major transshipment point for South American cocaine bound for the US and Central America, as well as for West Africa and Europe.
Over the summer, the administration issued a terrorist designation for another organization — the Cartel de los Soles, described by the Treasury Department as a “Venezuela-based criminal group headed by Nicolas Maduro.” Under the Trump administration’s legal logic, this makes Maduro the leader of a terrorist organization at war with the US, and presumably, also then a legitimate target.
It’s undoubtedly true that Maduro and his senior commanders are linked to drug trafficking and other criminal activities. But the Venezuelan president isn’t exactly Pablo Escobar, either.
“Cartel of the Suns,” named for the stars on the uniforms of generals, is not a coherent hierarchical organization, but a term used to describe a loose network of senior Venezuelan military officials controlling a range of criminal enterprises from drug smuggling to illicit gold mining.
Jeremy McDermott, co-director of Insight Crime, which tracks organized crime in Latin America, described it as a “feudal system,” under which Maduro grants subordinates control over geographic areas and the criminal enterprises within them to ensure loyalty.
“Maduro is not turning around and going, ‘Okay, listen: We’re going to send this shipment at this time to the Dominican Republic,’” McDermott told Vox.
Beyond the exact nature of the “cartel” in question, the Trump administration’s strategy — so far, the attacks on the boats, and even more so if those escalate to strikes on land — raises serious legal concerns. The administration argues that its actions, which have not been authorized by Congress, are legally justifiable as an act of self-defense due to the harm caused by drugs entering the US.
That approach raises the question of whether “we see trafficking and illicit drugs as a crime or as a physical threat to the safety and security of our nation that would require the use of the military,” James Saenze, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for counternarcotics under the Biden administration, told Vox.
In Saenz’s view, while drugs undoubtedly do damage to American society, viewing them as a form of aggression akin to terrorism ignores the fact that it’s American citizens who are buying the drugs. Whatever actions the US military takes against the suppliers and producers of cocaine or other drugs, “if you don’t get rid of the demand, there’s always going to be someone who’s going to meet the demand.”
Is regime change in the cards?
Opponents of the Venezuelan regime are optimistic that targeting the government’s criminal enterprises is key to finally bringing it down.
“Narcotrafficking and illicit economies are the glue that is keeping the high ranks within the Army loyal,” said Miguel Pizarro, a Venezuelan opposition politician who is now a senior aide in the Venezuelan opposition’s Washington, DC, office. “This regime’s structure has a lot more to do with money, privilege, and corruption than with ideology.” Pizarro added that, in addition to pressure on the regime, the officials within the regime who are not involved in its worst crimes need to be given guarantees for their safety and to be assured that there is “life after power.”
If economic and military pressure don’t bring down Maduro from within, could the US take more active measures? The closest precedent would be the 1989 US invasion of Panama that unseated and arrested dictator Manuel Noriega, who had, like Maduro, been indicted on drug charges in the US. Venezuela, however, is a much larger country in a much more fragile political condition.
Despite Trump’s substantial escalation, experts say the forces arrayed in the Caribbean now are probably not enough for a full-scale invasion — though that doesn’t rule out targeted strikes by drones or special operations forces getting deployed against Maduro or other senior regime figures. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), a leading congressional critic of the Maduro regime, suggested recently that Venezuelan officials should consider the fate of Qasem Soleimani, the senior Iranian general killed in a US drone strike during the first Trump administration.
But regime change, however it’s carried out, is a risky strategy, as Maduro was clearly trying to remind the US public by bringing up past US intervention debacles.
“Just taking out the top echelon is not going to change the regime, and it’s also unlikely to provoke a democratic transition,” said Chatham House’s Sabatini.
Pizarro, the Venezuelan opposition representative, dismissed comparisons to Iraq or Libya, saying that, despite the chaos and complexity of Venezuela after years of Maduro’s rule, the population is mostly united in hoping for an alternative and unlikely to collapse into civil conflict if the US deposes him.
“The amount of chaos, disorder, and territorial disintegration that we have right now is for us, the worse scenario,” he said. “Moving out of that scenario, we believe, is absolutely feasible.”
Trump’s actions in Iran, Yemen, Syria and elsewhere have shown that the aspiring Nobel laureate is hardly averse to using military force but is wary of getting bogged down in lengthy ground campaigns. In this case, he may be particularly concerned about the possibility of creating a power vacuum that causes more Venezuelans to flee the country for the US.
When it comes to using the military, the president prefers quick, decisive wins. Whether he escalates in Venezuela may depend on whether he can be convinced that achieving one there is on the table.
The post Is the US about to attack Venezuela? appeared first on Vox.
