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With this week’s arrival of the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, along with her three destroyers and one attack submarine escort, the U.S. military has completed a major buildup around Venezuela. It could now credibly attempt a decapitation operation against dictator Nicolas Maduro should President Donald Trump order it. The president has already authorized CIA action to destabilize Maduro’s regime.
This is not to say that Trump should order decapitation strikes to force Maduro out of power. On the contrary, the risks inherent in such a military operation would be very significant.
The problem here is not that of military practicality, but rather of second- and third-order effects. Maduro absolutely would be pushed out of power once U.S. forces were fully committed. The CIA would likely be able to then quickly bribe a growing cadre of regime military officers to start an internal uprising against Maduro. And at a moral level, Maduro’s departure would also be a manifestly good thing. After all, Maduro stole last year’s presidential election by refusing to yield power to the overwhelming winner, Edmundo Gonzalez. As with his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, Maduro has also presided over the continuing implosion of Venezuelan society amid rampant corruption, shortages of food and medicine, and extreme violence. Chávez and Maduro have made the nation with the world’s largest proven oil reserves a dystopia of impoverishment and misery.
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The problem?
However quickly or easily Maduro was forced out of power, the United States would then be left to pick up the pieces. At a minimum, that would mean confronting well-armed narcotrafficking and criminal organizations determined to protect their illicit businesses. It would mean confronting high-ranking officers in the military and security services who have made fortunes by enabling criminal groups in return for a share of their profits. It would mean handling a humanitarian relief operation for a population of more than 28 million people who have been depleted by Maduro’s extraordinary economic mismanagement.
These complexities and Trump’s oft-stated skepticism about entangling the U.S. in foreign wars lead some to believe that Trump is simply posturing with these military deployments. This thinking assumes that the military buildup is designed not to remove Maduro but to facilitate escalating military options against drug smugglers operating out of Venezuela and Colombia. The U.S. military has now carried out approximately 19 strikes against drug smuggling boats off Colombia and Venezuela. It is also possible that Trump is dangling a potent threat of military force over Maduro’s head in order to pressure those around the dictator to push him out of power, in fear that if they don’t, they will share in his fate.
That said, we must not discount the vast array of military power now positioned around Venezuela.
Even before the Ford carrier strike group arrived this week, the U.S. military had amassed a potent presence proximate to Venezuela. Alongside the Navy is a Marine expeditionary unit embarked with Harrier jump jets, a reinforced infantry battalion, an F-35B Marine fighter attack squadron based out of Puerto Rico, and hundreds of special forces personnel. Various U.S.-based Air Force bomber squadrons are also regularly flying just off the Venezuelan coast. These deployments are far greater than what the U.S. needs in order to strike drug smugglers at sea or on land.
Indeed, as the Washington Examiner reported in early October, “military planners believe the assembled forces are now sufficient to seize and hold key strategic facilities such as ports and airfields on Venezuelan territory (the Washington Examiner is withholding some details for national security reasons). U.S. control over such locations would allow for the increased, sustained projection of U.S. military power into Venezuela from defensible positions.”
It should go without saying that all of this is also very expensive. It’s also risky. With the Ford strike group now near Venezuela, it is at least temporarily unavailable for other contingencies. In this case, the Ford was repositioned from operations in the Middle East. What happens, for example, in the admittedly unlikely event that a new conflict with Iran breaks out in the near future?
But what the Ford does do is significantly boost Trump’s military means of forcing Maduro out.
The Ford’s air wing includes four strike fighter squadrons consisting of 48 F/A-18 Super Hornets and an additional EA-18G Super Hornet, an electronic warfare squadron designed for jamming enemy forces, which can also be armed. Alongside the 10 F-35Bs deployed to Puerto Rico, the U.S. now can significantly overmatch the Venezuelan air force’s 19 or 20 Su-30MKV fighter aircraft. While Venezuela has recently loaded Kh-31 anti-ship missiles onto these aircraft in an effort to deter Trump, the Su-30MKV and its weapons are no match for the technical capability and skill of deployed U.S. forces. They would likely be shot down en masse before they could even track interceding U.S. forces. The Su-30MKVs would be extraordinarily unlikely to get within range of any U.S. warships to even fire their Kh-31s. Maduro’s commanders are aware of this, which is why they have sensibly avoided flying near the U.S. military since Trump warned them not to do so last month.
Venezuelan ground-based air defenses would similarly struggle against the amassed U.S. military forces. They rely upon later-generation Russian air defenses, which have repeatedly proved inadequate against Israeli air crews over Syria and Iran. Additionally, U.S. aircrews are superior to their Israeli counterparts. In short, U.S. military forces near Venezuela now have the ability to launch rapid surprise attacks to destroy the Venezuelan air force, air defense network, and command and control apparatus. Or, put simply, to do what is necessary to enable a decapitation air-special forces campaign against Maduro.
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But again, the key question here is not whether the U.S. could launch decapitation strikes, but whether it should launch those strikes. Considering that uncertainty is the only certainty in war, that Maduro poses a real but presently manageable threat to U.S. interests, and that there is little U.S. domestic appetite for a new nation-building campaign, Trump should restrict his crosshairs to the cartels.
Trump’s whack-a-mole strategy against the narcotraffickers isn’t going to win the war on drugs. However, it introduces friction to these organizations, increasing their human and financial costs of doing business. And unlike a possible decapitation strategy against Maduro, this whack-a-mole strategy carries an affordable cost and risk to U.S. interests.
