U.S. forces continue to ramp up their presence in the Caribbean. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the nation’s largest and most advanced aircraft carrier, is in the Caribbean. Numerous combat aircraft are now in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. U.S. drones continue to target alleged drug smugglers operating out of Venezuela while President Donald Trump ups the rhetoric against Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.
Maduro and his predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez, transformed Venezuela from South America’s wealthiest country into its second-poorest after Bolivia. The problem is not only socialist self-destruction, but also the Venezuelan regime’s willingness to transform itself into a haven for terrorist sponsorship and revisionist states.
Roger Noriega, the former U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States, has documented how Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has partnered with the regime to mine uranium under the guise of building a tractor factory. Most such factories, however, do not have no-fly zones in place over them, nor do governments build them in rural, uranium-rich areas when the road to market goes through cities hundreds of miles away.
Chavez and Maduro gave Hezbollah and Hamas free run over Venezuela. In August 2010, Chavez hosted senior leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Caracas. Not by coincidence, of Venezuela’s centuries-old Jewish community, numbering 25,000 in 1990, only a few hundred remain today.
The Venezuelan regime is also a hub for regional destabilization, with Maduro speaking of neighboring Guyana in the same way that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein did just prior to his 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Venezuela also seeks to destabilize Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, and other regional states.
The problem with U.S. policy is that Venezuela is the symptom, not the cause. It is a secondary cancer, not the metastasis source. The real problem remains Cuba, which, under cover of its revolutionary vision, has become the greatest imperialist power in the hemisphere today, subverting countries such as Venezuela and Nicaragua to support its own collapsing economy. In September 2025, Maduro shipped Cuba more than 50,000 barrels of oil per day.
To use ground forces against a country like Venezuela would open a Pandora’s Box, could bog the United States down into a guerrilla conflict that would make Iraq and Afghanistan appear mild, and would drape Maduro in a nationalist flag. While Chávez was popular in some quarters of Venezuelan society, Maduro is the accidental president who arose because of Chavez’s early death. Maduro has none of Chavez’s charisma and has lost the support of many Venezuela leftists; their fellow travelers in international circles long ago went silent on Maduro as they could no longer abide by his antics or incompetence. Without Cuba’s support and muscle, the Venezuelan public would rush Maduro to the gallows.
The Cuban regime, meanwhile, remains belligerent toward the U.S. After President Barack Obama reached out his hand, the Cuban regime responded with a crackdown on civil society and increased terrorism support, including to Hamas and Hezbollah.
HOUSE DRIVES TOWARD OBAMACARE CLIFF
Cuba, however, is ripe for regime change. President Miguel Diaz-Canel is a figurehead; a troika of 90-plus-year-old Communist veterans continues to pull the strings. It has not worked: Cuba has largely gone dark as its electrical grid collapses, and epidemics now rage across the island. Two years ago, a doctor in Havana told me the second-leading cause of death among young adults was building collapse. To underscore the point, the next day, a chandelier came crashing down at the iconic Hotel Nacional. Perhaps one in five Cubans has fled the country over the past five years.
If Trump decapitated the Cuban leadership and sent American forces in armed with generators and gasoline, he could not only rectify a problem dating back to the Eisenhower administration, but he could also sever Maduro’s last true lifeline before China can build an alternate one.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is director of analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
