The U.S. military has thousands of troops currently in the Caribbean with thousands more on the way, and experts largely agree the buildup of firepower far exceeds what’s required for the missions they’re currently conducting.
Since the beginning of last month, the military has targeted more than a dozen alleged drug smuggling vessels, killing more than 50 people, but hasn’t publicly released any evidence to prove the people aboard were in fact carrying illegal narcotics.
President Donald Trump has approved CIA operations within Venezuela. He has also mused about the military carrying out strikes on Venezuelan soil. The president and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth say these strikes are meant to stop the illegal flow of drugs from Central America into the country.
The U.S. government considers Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro illegitimate after he claimed victory in a disputed election last year. In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted him and several others, alleging that they were participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy to “flood” the United States with cocaine and inflict the drug’s effects on Americans.
“[The operation] looked pretty focused on interdicting drug trafficking with some measure of intimidating the Maduro regime,” Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Washington Examiner. “But over time, it’s become much more focused on, or there’s been much more emphasis on, the Maduro regime and destabilizing it.”
Earlier this year, the DOJ increased the bounty on Maduro’s head from $25 million to $50 million. The increased bounty could further persuade someone from his inner circle to betray him to the benefit of the U.S.
A federal agent working under the Department of Homeland Security who was seeking to convince one of Maduro’s pilots to turn on him sent his mark the DOJ announcement about the increased bounty, according to the Associated Press.
Former U.S. Southern Command Commander Gen. Laura Richardson said earlier this month that she views the strikes as a part of a “pressure campaign” that expands beyond drug smuggling.
“When you see this capability, I think this pressure campaign, which is what I see this as, is not just about the narcotics,” she said at an event with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies earlier this month. “I mean, you have all the illegal things going on in this region. You’ve got the illegal drug trafficking, you’ve got the human trafficking, you’ve got the illegal mining, you’ve got all these rare earths … and so on and so forth.”
The recent strikes in the Western Hemisphere have been a stark transition away from the traditional way the U.S. stopped drug smuggling, which was law enforcement interdictions.
“You talk about a dangerous activity in doing that yourself. When you get on a drug boat that you know is loaded with drugs, and the people know they’re caught, right? Then what happens? So, I’m not saying everything is right in terms of what’s happening, but I will tell you that in terms of a position of strength, we’re very much present now in the Western Hemisphere,” Richardson added.
In her opinion, these strikes on purported drug vessels are “lawful,” though it’s been a highly debated subject in recent weeks among experts. Richardson’s successor, Admiral Alvin Holsey, the person in charge of this campaign, announced that he will retire in December, only about one year into a three-year term.
The U.S. military is undergoing one of its largest build-ups of force in the Western Hemisphere in decades, and more troops are on their way.
The Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, the Navy’s newest and largest aircraft carrier, is on its way to the region after departing from the Adriatic Sea. It carries a squadron of F/A-18 Super Hornets and helicopter squadrons. They will join the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group and the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, several P-8 spy planes, at least one warship, and at least one attack submarine.
U.S. forces have also conducted several aerial demonstrations of force by flying close to Venezuelan airspace. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said Sunday that Trump is expected to brief members of Congress on future operations against Venezuela and Colombia when he returns from his trip to Asia.
“So there will be a congressional briefing about a potential expanding from the sea to the land,” Graham told CBS’s Face the Nation.
Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel, does not believe the U.S. presence would be large enough to overthrow the Maduro regime and occupy the country. But, if the U.S. were to strike targets in Venezuela, he believes they could target the cartel and its facilities, ports, and infrastructure, or the U.S. could go directly after Maduro’s regime.
“Let’s be clear that U.S. military strikes inside Venezuela is a whole different thing, and it would be a significant escalation that would have, I am confident, unintended consequences that some may not foresee,” Bradley Bowman, a senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Washington Examiner.
One of Venezuela’s most notable allies is Russia, which on Monday ratified its strategic partnership agreement with Caracas.
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Maduro claimed last week that the country has 5,000 Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles in “key defense positions.” The Igla-S missiles are short-range, low-altitude portable air defense systems that an individual soldier can fire. If used correctly, one of these missiles could take down small aerial targets that are flying low, such as drones, cruise missiles, helicopters, and low-flying planes.
“The Venezuelans have pretty robust air defenses,” Cancian said, adding that the military likely wouldn’t send aircraft into Venezuelan airspace in the small chance that they “get lucky” and shoot one down, which he said would “change the whole political dynamic.”
