Venezuela ordered a “massive” military deployment on Tuesday night in response to the arrival of the largest U.S. military aircraft carrier in the region.
Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez said the government is placing “the entire country’s military arsenal on full operational readiness,” with preparations including the “massive deployment of ground, aerial, naval, riverine and missile forces.”
Padrino Lopez said on national television that the mobilization will include “almost 200,000” service members.
The arrival of the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group in the Caribbean has been anticipated for weeks, after the Navy said it would relocate from Europe to the region on Oct. 24. The Ford, which is the Navy’s largest and most modern aircraft carrier, has about 4,000 sailors on board.
The U.S. military is currently in the midst of its largest buildup of U.S. forces in the Western Hemisphere in decades.
U.S. troops have carried out nearly 20 lethal kinetic strikes, killing about 75 people, on purported drug smuggling vessels that have ties to Venezuela. The strikes are a significant deviation from the United States’s long-standing strategy of leaning on the Coast Guard to interdict these ships, seize any drugs, and arrest anyone on board.
With thousands of service members in the Caribbean, there is an increasing belief that the strikes on vessels are one part of the administration’s larger plan to apply more pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
The U.S. views Maduro as an illegitimate leader. He was accused by the international community of falsely claiming victory in the last election, and he was indicted in the U.S. in 2020 on narcoterrorism charges.
President Donald Trump has approved the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, but he has not approved the military to carry out kinetic strikes on Venezuelan soil, which would be a significant escalation from the strikes in international waters.
Should he do that, the U.S. could target airstrips, military bases, drug production facilities, and more.
HERE ARE THE DETAILS OF THE US STRIKES TARGETING ALLEGED DRUG VESSELS
Maduro claimed last month that the country has 5,000 Russian-made antiaircraft missiles in “key defense positions.” The Igla-S missiles are short-range, low-altitude, portable air defense systems that can be fired by an individual soldier and take down small aerial targets flying low to the ground, such as drones, cruise missiles, helicopters, and low-flying planes.
Earlier this year, the administration designated several drug cartels as terrorist organizations, which gave it more latitude in how to combat them. The U.S. also increased the reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest from $25 million to $50 million.
