The US has deployed the world’s largest warship to the waters of the Caribbean and Latin America in an escalation of the military buildup by the US and Venezuela.
The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford has joined other warships and a nuclear-powered submarine in what was already seen as the largest US military presence in the region since the 1989 invasion of Panama. US airstrikes on boats in South American waters have killed at least 76 people since September.
Meanwhile, Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, has announced what he called a “massive deployment” of land, sea, air, river and missile forces, as well as civilian militia, to counter the US naval presence off his country’s coast.
Will the US attack Venezuela?
Donald Trump has sought to justify the military buildup and the airstrikes by arguing they are necessary to stem the flow of drugs to the US, mainly from Venezuela. But many analysts see these moves instead as a way to put pressure on Maduro to step down after he stole last year’s election.
With the US navy’s announcement on Tuesday of the arrival of the world’s largest aircraft carrier to the area of responsibility of the US Southern Command, which covers Latin America and the Caribbean, some believe the risk of an invasion is growing.
The massive warship, carrying 4,000 sailors and capable of transporting 90 aircraft, is reportedly in the western Atlantic and expected to reach the Caribbean in the coming days.
Christopher Sabatini, a senior research fellow for Latin America at Chatham House, said: “This is clearly an attempt to scare Maduro, perhaps into seeking exile, and to push the [Venezuelan] military to overthrow him or force him out, establishing some form of transitional or non-Maduro-dominated government.
“I don’t think the White House really wants to act. They’re hoping to engage in what I call regime change on the cheap – although it’s not that cheap any more because it costs $8m a day to keep that aircraft carrier there.”
However, if the threat alone proved insufficient, Sabatini said, the US was “almost putting itself in a position where it will have to do something to justify this [military buildup]”.
What is Maduro doing in response?
On Tuesday, before the US navy confirmed the carrier’s arrival, the Venezuelan regime announced a new phase of its military deployment against what it called US “imperial threats”. The defence minister, Vladimir Padrino, said 200,000 troops were taking part in the exercise.
Maduro has accused the US of “fabricating a new war” and said the naval deployment represents “the greatest threat our continent has faced in the past 100 years”.
Venezuela has reportedly received Russian military equipment to strengthen its defences, including missile and air defence systems, while Moscow has reaffirmed its support for Venezuelan sovereignty.
José Luis Pérez Guadalupe, a criminology professor at Peru’s Universidad del Pacífico and co-author of a recent book on organised crime in Venezuela, said: “The mere fact that the US is acting and threatening Venezuela has stirred nationalist feeling among Venezuelans in the face of a foreign invader – and Maduro plays that very well.”
He believes that any US intervention could backfire on Trump’s interests. “Let’s suppose they remove Maduro – who will be president then?” he asked.
If it were the opposition candidate Edmundo González, widely regarded as the real winner of the last election, or María Corina Machado, the opposition leader and Nobel peace prize laureate, “they would be seen as traitors to Venezuela for supporting a foreign invasion”, Pérez Guadalupe said.
“That would make it far more difficult to form a government with even a majority level of support, let alone a broad consensus.”
Are the buildup and airstrikes ending drug trafficking?
So far there is no data to support that claim. It is not even known how much or what kind of drugs were being carried on each boat targeted, or whether they were carrying drugs at all, as the US has released no evidence or details about the vessels or their occupants. The UN has described the killings as extrajudicial executions.
Most of the attacks have taken place in the Caribbean. A 2020 report by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) estimated that 74% of the cocaine reaching the US arrived via the Pacific. Only 8% of “documented cocaine movements departing South America moved toward the Caribbean islands in 2019, mostly aboard go-fast vessels”, it said.
Trump claimed the targeted boats were “stacked up with bags of white powder, that’s mostly fentanyl”, but fentanyl is neither produced nor significantly consumed in South America, according to Andrés Antillano, a criminology professor at the Central University of Venezuela. He said fentanyl was mainly produced in Mexico using chemical precursors imported from Asian countries, including China.
Antillano said the airstrikes were an ineffective way to stop drug smuggling as attacks on one route merely forced traffickers to seek alternatives. “It’s nothing more than a bad alibi – a narrative meant to justify other agendas,” he said.
What role does Venezuela play in cocaine trafficking?
Venezuela is considered a transit country for cocaine that comes mainly from neighbouring Colombia, the world’s largest producer and one of only three cultivators alongside Peru and Bolivia.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, cocaine seizures in Venezuela accounted for 2.3% of the global total in 2020, and by 2023 – the most recent year’s data available – that share had fallen to 1.9%.
Cocaine leaves Venezuela by land, mainly through the Amazon region, as well as by air and sea. But Pérez Guadalupe said there was “no evidence that shipments go directly to the US”.
He said: “It’s not that the drugs passing through Venezuela don’t end up in the US, but they first go to intermediate points in the Caribbean.” From countries such as Trinidad and Tobago, the cocaine was then sent on to Mexico, the US, Africa and “mainly” to Europe, Pérez Guadalupe said.
What role does the Venezuelan regime play?
In August the US government increased to $50m its reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Maduro, described as the “global terrorist leader of the Cartel de los Soles”.
The group’s name first appeared in the Venezuelan press in the early 1990s, with “soles” referring to the sun insignias worn by military officers who were allegedly central to the scheme. According to the Department of Justice, one of the group’s objectives is “to flood” the US with cocaine.
However, Antillano, Pérez Guadalupe and many other experts on Venezuelan organised crime say no such cartel exists.
Pérez Guadalupe said: “The so-called Cartel de los Soles is not a group like the Medellín or Cali cartels, running everything from production to transport … It’s more a way of describing how Maduro has stayed in power by granting concessions to certain criminal groups.”
In exchange for their support, Maduro has allegedly allowed criminal organisations to control some regions and prisons, and “the army runs through all these power structures, because it operates across the country and facilitates the transit and export of drugs”, Pérez Guadalupe said.
Antillano said government figures involved in trafficking did not operate as a single unit – in fact, they competed with each other. “In Venezuela, bribing a military officer doesn’t guarantee that another officer further along the chain, or even an ordinary police officer, won’t also demand a cut,” he said.
“The idea of a fully coordinated, vertical, consistent policy to flood the US with cocaine, as Trump has been claiming, is completely unsustainable and there’s no serious evidence to support it … but it taps into a certain anxiety among the US population and can be politically exploited as a way of justifying mass deportations and the criminalisation of migration,” Antillano added.
