This week, the USS Gerald R Ford – the world’s largest aircraft carrier –arrived in the Caribbean. The US now has 15,000 troops, dozens of aircraft and a fleet of warships in the region.
The last time it amassed such force there was in 1989, when it invaded Panama to depose its dictator, Manuel Noriega. Now it raises the question as to whether the Trump administration plans to do the same in Venezuela, where its longtime antagonist, President Nicolás Maduro, stole an election last year.
But this US armada is already the most vivid application yet of the “Donroe doctrine”: Donald Trump’s revival of the 1823 Monroe doctrine, in which the US marked the Americas as its patch – and was willing to impose its will through force.
“The Trump White House is paying more attention to Latin America than any administration in at least 30 years,” said Brian Winter, editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly. “But the question remains: how far are they willing to go?”
The naval buildup began in mid-August, prompting Maduro to call up Venezuela’s civilian militia to reinforce its roughly 120,000-strong armed forces, citing the threat of invasion. Then, on 2 September, the Trump administration destroyed an alleged drug trafficking vessel just outside Venezuelan waters, killing 11 people – and posted the video online.
It was reminiscent of US drone strikes on Islamist groups such as al-Qaida, reflecting the administration’s designation of drug trafficking groups as terrorist organisations. The US claims that Maduro leads one such group – the Cártel de los Soles – and has offered a $50m bounty for information leading to his arrest.
That Maduro’s regime works with criminal groups and facilitates drug trafficking is “beyond doubt”, according to InSight Crime, a thinktank. But experts question whether the Cártel de los Soles really exists as an organisation.
Nonetheless, the Trump administration has since blown up 21 boats across the Caribbean and the Pacific, killing 83 people, while amassing military assets on Venezuela’s doorstep.
Trump says that the deployment is needed to stop the flow of drugs to the US. But the Caribbean is not the most important cocaine trafficking route – and Venezuela is essentially not involved in the trafficking of fentanyl, the synthetic opioid behind America’s overdose crisis. Many have concluded that the secondary purpose, or perhaps the true one, is regime change.
“The objective of the armada in the Caribbean is not solely counter-narcotics, because it is entirely too powerful,” said James Story, US ambassador to Venezuela from 2018 to 2023. “It’s like killing mosquitoes with a shotgun.”
“[The Trump administration] wants to create the perception that a major escalation – including a strike on Maduro himself or an invasion – could be possible,” said Will Freeman from the Council on Foreign Relations, a US-based thinktank. “And to see if it triggers a split in the regime.”
‘The objective of the armada in the Caribbean is not solely counter-narcotics … it’s like killing mosquitoes with a shotgun’
James Story, former US ambassador to Venezuela
The enmity between the US and Venezuela goes back to the start of the century, when the charismatic president, Hugo Chávez, aligned the country with Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba and used Venezuela’s oil money to fund social spending and the regional leftwing alliance Alba.
Chávez died of a heart attack in 2013, and was succeeded by Maduro, his handpicked candidate. But a year later the commodity boom ended and oil revenues plummeted. The government began printing money to finance its budget, triggering hyperinflation and a collapse in living standards. US sanctions did not help. More than 7 million Venezuelans emigrated as Maduro held on to power through repression.
This culminated in last year’s election, when followers of opposition leader María Corina Machado – who was banned from running – managed to collect voting tallies from more than 80% of polling stations showing that Edmundo González Urrutia, the stand-in opposition candidate, won more than twice as many votes as Maduro.
Nonetheless Maduro claimed to have won 51% of the vote.
Machado, now in hiding in Venezuela, received the Nobel peace prize this year. In the wake of the US naval buildup, she told her followers that Maduro’s days in power are numbered.
Trump tried and failed to remove Maduro during his first term – but this time looks different. In 2019, the US applied “economic maximum pressure”, but Maduro’s regime clung on, said Freeman. Now the US is applying military pressure instead. “It’s maximum sabre rattling.”
The arrival of the Gerald R Ford has only raised the expectations of further strikes. And Trump has various options to ratchet up the pressure, said Story. Those range from hitting drug trafficking facilities inside Venezuela to assassinating a regime insider or neutralising Venezuela’s military capacity by taking out its airforce and missile boats.
Still, it’s unclear any of these would break Maduro’s grip on power. The regime’s intelligence apparatus has proved effective at finding and eliminating any military challengers. “I think the regime is coup-proofed enough that even a land strike is unlikely to force a split,” said Freeman.
Meanwhile Maduro-aligned paramilitaries have been sent to neighbourhoods across Caracas to quash dissent, while the president urged citizens to report neighbours suspected of “disrupting internal order”.
The assembled US forces fall far short of what would be required for a land invasion, which would probably be a step too far for Trump’s supporters, who are allergic to foreign wars. “The Maga base would never allow it,” said Winter. “And without boots on the ground, I don’t see how you get [regime] change.”
Which leaves another possibility: a deal.
Last month, Maduro reportedly offered the US privileged access to Venezuela’s natural resources – which include the world’s largest proven oil reserves – only for Trump to reject the offer. But Trump has not explicitly stated that regime change is his goal, which gives him more room to claim a win even if Maduro stays in power.
The latest messages coming out of the White House have been mixed. On Sunday, Trump said they “may be having some discussions” with Maduro. But the very next day he refused to rule out sending troops into Venezuela. Indeed, he went further, saying he would be open to military action in other Latin American countries where drug cartels operate, including next-door Colombia, where he would “be proud” to knock out “cocaine factories”.
This aggressive foreign policy has scored Trump some quick wins, not least in Mexico, where the government is straining to cooperate on security; Panama, where the Chinese have been pushed away from the canal; and a range of countries that have agreed to receive aircraft-loads of deported migrants – not necessarily their own.
The public response of countries in the region has been muted so far, with Trump allies such as Argentina and Ecuador refusing to sign a statement put out by the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States expressing concern about US military action, and some, such as Trinidad and Tobago, even welcoming the iron fist against drug trafficking.
“But all of this may produce a backlash against the US over the medium term,” said Winter. “That’s what history tells us is likely to happen when the US throws its weight around like this.”
Photograph by Gladjimi Balisage/DoD/AFP via Getty