EXPLAINING THE NEW U.S. MILITARY POSTURE IN THE CARIBBEAN / GEOPOLITICAL FUTURES

Explaining the New US Military Posture in the Caribbean

Geography and capability define much of the mission.

By: Andrew Davidson

In October, Washington deployed the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group from Europe to the southern Caribbean – a move that consolidates what had been haphazard interdiction and training missions into a single, layered air-sea posture. 

It was billed as a counter-narcotics and freedom-of-navigation mission, but its true purpose is to deny Venezuela freedom of movement along its northern coast. 

In practice, it will be capable of sustaining pressure on Caracas without having to occupy it. 

It is nothing less than a recalibration of U.S. influence in the Caribbean that now aims to shape Venezuela’s behavior.

The strike group’s arrival will raise the total number of U.S. vessels in the area to 10-15. 

They include Tomahawk-capable destroyers, an amphibious assault ship and a reported attack submarine. 

This sea power links to a distributed land-and-air architecture that surrounds Venezuela on three axes. 

From the west, Panamanian and Colombian cooperation provides access and launch points that close the western approaches. 

To the north, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and logistics nodes in Puerto Rico and Guantanamo Bay form the basin’s backbone. 

To the east, forward sites across the Netherlands Antilles, Trinidad and Tobago, and the newly requested radar node at Grenada establish a forward line of surveillance and interception. 

Together, these assets envelop Venezuela’s northern littoral region. 

Meanwhile, the Guiana Shield’s dense jungle, the Orinoco basin and the Andean foothills along Colombia block its southern frontier from large-scale movement. 

In short, geography and U.S. assets are such that Venezuela’s only room to maneuver is to the north. 

Platforms therein perform distinct but complementary functions. 

Carrier assets and long-range bombers offer strike options at scale. 

EA-18G Growlers provide an electronic warfare layer that can suppress coastal radars and jam command and control links. 

E-11A BACN relays knit dispersed air, surface and special operations elements into a single joint command picture. 

And F-35s, Tomahawk-armed destroyers and an attack submarine supply persistent, over-the-horizon strike capacity.

Operationally, this gives Washington three options it didn’t have before. 

One is continuous maritime denial across every major approach. 

The second is rapid, precise strikes on identified maritime and coastal nodes without forward basing. 

The third is graduated pressure – that is, the ability to tighten or relax pressure as the situation demands. 

Because the ring relies on overlapping nodes instead of occupation, it operates within the legal frame of interdiction and maritime security.

It cannot be overstated how much geography complements U.S. capability here. 

Population and economic infrastructure are concentrated along a narrow coastal strip and a few river valleys. 

Farther inland, the Andes, dense forest and poor roads create natural defenses that hinder mechanized movement. 

(That same terrain and infrastructure limit Caracas’ ability to project forces or reroute logistics.) 

For the U.S., these constraints make a conventional ground invasion both politically costly and operationally inefficient: moving and sustaining large forces over poor logistics corridors would be slow, casualty-prone and politically explosive. 

Amphibious options, meanwhile, face narrow approaches from low ground. 

The terrain favors defensive, guerrilla-style resistance.

In contrast, the northern littoral and offshore approaches offer clear operational advantages for a maritime-air campaign instead. 

Major ports, oil storage nodes and identifiable informal transshipment points link producers, middlemen and export routes. 

They are also vulnerable to detection and precision strikes. 

Offshore rendezvous and small illegal beaches complicate complete interdiction, but they also distribute the target set into predictable chokepoints. 

In other words, the environment all but demands a naval-centric coercion model for the U.S. that denies movement at sea, severs littoral logistics and strikes key coastal chokepoints tied to drug trafficking.

This model draws from the playbook used in Operation Rough Rider, which sought to contain Houthi maritime threats in the Red Sea through decentralized naval formations linked by real-time ISR. 

Carrier aviation and drones provide identification, targeting and strike options, all under the pretense of narcotics interdiction. 

For Venezuela, each strike will demonstrate capability and intent without qualifying as regime change. 

The repetition becomes the message: Any destabilizing activity – trafficking, foreign basing or covert logistics – will be disrupted at will.

In terms of conventional military, Venezuela is dramatically outmatched. 

It boasts an estimated 123,000 active personnel, but its force structure is aging, poorly maintained and heavily dependent on external advisory and logistical support. 

That creates a structural asymmetry. 

Unlike the Houthis’ decentralized, survival-based command model, Venezuela lacks a distributed operational structure supported by networked ISR. 

Its radar and air defense posture are oriented toward traditional corridors and point defenses, and it lacks the targeting capability needed to contest a distributed, multidomain U.S. strike pattern.

The equipment Venezuela does possess – fast-attack boats and Nasir/CM-90–class anti-ship missiles – has potential but can be only so useful without sophisticated targeting. 

Coastal radars near sea level have a limited horizon (only tens of kilometers, depending on antenna height and atmospheric refraction), so shore-based and small-boat missiles cannot exploit their full range without satellite or over-the-horizon targeting links. 

Venezuela fields Russian-supplied S-300VM systems, but their coverage remains largely dependent on fixed sites. 

Iranian-modeled loitering munitions and fast boats can harass littoral operations, but without integrated air defense coordination, they are little more than tactical nuisances against U.S. forces. 

The likely outcome is operational exhaustion, a slow squeeze that degrades revenue and isolates the government in Caracas.

The U.S. isn’t without its own constraints. 

Its goals in the Caribbean are threefold – hemispheric denial, counter-narcotics enforcement and coercive leverage on Venezuela – but the pursuit of any goal comes at the expense of at least one of the others. 

For example, if the Venezuelan government collapsed quickly, it would likely destabilize the hemisphere through mass displacement and create a power vacuum that could be filled by something even more hostile to U.S. interests.

Other, more practical constraints remain. 

Legal boundaries between law enforcement interdiction and the use of force, the need for verifiable intelligence and the risk of civilian casualties all raise the political cost of strikes ashore. 

Regional diplomacy matters are also an issue. 

Colombia, Caribbean states and Brazil can amplify or blunt U.S. movement, depending on their own interests. 

Other countries farther afield could also affect the outcome of the operation. 

Russia, for example, formalized its alignment with Venezuela on Oct. 27 through the Strategic Partnership and Cooperation Agreement. 

It’s not a defense pact, but it does outline strategies to counter Western sanctions and to cooperate on economic, humanitarian and military-technical matters. 

Though Russia has its own limitations, any involvement could raise the cost of escalation. 

Any escalation, such as a limited maritime blockade of exports, would draw significant international backlash from nations reliant on its crude – notably China, India and Caribbean states.

The bottom line is that the U.S. can and will apply calibrated maritime and air pressure where evidence is robust and partners acquiesce, but it will hesitate to escalate into overt regime-targeted strikes or occupation unless compelled by an acute, unambiguous national security threshold. 

The tension between expansive objectives and restrictive constraints will define the tempo and the extent of U.S. operations.

The more likely targets will include small “go-fast” boats, semi-submersibles and motherships that move cargo through the northern approaches, along with offshore tankers and storage sites linked to illicit networks. 

Secondary targets will include coastal logistics nodes: informal jetties, beaches and small piers used for repeated transshipment. 

If pressure proves insufficient or if there is more evidence of clearer threats, the campaign could take aim at processing facilities and airstrips supporting covert logistics flights or regime-affiliated vessels credibly tied to trafficking operations. 

The highest risk threshold – strikes on regime targets, major oil terminals or the like – would constitute direct state pressure, inviting regional backlash and likely an international response. 

It would also jeopardize U.S.-licensed commercial interests in the country.

The most plausible near-term outcome, then, is a protracted, coercive campaign that progressively squeezes trafficking networks while signaling sustained pressure on Caracas. 

If that pressure fails to induce Washington’s desired changes, then operations could expand. 

Miscalculation is the biggest risk: A strike causing major civilian harm or a hostile Russian or regional response could transform a limited coercive campaign into a broader crisis.