THE MEANING OF AMERICA`S VAST MILITARY BUILD-UP OFF VENEZUELA / THE ECONOMIST

Gunboat diplomacy 

The meaning of America’s vast military build-up off Venezuela

The world’s largest aircraft-carrier is making for the Venezuelan coast. Its military aims are unclear 

Photograph: Getty Images

ON OCTOBER 26th the USS Gerald Ford, the largest aircraft-carrier in the world, slipped out of the Croatian port of Split. 

Days earlier the Pentagon’s boss, Pete Hegseth, had ordered her to sail to the Caribbean to join a vast and so-far-unexplained military build-up. 

More than 10% of all deployed American naval assets are currently in the area controlled by the Pentagon’s Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which oversees operations in Central and South America. 

Does the Trump administration have the regime of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela in its sights?

In recent weeks the United States has mounted a campaign of air strikes against boats allegedly linked to drug-smugglers. 

The latest, on October 29th, killed four men. 

The death toll from the 14 strikes so far, in both the Caribbean and the Pacific, is an estimated 61 people. 

Each time the Trump administration has stressed that its strikes took place in international waters. 

Many legal experts say they are blatantly illegal, questioning the administration’s justification that it is in an “armed conflict” with drug-traffickers. 

Neither Congress nor United States military commanders have pushed back much against that claim, though Admiral Alvin Holsey, SOUTHCOM’s commander, recently said he would leave his post. 

He is said to have disagreed with Mr Hegseth over the attacks.

The broader military build-up seems at least partly directed at Mr Maduro, who lost the 2024 election but fraudulently claimed he won. 

The United States accuses him of being a drug kingpin, a claim viewed sceptically by many analysts. 

Mr Trump, who has also described Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s president, as a “drug leader”, has openly hinted at the prospect of strikes on land. 

“We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela,” he said, adding: “We’re going to stop them by land also…The land is going to be next.”

Plenty of firepower is in place. 

The build-up of ships is the largest in the region since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, with capacity to launch around 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles. 

The three destroyers accompanying the Ford could collectively launch around 70 more, reckon Mark Cancian and Chris Park of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think-tank in Washington. 

B-1 and B-52 bombers, as well as helicopters assigned to the United States’ special forces, have been flying near Venezuela’s coast. 

This could all be an effort to rattle Mr Maduro, or to map out his air defences, of which he has recently been boasting—or both.

On October 26th an American destroyer docked in Trinidad & Tobago, an island country 11km from Venezuela, as part of what the United States called a training exercise involving the US Marine Corps. 

That could serve as a cover for moving naval assets closer to the shore. 

Mr Hegseth has announced a new counternarcotics task-force that will be led by one of the marines’ three expeditionary forces.

The aim of this gunboat diplomacy is fuzzy. 

Different advisers within the Trump administration have so far taken divergent approaches to Venezuela. 

One possibility is that Mr Trump seeks to capture or kill Mr Maduro, perhaps with a special-forces operation. 

(Attacking military infrastructure or a ground invasion is still unlikely.) 

Mr Trump says he has authorised a covert CIA campaign inside the country, which is said to include lethal operations.

The goal may also be to heap pressure on the dictator until someone in his inner circle betrays him. 

The $50m reward that the United States has offered for information leading to his capture has not turned anyone, yet. 

But the regime is worried. 

It has raised militias, increased security and paved the way for a state of emergency.

Instead of attacking Mr Maduro and his regime directly, Mr Trump could just continue to carry out his stated aims and attack sites in Venezuela which he can claim to be associated with drug-traffickers. 

That would do little to alleviate America’s drug problem, though it might let Mr Trump declare victory and move on. 

The fentanyl that enters the United States is mostly produced in Mexico, not Venezuela. 

Any strikes on land, bringing the conflict from international waters to sovereign territory, would be an extraordinary escalation, pulling America’s focus away from Europe and the Pacific despite the insistence from many in the Pentagon that its “pacing threat” is China.

Speaking to his generals and admirals last month, Mr Hegseth praised the Gulf war of 1991 as a model “limited mission with overwhelming forces and a clear end state”. 

He criticised the “mission creep” in Vietnam.

Now he is in a bind in Venezuela. 

Pinprick air strikes will probably be ineffective. 

A ground war could become a quagmire. 

Even if Mr Maduro were unseated, and the man who won the elections last year, 

Edmundo González, were put in power, no doubt to euphoria in Venezuela, it is unclear what would happen next. 

“The risks of violence in any post-Maduro scenario should not be downplayed,” notes the International Crisis Group, a think-tank in Brussels. 

“Many senior military officers could resist regime change.”

When you have an aircraft-carrier...

In any case, the clock is ticking. 

The Ford is a “use-or-lose asset”, notes the CSIS, because the Pentagon will be reluctant to keep one of its most important warships in the Caribbean for long unless it is truly needed. 

It will take at least a week or more for it to get there. 

CSIS says its deployment is one of two indicators for an “attack and invasion” scenario. 

The other would be the creation of “tent cities” in Puerto Rico, a United States territory in the Caribbean, which could house many troops. 

There is no sign of them.