Trump escalates pressure on Venezuela with unclear endgame

The Trump administration is rapidly escalating its pressure campaign against Venezuela, with America’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford, about to take up a position within striking distance of the country, even as President Donald Trump’s aides provide conflicting accounts of what, exactly, they are seeking to achieve. Trump held back-to-back days of meetings at the White House over the past two days, reviewing military options, including the use of Special Operations forces and direct action inside Venezuela.
It is still not clear whether Trump has made a decision about what kind of action to authorise, if any. On Friday, he told reporters on Air Force One that “I sort of made up my mind.” “I can’t tell you what it is,” he said, “but we made a lot of progress with Venezuela in terms of stopping drugs from pouring in.” It is possible Trump is relying on the arrival of so much firepower to intimidate the government of Nicolás Maduro, who the United States and many of its allies say is not Venezuela’s legitimate president. Maduro has put his forces on high alert, leaving the two countries with their weapons cocked and ready for war.
There were signs that the administration was moving into a new and more aggressive posture. Shortly after a meeting on Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on social media that the mission in the Caribbean now had a name — “Southern Spear.” He described its goal in expansive terms, saying the operation “removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere.” “The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighbourhood,” he wrote, “and we will protect it.” With the arrival of the Ford and three accompanying missile-firing Navy destroyers, there are now 15,000 troops in the region, more than there have been at any time in decades. The only thing missing is a strategic explanation from the Trump administration that would clarify why the United States is amassing such a large force. Hegseth’s posting on the social platform X was only the latest in a series of statements from administration officials that, at best, are in tension with one another. Some are outright contradictory.
Trump has been the most consistent, saying it is all about drugs. But that would not explain why the Ford was rushed from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Caribbean region, adding to a US force that has now reached 15,000 soldiers and sailors, to attack small boats that until early September had been intercepted by the Coast Guard. Nor would it explain why Colombia or Mexico — Mexico being the main conduit for fentanyl — are not in the Navy’s sights. So far, the United States has launched 20 strikes on speedboats, killing at least 80 people in an operation that legal experts said might violate international law.
In private, Trump has talked to aides about Venezuela’s huge oil reserves, estimated at 300 billion barrels, the largest in the world. He had an offer from Maduro that would have essentially given the United States rights to much of it, without resorting to military action. Trump called off those talks, though Friday a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the situation, said the talks were not entirely dead — and that the deployment of the aircraft carrier was a means to gain leverage over Maduro.
If so, it would be a return to the era of “gunboat diplomacy,” a phrase that became popular in the 19th century as great powers used their naval capabilities to intimidate lesser powers — including Venezuela, which was the target of a European-led naval blockade from 1902 to 1903. Just as the blockade was ending, the US Navy intervened to support Panama’s secession from Colombia, paving the way for the construction of the Panama Canal. And then there is the question of whether Trump is pursuing regime change in Venezuela, in hopes of installing a government friendlier to the United States. When Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a private meeting with House and Senate leaders last week, he insisted that ousting Maduro was not the administration’s objective, and that any reporting to the contrary was a creation of the press.
What is left is strategic incoherence, with officials explaining a different mix of grievances, objectives and acceptable outcomes. Just a day before Hegseth said “Southern Spear” was about protecting the whole Western Hemisphere, Rubio indicated that there was a simple explanation. “This is a counter-drug operation,” he told reporters travelling with him in Canada. “And if they stop sending drug boats, there won’t be any problems.”
At the White House, Anna Kelly, a spokesperson, said on Friday that Trump’s message to Maduro was to stop sending drugs and criminals to the United States. “The president has made clear that he will continue to strike narco-terrorists trafficking illicit narcotics,” she said, “anything else is speculation, and should be treated as such.”
While the president has publicly focused on confronting the region’s drug threat to the United States, in private he has talked more about Maduro’s fate, and about oil, aides say. “The Trump administration’s decision to conduct military operations in the Caribbean is consistent with their contention that the traffickers are terrorists, not just criminals and as such should be dealt with just as we have dealt with terrorists elsewhere,” said Patrick Duddy, a former US ambassador to Venezuela and a visiting senior lecturer at Duke University. But he added: “I am not certain of whether they have conflated counter-narcotics with regime change in Venezuela. If in fact the administration sees Maduro as the head of a cartel and views him as a fugitive for American justice, it would suggest their ambitions are greater than simply intercepting drugs in the Caribbean.”

By David E. SangernThe writer is the White House and National Security Correspondent for The New York Times

Eric Schmitt
The writer is a national security correspondent for The New York Times

Tyler Pager
The writer is a correspondent, covering President Trump and his administration
Zolan Kanno-Youngs
The writer is a White House correspondent for The New York Times