The Trump administration is rapidly escalating its pressure campaign against Venezuela, with America’s largest aircraft carrier, the Ford, about to take up a position within striking distance of the country, even as President Trump’s aides provide conflicting accounts of what, exactly, they are seeking to achieve.
Mr. 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 Mr. Trump has made a decision about what kind of action to authorize, 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 Mr. 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. Mr. 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 neighborhood,” 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. Mr. Hegseth’s posting on 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.
Mr. 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 an American 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.
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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, Mr. 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 Mr. Maduro that would have essentially given the United States rights to much of it, without resorting to military action. Mr. Trump called off those talks, though on 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 Mr. 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 U.S. 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 Mr. 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 Mr. Maduro was not the administration’s objective, and that any reporting to the contrary was a creation of the press.
