By his own count, President Donald Trump has “settled” eight wars, from the Gaza Strip to Southeast Asia, during his nine months in office. But in a place much closer to home, he now seems determined to start one.
With dozens of warships and planes, and thousands of U.S. troops newly deployed to the Caribbean Sea, Trump has declared an “armed conflict” with drug trafficking groups he has designated international terrorists. U.S. air attacks have blown up at least seven boats that Trump has charged were carrying drugs to the United States in international waters from Venezuela, in the process killing dozens of alleged traffickers.
He has also signed a “finding,” or authorization document, for CIA covert operations in Venezuela, and charged its president, Nicolás Maduro, with being illegitimately elected and heading a narcotics cartel.
“I authorized it for two reasons,” Trump said last week. Venezuela, he said, was the “worst abuser” of “open border” policies under the Biden administration, emptying its “prisons, mental institutions, insane asylums” of migrants to the United States. “The other thing is drugs. ... We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela.”
Asked if he had authorized the CIA to “take out” Maduro, Trump said it would be “a ridiculous question for me to answer. But I think Venezuela is feeling the heat.”
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly referred to Trump’s public statements in response to a request for clarification of his policy in the region. She added in an email that “these decisive strikes have been against designated narcoterrorists bringing deadly poison to our shores and the President will continue to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice.”
Trump has made clear his intentions to go beyond blowing up boats, saying “we’re going to stop them by land” in Venezuela. Several people familiar with internal administration deliberations said any initial land attack would probably be a targeted operation on alleged trafficker encampments or clandestine airstrips, rather than a direct attempt to unseat Maduro.
Some said the U.S. deployments and boat strikes were psychological warfare to promote fractures in the Venezuelan armed forces or persuade Maduro to step down.
But Trump has said nothing to dispel concerns that the United States could launch a full-scale military operation.
Having declared war against narco-terrorists, and designated Maduro as the head of at least one of them, “there really is no turning back unless Maduro is essentially not in power,” said one person among those interviewed for this article who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity about the sensitive issue.
“At the end of the day if you have authority to take out cartel runners” at sea, “you can take out the cartel boss,” the person said.
The vast majority of illicit drugs entering the United States — and virtually all of the fentanyl — do not come from or through the Caribbean, but from along the Pacific coast or by land from Mexico, according to U.S. government and U.N. experts. Venezuela is generally used as a conduit for cocaine produced and trafficked by Colombian guerrilla groups — primarily the National Liberation Army, or ELN, by its Spanish initials.
The Cartel de los Soles, the terrorist-designated Venezuelan group that, according to the Trump administration, is headed by Maduro, is largely made up of senior Venezuelan military and regime officials who facilitate and take a cut of profits from drug trafficking and other criminal activity.
“I think we are a ways off from having a military presence on the ground” in Venezuela, said Juan Gonzalez, who served as National Security Council senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs during the Biden administration. “It doesn’t mean that they won’t use U.S. assets to try to go inside of Venezuelan territory, but it’s much easier to go after ELN safe havens ... that border Colombia [inside Venezuela] than to go inside Caracas.”
While Trump’s precise instructions to the CIA are highly classified, two people familiar with the document he signed described it as authorizing aggressive agency action against the Venezuelan government and associated drug traffickers.
The document does not explicitly order the CIA to overthrow Maduro, but it authorizes steps that could lead to that outcome, said the people familiar with it.
The spy agency has moved to beef up its presence in the region, surging personnel to the Caribbean and surrounding area to collect human and electronic intelligence, the people familiar with the matter said. The Pentagon has already surged U.S. special operations forces into the region, including an elite helicopter unit.
“The U.S. is at a turning point — Washington needs to decide what it wants,” said Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela expert at the Atlantic Council. “The president came to office campaigning to end endless wars, but he’s found himself now championing what may be America’s longest war, which is the war on drugs.”
With dozens of warships and planes, and thousands of U.S. troops newly deployed to the Caribbean Sea, Trump has declared an “armed conflict” with drug trafficking groups he has designated international terrorists. U.S. air attacks have blown up at least seven boats that Trump has charged were carrying drugs to the United States in international waters from Venezuela, in the process killing dozens of alleged traffickers.
He has also signed a “finding,” or authorization document, for CIA covert operations in Venezuela, and charged its president, Nicolás Maduro, with being illegitimately elected and heading a narcotics cartel.
“I authorized it for two reasons,” Trump said last week. Venezuela, he said, was the “worst abuser” of “open border” policies under the Biden administration, emptying its “prisons, mental institutions, insane asylums” of migrants to the United States. “The other thing is drugs. ... We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela.”
Asked if he had authorized the CIA to “take out” Maduro, Trump said it would be “a ridiculous question for me to answer. But I think Venezuela is feeling the heat.”
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly referred to Trump’s public statements in response to a request for clarification of his policy in the region. She added in an email that “these decisive strikes have been against designated narcoterrorists bringing deadly poison to our shores and the President will continue to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice.”
Trump has made clear his intentions to go beyond blowing up boats, saying “we’re going to stop them by land” in Venezuela. Several people familiar with internal administration deliberations said any initial land attack would probably be a targeted operation on alleged trafficker encampments or clandestine airstrips, rather than a direct attempt to unseat Maduro.
Some said the U.S. deployments and boat strikes were psychological warfare to promote fractures in the Venezuelan armed forces or persuade Maduro to step down.
But Trump has said nothing to dispel concerns that the United States could launch a full-scale military operation.
Having declared war against narco-terrorists, and designated Maduro as the head of at least one of them, “there really is no turning back unless Maduro is essentially not in power,” said one person among those interviewed for this article who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity about the sensitive issue.
“At the end of the day if you have authority to take out cartel runners” at sea, “you can take out the cartel boss,” the person said.
The vast majority of illicit drugs entering the United States — and virtually all of the fentanyl — do not come from or through the Caribbean, but from along the Pacific coast or by land from Mexico, according to U.S. government and U.N. experts. Venezuela is generally used as a conduit for cocaine produced and trafficked by Colombian guerrilla groups — primarily the National Liberation Army, or ELN, by its Spanish initials.
The Cartel de los Soles, the terrorist-designated Venezuelan group that, according to the Trump administration, is headed by Maduro, is largely made up of senior Venezuelan military and regime officials who facilitate and take a cut of profits from drug trafficking and other criminal activity.
“I think we are a ways off from having a military presence on the ground” in Venezuela, said Juan Gonzalez, who served as National Security Council senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs during the Biden administration. “It doesn’t mean that they won’t use U.S. assets to try to go inside of Venezuelan territory, but it’s much easier to go after ELN safe havens ... that border Colombia [inside Venezuela] than to go inside Caracas.”
While Trump’s precise instructions to the CIA are highly classified, two people familiar with the document he signed described it as authorizing aggressive agency action against the Venezuelan government and associated drug traffickers.
The document does not explicitly order the CIA to overthrow Maduro, but it authorizes steps that could lead to that outcome, said the people familiar with it.
The spy agency has moved to beef up its presence in the region, surging personnel to the Caribbean and surrounding area to collect human and electronic intelligence, the people familiar with the matter said. The Pentagon has already surged U.S. special operations forces into the region, including an elite helicopter unit.
“The U.S. is at a turning point — Washington needs to decide what it wants,” said Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela expert at the Atlantic Council. “The president came to office campaigning to end endless wars, but he’s found himself now championing what may be America’s longest war, which is the war on drugs.”
