There are eight U.S. Navy vessels in, near, or on their way to the Caribbean, including two currently in the Pacific. This is a significant build-up for a region that has rarely seen such a large presence of U.S. military vessels, and a move that has escalated tensions with nearby Venezuela, reported the Washington Post. The ships are part of an “enhanced counter-narcotics operation” to carry out drug interdiction missions in Latin America, an unnamed defense official said. In total, three destroyers, two landing dock ships, an amphibious assault ship, a cruiser, and a littoral combat ship are either in the region or on their way. The destroyers are each carrying detachments of U.S. Coast Guard and law enforcement officials aboard, who would carry out detentions, or arrests in drug interdictions. The three landing ships, led by the USS Iwo Jima, were held up in Norfolk last week by Hurricane Erin, and were still off the U.S. east coast as of Aug. 26.
The news of a potential build-up of warships in the region has raised suspicions that the U.S. might take military actions against Venezuela, whose President Nicolás Maduro is accused by the Trump administration of running a drug cartel, the Post report states. The United States this month raised the bounty for Maduro’s capture for the second time this year—doubling it from $25 million to $50 million. Maduro and his officials have announced the mobilization of 15,000 troops to the Colombian border to “ensure peace in the area” and called on Venezuelans to enlist in militias to “fight the empire.”
Asked by reporters about the possibility of sending troops to Venezuela, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that President Trump “is prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice.”
“The Maduro regime is not the legitimate government of Venezuela,” Leavitt claimed. “It is a narco-terror cartel, and Maduro, it is the view of this administration, is not a legitimate president. He is a fugitive head of this cartel who has been indicted in the United States for trafficking drugs into the country.”
And yet business as usual goes on. The Trump administration last month reissued a Biden-era license to U.S. oil and gas giant Chevron Corporation to resume oil operations in Venezuela, and Venezuelan oil is still coming to the U.S. Also, U.S. deportation flights are still going to Venezuela at the rate of about two per week. Those flights require coordination with senior government officials in Venezuela.
