Maduro has to make the right decision fast – he could find himself trapped and might soon discover that he cannot flee the country even if he decided to. The Trump administration has already offered a US$50 million bounty for information leading to the arrest or conviction of the Venezuelan leader – doubling the US$25 million reward initially offered during Trump’s first presidency.
So far, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro has survived at least one attempt on his life, when two drones exploded as he was speaking at a military parade in Caracas in 2018. He accused neighboring Colombia of being responsible, although some opponents suggested the episode was a false flag operation staged by the Maduro regime itself to win sympathy.
In May 2020, Venezuelan security forces foiled an attempt by about 60 dissidents, accompanied by two former U.S. Green Berets, to capture and oust him in a plot that involved infiltrating the country by sea. Now, the U.S. military is getting ready to “involve directly” to overthrow the dictator after all indirect attempts to oust Maduro failed.
The writing is on the wall that President Donald Trump was preparing to hit Maduro militarily when at least 57 people have been killed in more than a dozen U.S. military strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. Washington has accused Maduro and other senior Venezuelan officials of being at the head of a cartel smuggling drugs into the U.S.
Of course, Maduro denies the charge, and even experts dispute the significance of Venezuela’s role in the illegal drug trade. But that didn’t stop Trump from intensifying the pressure further by authorizing the CIA – known for carrying out assassination jobs – to carry out covert activities inside Venezuela, although the contents of his instructions are classified and unknown.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reportedly had tried – and failed – to bribe the Venezuelan president’s pilot into diverting his plane to enable American authorities to capture him. Tensions hit the roof last week, when the Pentagon announced that the USS Gerald Ford, the biggest and most advanced aircraft carrier in the U.S. Navy, would sail from Europe to join a military force in the Caribbean.
The dispatch of the carrier – consisting of destroyers armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles, B-1 and B-52 bombers, and special forces helicopters – is the strongest sign yet that Trump is serious about striking targets on land in what his administration has said is an effort to destroy drug smuggling operations. The deployment marks the U.S.’ biggest naval buildup in the region since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.
The carrier will be joining eight warships, F-35B jet fighters, P-8 Poseidon surveillance planes, AC-130J Ghostriders, MQ-9 Reaper drones and other weaponry in the region. The U.S. has also deployed the Army’s secretive 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, known as the “Night Stalkers,” and the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit that is capable of carrying out special operations missions.
Crucially, moving a carrier out of the Mediterranean not only takes critical combat power out of the region, but also would leave – for the first time in decades – no carrier in either U.S. Central Command (home of U.S. forces in the Middle East) or U.S. European Command. This means Trump is sending a message that the wars in Gaza and in Ukraine do not have priority as that of Venezuela.
Combined with the ships and Marines already on station in nearby waters, the Ford’s air power will give Trump the ability to strike the cartels’ drug facilities anywhere in Venezuela at any time. “If you are a narco-terrorist smuggling drugs in our hemisphere, we will treat you like we treat Al-Qaeda. Day or NIGHT, we will map your networks, track your people, hunt you down, and kill you,” – U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said.
More importantly, the White House’s decision to take things into its own hands suggests that the Trump administration is losing patience and giving up on the hope that Venezuela’s military leaders will rise up and overthrow Maduro themselves. The Trump administration has long described Maduro as an illegitimate leader and accused him of running a criminal cartel.
The U.S. has identified targets in Venezuela that include military facilities used to smuggle drugs. The potential targets include ports and airports controlled by the military that are allegedly used to traffic drugs, as well as naval facilities and airstrips. Air attacks on targets inside Venezuela – if Trump gives the green light – would mark a significant escalation, which has until now been limited to airstrikes on drug boats.
Venezuela has long been a favourite transit route for Colombian cocaine, and some high-ranking Venezuelan government and military officials have been charged by American prosecutors with smuggling that drug. Donald Trump has focused in particular on combating the fentanyl crisis due to skyrocketing deaths related to the drug in the U.S. in recent years.
Synthetic opioids, mostly fentanyl, killed more than 48,000 last year alone, while cocaine killed 22,000. “President Trump has been clear in his message to Maduro: stop sending drugs and criminals to our country. The President is prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our homeland,” – said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly.
In fact, the fentanyl problem is so critical that Trump was willing to slash “fentanyl tariffs” on Chinese import from 20% to 10% after he met China’s Xi Jinping in South Korea this week. The U.S. president said President Xi will work “very hard to stop the flow” of fentanyl, even though China has promised to crack down on the drug for years, but has not seriously following through.
To justify land strikes on Venezuela, the Trump administration has started a messaging campaign to project Maduro as the head of a drug trafficking enterprise that seeks to “flood” the U.S. with drugs. The U.S. has also called Venezuela a “central hub of terrorist activity” and have claimed that Maduro’s regime is secretly running the cartels.
The deployment of the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group to the Mediterranean could be a psychological warfare strategy. While hitting targets on land would increase pressure on the dictator to flee to Russia or China, the U.S. could be testing the water whether Maduro is weak and the military will switch sides. The military could easily betray Maduro the moment U.S. carries out air strikes on the Venezuelan armed forces.
Venezuela’s military has quite sophisticated air defenses, including a substantial amount of Russian-made equipment. It is believed to operate four to six Russian-made S-300 air-defense systems and man-portable systems, which could potentially detect and shoot down U.S. military aircraft. Exactly how well the S-300s work or how well-trained Venezuela’s air-defense forces are is another different story though.
Last week, Maduro warned the U.S. that Venezuela had about 5,000 Russian-made Igla-S man-portable surface-to-air missiles (MANPADS). “Any military force in the world knows the power of the Igla-S, and Venezuela has no fewer than 5,000 of them positioned at key anti-air defense posts – to guarantee the peace, stability and tranquility of our people,” – he said.
It will not be a walk in the park for Trump. Last weekend, an aircraft sanctioned by the U.S. for its ties to illicit Russian military activity arrived in Caracas, raising the prospect that Russia could increase its support of Venezuela’s forces in the event of a U.S. attack. While Maduro is not expected to flee without a fight, he does not have many cards to play.
The U.S.’ game plan is to pressure Maduro’s inner circle to turn against him if the first round of airstrikes can’t force him out of power. If strikes on naval and air force targets ashore don’t force Maduro to resign, the next round of strikes could go after leadership targets, especially the dictator’s most trusted lieutenants and cronies. By then, it is possible Maduro will fold his cards and go.
With seven out of 10 Venezuelan households living in poverty in 2024, the country is already in a deplorable state. Shrinking GDP, high unemployment and underemployment, 270% inflation, government persecution, and devastating spending power are recipes for a bloody coup if given the right dose of push. A U.S. attack would cause further damage and could spark the downfall of Maduro.
Still, even if Maduro’s exit might set the scene for a democratic transition, it could spawn a replacement loyal to theleftist movementspearheaded by Maduro’s late predecessor, Hugo Chávez, giving birth to yet another dictator. The reason why the U.S. has to make one big circle of accusing Maduro as a drug lord instead of directly assassinating him is because Maduro is still a sitting leader of a sovereign country.
Maduro is not Hitler. And he certainly is not Osama bin Laden, who had killed thousands of Americans before his termination by a Navy SEAL team in 2011. Likewise, Qassem Suleimani was killed by a drone strike ordered by Trump in 2020 because the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds force had killed Americans. Maduro can only be toppled in a coup, or forced to quit.
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November 2nd, 2025 by financetwitter
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