On January 20, 2025 Donald Trump returned to the White House. When it comes to the use of American force around the world, commentators focused on the internal tensions within the MAGA movement, which proclaims America First. Since taking office, the president has ordered two major military operations, both thousands of miles from the US: the operation against the Houthis in Yemen, and the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities.
Both actions, and especially the latter, threatened to split the movement that promised to end America's "endless wars." But now it appears the president is preparing the ground for a third use of force, and this time, much closer to home.
Paper tigers
Since the beginning of last month, more and more reports have emerged about a secret directive Trump signed instructing the Pentagon, or by its new name, the Department of War, to prepare for military action against drug cartels in Latin America. Now it seems the blue arrows on US operations-room maps are pointing toward Venezuela.
In recent weeks the US Navy has concentrated warships, a nuclear submarine, cruisers, destroyers and even landing ships, a threatening hint of a readiness for an invasion that is still hard to see on the horizon. At the center of the force stands the amphibious assault ship Iwo Jima with thousands of Marines on board, whose primary role is to support an amphibious operation. At the same time F-35s, drones and Osprey helicopters that are used to land special forces were deployed to Puerto Rico.
On September 2, the first use of force took place: US forces attacked a small boat accused of drug smuggling. "We blew them up," the president said of the strike that the administration claimed killed 11 drug traffickers. Two days later Venezuelan fighter jets flew low over a US ship. The Pentagon called that "an extreme provocation."
On Monday Trump announced on his Truth Social account another strike on a small vessel carrying three people. As in the previous strike he posted video showing the small boat exploding. "These most violent drug cartels pose a threat to US national security, our foreign policy and our vital interests," he wrote.
For many years Venezuela has been a failed state. About 8 million refugees, a quarter of the population, have fled the country since 2014, when President Nicolás Maduro began repressing the opposition and refused to accept the voters' verdict. Migration routes came to be littered with paper creations, made from worthless bolívar banknotes that refugees carried while fleeing a state that collapsed under Maduro's and his predecessor Hugo Chávez's "socialism."
The regime rests on a narrow core: military officers who control state companies, police and members of the colectivos - armed street gangs. Those outside that circle live in poverty or flee, while an electoral fraud in 2024 crushed what remained of the opposition and sent it into exile or underground. "This is a classic repressive state, like Russia or Iran," says Dr. Ben-Zion Telefus of Bar-Ilan University, an expert on the politics of the drug war and host of The Stray Weed podcast.
"If we are attacked, we will enter into armed conflict," Maduro threatened, calling the US deployment "the greatest threat on the continent in 100 years." Bombastic propaganda videos about "mobilizing popular militias" intended to stop the Americans mostly feature state workers and pensioners who depend on participating in Maduro's staged rallies, and in recent weeks Maduro has taken to wearing military uniforms.
The Trump administration links Maduro to drug trafficking, mainly through the gang Tren de Aragua and by branding the Caracas regime as the Cartel of the Suns, a play on the army rank insignia that resemble suns, allegedly running a drug trafficking network from within state mechanisms. That labeling was also the rationale offered for doubling the bounty on Maduro's head to $50 million.
Tren de Aragua, which Trump has designated a terrorist organization, is a gang that built its power inside the Tocorón prison in Venezuela, where authorities allowed its leaders to run the facility in exchange for maintaining order. In May 2023 the prison was dismantled in a publicized operation. "The dismantling actually increased their strength; they had to find new sources of income and began to spread through South, Central and North America," says Dr. Telefus. According to him, the gang found revenue streams based on the same network of refugees who fled Venezuela: extortion, cross-border smuggling, human trafficking, and drugs.
A perfect fit
So why is Venezuela specifically in the sights?
There are several reasons to believe Washington will soon begin striking targets on Venezuelan soil, actions that make a war with it fit the White House like a glove. "What you are seeing now is not training," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a visit to the Iwo Jima off the coast of Puerto Rico. "This is a real mission for the vital interests of the US, to end the poisoning of the American people."
The US War on Drugs did not start with Trump, but under his presidency it takes on a meaning tied to the administration's raison d'etre: protecting the American middle class, whose livelihoods allegedly were stolen by globalist interests, whose dignity and beliefs are harmed and cancelled by woke culture and drug traffickers, with the Chinese and pharmaceutical companies supposedly conspiring to kill Trump and his loved ones for profit. Those are central enemies of MAGA, and the war on them is America First.
Conveniently for the much-maligned neoconservatives, who were pushed out of the Republican mainstream, a confrontation with the Maduro regime achieves a "classic" objective: reestablishing American dominance in the Western Hemisphere, the regional backyard, and fighting communism. It appears Marco Rubio, secretary of state and national security adviser whose influence has been growing, is leading the move. Besides being a remnant of the pre-Trump Republican Party, and the son of Cuban refugees, he sees socialist regimes in Latin America as a strategic and moral threat.
But will a war in Venezuela reduce drug trafficking? "Trump is focused on supply-side measures, which historically have proven to be the least productive," says Telefus. "This administration has no coherent policy that connects means to ends. Fentanyl is mainly illicitly manufactured in Mexico with precursors from China. Venezuela provides mostly cocaine, and even that in negligible quantities."
Iranian advisers assist Maduro
The International Institute for Strategic Studies estimated Maduro's forces at roughly 123,000 soldiers, 220,000 militia members and 8,000 reservists. The Venezuelan military holds a mix of Western and non-Western weapons systems: fighter jets bought from the US in the 1980s alongside Russian aircraft and missiles.
An interesting aspect is the relationship between Maduro's regime and Iran, which goes beyond mutual moral support between two states isolated by what they call "American imperialism." It is a relationship with significant military aspects; for example in 2022 then-defense minister Benny Gantz revealed that Iran had transferred to Maduro technologies for producing Mohajer-6 drones on Venezuelan soil and the appropriate armaments.
Dani Sitrinovich, former head of the Iran branch in AMAN's research division and a researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, explains that the connection between the countries is much deeper. "Venezuela is effectively Iran's primary operational hub in Latin America," he says. "Iran has economic, security and political interests in Venezuela. All the assistance it provides to the Venezuelans, from missile boats to establishing a drone production facility, serves those interests."
According to Sitrinovich, "Iran uses that presence as a certain threat for a theoretical day of reckoning when it would need access to a point within reach of the continental US. It very much wants to keep that influence. There are Iranian advisers who could assist the Maduro regime and its military."
The fall of Maduro, a scenario that currently seems distant, could lead to improved relations between Venezuela, the US and Israel, and severely damage Iran's foothold in Latin America.
The American threat has also produced a series of high-level discussions between the leaders of the last country the US attacked and the one that appears next in line. Last week Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, spoke with Maduro.
Hopes that the punitive blows the Iranian regime sustained would lead to its downfall have so far faded, but it may be that Venezuela will be an easier target for a quick American victory, even without an ambitious US invasion.
"You do not have to invade Venezuela to depose Maduro," explains Dr. Telefus. "The best way is to change the calculations of senior Venezuelan officers, who hold the state." According to Telefus, if enough generals are convinced that Maduro's days are numbered and receive guarantees for their security and status, they may agree "to get rid of Maduro" and craft a path to regime change.
"The Trump administration is very focused on optics. It can say 'look, I'm attacking those who poison the US. You don't have to occupy the country, just remove the person," Telefus concludes. If we choose an image from the president's world, Venezuela offers a very attractive value for money - and that is what makes it, in all likelihood, the administration's current target.
