A steady build-up of military pressure has been coalescing along the Venezuelan coastline in the South Caribbean, as the United States government announced last month a deployment of an array of military assets to the region to conduct anti-trafficking operations against criminal cartels, allegedly linked to the Venezuela-backed organization, ‘Cartel de Los Soles’.
The deployment consists of military aircraft such as Ospreys; naval vessels that include amphibious assault ships; guided-missile destroyers; naval-reconnaissance crafts; and a nuclear submarine.
Over the weekend, the U.S. Navy repositioned the USS Lake Erie (CG-70) – a guided-missile cruiser – from the Pacific theater, moving it through the Panama Canal into Caribbean waters.
The repositioning has received the attention of every nation in Latin America, after the Trump administration vowed to track down a list of criminal drug cartels recently labeled as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations”.
Speculation, however, has been mounting of an imminent U.S. military invasion of Venezuela to carry out a long-awaited regime-change campaign against the government of the ruthless strongman, Nicolás Maduro.
Last week, the Maduro government responded to the U.S. deployment by activating its territorial militia. A multiple-day recruitment campaign launched by the Bolivarian government in Caracas now claims it has over eight million signatures of citizens who have volunteered to be called up in case of a U.S. invasion.
In a speech in Caracas on Monday, Maduro warned the U.S. President that U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio:
“wants to stain your hands with blood, with South American blood, Caribbean blood, with Venezuelan blood, they want to lead you to a bloodbath and for your surname, Trump, to be stained with blood for centuries to come, with a massacre against the people of Venezuela, with a terrible war against South America and the Caribbean, because this would be a complete war across the entire continent.”
During a press briefing in the Oval Office yesterday afternoon, after announcing the administration’s plans to relocate the U.S. Space Force Command from Colorado to Huntsville, Alabama, the State Department released a video of a recently declassified surveillance footage capturing the moment a small speedboat, manned by several people, as could be deciphered by their heat signal emanating from the infrared camera, suddenly explode in an apparent strike, which, according to the State Department, killed “11 terrorists” allegedly linked to the criminal Venezuelan street gang, ‘Tren de Aragua’.
The U.S. government also stated that the strike occurred in international waters, indicating that the military did not operate in foreign waters, and violating the territorial integrity of any nation.
The incident is a clear escalation that will have a real, regional impact by demonstrating to U.S. partners and adversaries in Latin America that the Trump administration is committed in its efforts to eradicate the threat of narco-trafficking organizations and to “stop the flow of drugs flooding into the country,” as was recently expressed by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt last week.
Nicolás Maduro’s government had the strange initial response to the strike, through the Communications Minister Freddy Ñáñez, by remarking that perhaps the video had been altered, or created by artificial intelligence.
During a walk with Venezuela’s First Lady, President Maduro remarked that “In the face of imperialist threats, God (is) with us”, he told his supporters, without commenting directly on the U.S. strike.
During a White House meeting with the President of Poland on September 3, when asked about the strike that took place near Venezuela the day before, President Trump answered:
“On the boat you had massive amounts of drugs… massive amounts of drugs they were bringing in to our country to kill a lot of people… we have tapes of them speaking… I don’t think they’ll be doing it again… a lot of people are going to be saying “let’s not do that again”, once they watch that tape.”
