Gunboats follow sanctions in US strategy on Venezuela
The US naval buildup off Venezuela's coast is not about drug interdiction, but imperial pressure. Caracas's response, grounded in asymmetric defense and bolstered by key Eurasian alliances, has transformed a lopsided showdown into a contest of global powers.
The US has entered a new phase in its long war on Venezuela. Having exhausted economic and diplomatic tools, it has now turned to the military lever, dispatching warships to the Caribbean in a naked display of force.
This escalation caps years of imperial targeting of the Bolivarian government in Caracas – beginning with sweeping sanctions under former US President Barack Obama, tightened to unprecedented levels under President Donald Trump, and sustained through bipartisan consensus.
Officially, Washington frames this as part of a broad “counter narcotics” campaign targeting so-called terrorist organizations. But that story collapses under scrutiny. What the US really seeks is regime change and regional control, thinly veiled behind drug war rhetoric.
Lawfare as prelude to war
The legal framework underpinning the US operation began with a secret presidential directive granting the Pentagon authority to target designated foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). Washington is sending assault ships to waters off Venezuela to crack down on drug trafficking, an anonymous American defense official said. The move, confirmed by Trump, targets cartels he blames for smuggling fentanyl and other drugs. Among these groups is the so-called “Cartel de los Soles” (Cartel of the Suns), a term once used informally to describe scattered corruption networks in Venezuela's military. Washington has now repackaged this into a centralized cartel, with the Trump administration labeling it a terrorist organization, though its existence is disputed. In July, the Trump administration suggested that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro led the Cartel de los Soles, with support from other senior Venezuelan officials.
The US Justice Department doubled down, offering a $50 million bounty for Maduro’s capture. This lawfare strategy, stripping a head of state of sovereign immunity and branding him a narco-terrorist, is designed to justify open aggression before domestic and international audiences.
According to Christopher Sabatini, a research fellow at London’s Chatham House, the US deployment of ships, the designation of the Venezuelan “Tren de Aragua” as a terrorist organization, and the increased bounty on Maduro are all elements of a White House strategy aimed at making “as much noise as possible” to please Venezuela’s opposition – many of whom support Trump – and to “scare maneuver” senior government officials into defecting.
Fictional cartels, real deployments
Expert analyses, including those by InSight Crime – a think tank that specializes in corruption in the Americas –and former US intelligence officers, have discredited the claim that Venezuela hosts a state-run drug cartel. Earlier this month, InSight Crime said US sanctions on the Cartel de los Soles were misplaced. “The US government’s new sanctions against Venezuela’s so-called ‘Cartel of the Suns’ incorrectly portray it as a hierarchical, ideologically driven drug trafficking organisation rather than a profit-based system of generalised corruption involving high-ranking military figures,” it wrote.
Reports issued by impartial international bodies, such as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime World Drug Report 2025, say that the main routes for cocaine smuggling from the Andean region to North America are mainly concentrated in the Pacific and through Central American corridors.
The Eastern Route through the Caribbean Sea constitutes parts of which pass near Venezuela, a statistically negligible proportion of the total flows. This disparity makes targeting Venezuela as a priority in the fight against drugs disproportionate to the size of its actual role in major smuggling networks.
Organized crime analysts and former intelligence officials, such as Fulton Armstrong, also question the American narrative that portrays the Carte de los Soles as an integrated state-run hierarchical organization. Specialized analyses, including previous reports by organizations such as InSight Crime, suggest that the term arose informally to describe sporadic corruption networks within the Venezuelan armed forces that profit from illicit activities, rather than as a centralized structure similar to Mexican drug cartels.
The American narrative seems to have pieced together these disparate phenomena and presented them as a single, cohesive entity to serve a political goal, which is to falsely portray the Venezuelan state as a “narco-state.”
On the other hand, the Trump administration has not provided any credible physical evidence linking Venezuela specifically to the production or trafficking of fentanyl, which is currently the highest priority for public health and national security in the US.
Yet Washington's military footprint tells a different story. The deployment includes Arleigh Burke-class destroyers with Aegis combat systems, Tomahawk cruise missiles, and the Iwo Jima amphibious assault group.
The precedent evokes troubling historical examples, such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident that escalated the Vietnam War, or the 1989 US invasion of Panama to arrest president Manuel Noriega under drug trafficking charges.
Psychological warfare, regional signaling, and oil
The highly visible US military posture, coupled with vague official statements, serves as a powerful tool of psychological pressure. It aims to sow uncertainty and stress within Venezuela’s institutions, particularly the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, by encouraging defections or disrupting command cohesion – all without firing a single shot. It also provides the domestic opposition with leverage to regain political initiative after repeated failures.
By projecting overwhelming force just offshore, Washington hopes to recreate such fissures inside the Bolivarian armed forces, banking on history to repeat itself. Yet unlike two decades ago, today’s command structure has been hardened by years of siege, external training, and deepened ties with Russian and Iranian military counterparts.
The American operation serves multiple functions. Besides aiming to fracture Venezuela’s military command and re-energize a failed opposition, it also signals to regional allies of Caracas – Cuba and Nicaragua – and international backers – Russia, China, Iran – that the US intends to hold its so-called backyard.
Beyond Havana and Managua, other Latin American governments have grown wary of Washington’s naval assertiveness.
Reports by the military portal DefesaNet described “Operation Imeri,” a clandestine plan allegedly floated inside Itamaraty to extract Maduro and shield him from a US-led intervention. Though denied officially, the leaks suggest serious debate within Brazil’s political and security elite about how to deal with Washington’s escalation.
Within CELAC, US gunboat diplomacy has revived fears of a return to 20th-century interventions, further eroding Washington’s standing in the region.
Yet at the heart of this is oil. Venezuela holds the world's largest proven reserves. Securing access, or at least denying it to others, remains a core tenet of US strategy in the hemisphere.
Caracas counters with asymmetry and alliances
President Maduro has responded by activating Venezuela’s defense doctrine – the “War of All People.” This entails mobilizing up to five million fighters via the Bolivarian Militia to create a nationwide resistance grid designed to bleed out any invader in a prolonged war of attrition.
This doctrine, adopted under Maduro’s predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez, after the 2002 coup attempt, aims to turn any invasion into a drawn-out, high-cost occupation through civilian-based defense rooted in local communities.
On the diplomatic front, Venezuela denounced the US move as a breach of international law and rallied support in regional and global forums, including CELAC and the UN. More crucially, Caracas leaned into its strategic alliances.
Russia supplies advanced arms, conducts joint drills, and blocks US-led resolutions at the UN Security Council. China remains Venezuela’s largest creditor and economic partner, providing oil-backed loans and infrastructural investment. For years, Beijing has provided billions of dollars in loans to the Venezuelan government in exchange for future oil shipments, which has provided urgent cash liquidity to the Venezuelan government.
Iran offers technical know-how to rehabilitate Venezuela’s refineries, ships fuel across blockaded seas, and stocks grocery shelves with essential goods. The relationship between Caracas and Tehran is unique, based on objective solidarity between two countries that are subject to maximum pressure and US sanctions, and they share an ideological discourse against hegemony. Together, these alliances form a geopolitical shield that has prevented Venezuela from becoming another failed state in the wake of US sanctions.
Each player adds a layer of resilience: Russia ensures military depth, China secures economic oxygen, and Iran delivers practical solutions for daily survival. Together, they have transformed what could have been a one-sided intervention into a crucial standoff in the emerging multipolar order.
In 2022, Tehran and Caracas intensified ship‑to‑ship oil transfers, shifting crude covertly at sea to skirt US sanctions, demonstrating the inventive lengths they have gone to sustain bilateral energy flows.
In Latin America and beyond, Washington’s playbook is hardly new. Panama’s Noriega was ousted under the banner of narcotics, while in Afghanistan, poppy cultivation was folded into the “war on terror” – despite the fact that the country's drug industry thrived under US occupation. By recycling these tropes, Washington seeks to mask raw power projection with legalistic smoke.
Scenarios on the horizon
Three outcomes now define the road ahead. The first is a managed crisis, in which the US continues its military pressure campaign without initiating direct conflict. Washington keeps its naval presence active in the region and uses it as a bargaining chip in broader global negotiations, especially with Russia and China. In this scenario, the standoff remains contained, but the threat lingers.
The second is a limited intervention that spirals into chaos. This could take the form of a targeted strike or a naval blockade, triggering fierce resistance from Venezuelan forces and militias, sending economic shockwaves across global energy markets, and destabilizing bordering countries – most notably Colombia.
The third scenario is a calculated retreat. Faced with high risks and diminishing returns, Washington could scale back its military footprint while maintaining economic sanctions. Caracas, in turn, survives through its foreign alliances and internal resilience mechanisms, preserving a tense but stable status quo.
It becomes clear that Washington’s escalation, cloaked in the rhetoric of narcotics control, is, at its core, a multifaceted pressure campaign with goals far beyond drug interdiction. The weak narcotics pretext, undermined by field data and expert analysis, merely serves as a political and legal smokescreen for a broader geopolitical and economic offensive.
Each path carries heavy costs. But one thing is certain: This is not about narcotics, but about empire. And Venezuela, long marked for destabilization by Washington, has become a key frontline in the global battle against unipolar domination.
The outcome will not only shape Venezuela’s future; it will mark a turning point in the balance of power in the 21st century.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.