Geostrategic Media Political Commentary, Analysis, Security, Defense
Matthew Reisener
Despite the military buildup in the Caribbean, the White House is more interested in signalling than in overthrowing Nicolás Maduro.
On October 24, the Pentagon announced that the USS Gerald R. Ford and its attendant strike group would be dispatched from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean to “bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States homeland and our security in the Western Hemisphere.” This action is the latest sign of America’s increasingly bellicose posture towards Venezuela, a country whose president, Nicolás Maduro, is considered a fugitive in the United States due to his alleged connections to narcotics trafficking, and against which the United States has conducted airstrikesagainst alleged drug boats hailing from its shores.
Many experts view the deployment of the Ford as a sign of both impending conflict between the United States and Venezuela and an indication ofTrump’s intent to pursue a regime change strategy to oust Maduro, withsome analysts explicitly advocating for such a strategy.
A regime change strategy is certainly a plausible interpretation of America’s recent actions towards Venezuela. In late August, the US Navy deployedseven warships to the Caribbean and began conducting airstrikes against alleged drug boats days later. While the White House told Congress that it lacks a legal justification to conduct military strikes in Venezuela, Trumpauthorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in the country, asked the Pentagon to prepare plans for possible use of force against cartels located in Venezuela and elsewhere, and allowed the Pentagon to conduct simulated bombing runs within 20 miles of Venezuela’s border.
The White House designated Tren de Aragua (a criminal organization of Venezuelan origin with alleged ties to Maduro) as a foreign terrorist organization, possibly in hopes of providing a legal pretext for striking Venezuela under the auspices of counterterrorism. Trump himself statedthat he believes Maduro’s days in power are numbered, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has long been a proponent of ousting the Venezuelan strongman. The presence of the Ford in the Caribbean certainly hints at military goals beyond counternarcotics, as an aircraft carrier is hardly necessary for the targeting of drug runners.
One can certainly understand the temptation to facilitate Maduro’s exit. Maduro clung to power after losing the 2024 presidential election, fraudulently declaring victory and forcing his opponent, Edmundo González, to flee to Spain. Despite casting himself as a populist revolutionary, he oversees a deeply corrupt regime that diverts billions of dollars annually from public institutions to line his and his loyalists’ pockets. Maduro jails his political opponents, suppresses the media, and was found by Human Rights Watch to have carried out nearly 600 violations of freedom of expression and attacks on human rights defenders in the first half of 2024 alone.
Perhaps most objectionably to the Trump administration, Maduro is either directly empowering the operations of cartels or creating an environment in which members of his government can do so without impunity. Exiled Venezuelan politician Juan Miguel Matheus argues that Maduro “succeeded in merging political power with criminal power into a single apparatus.”
However, America’s military buildup in the Caribbean is likely not a sign of the Trump administration’s commitment to regime change. Trump has proven willing to use America’s offshore military capabilities to pursue his geopolitical objectives, as evidenced by the aforementioned strikes on alleged drug traffickers, as well as previous attacks targeting Iran, the Houthis, and ISIS.
These strikes could potentially kill Maduro, scare him into exile, or inspire a popular uprising capable of forcing him out of power. However, historical evidence that naval and aerial bombing campaigns alone can precipitate regime change is scant. A ground invasion would likely be needed to achieve such an outcome, which could require 50,000 or more troops, given Venezuela’s size and demographic diversity. While Trump’s rhetoric suggests a desire to see Maduro removed from power, there is little indication that the president who has repeatedly railed against America’s invasion and extended occupation of Iraq is eager to authorize such a campaign.
If America did attempt a regime change, there would be no assurances of success. Fomenting regime change without deploying troops is a challenging proposition, which research suggests is successful only about 10 percent of the time. America also has a checkered track record of regime change in Latin America. While the United States forced regime changes in Grenada and Panama in the 1980s by deploying troops to these countries, attempts at supporting coups and rebellions in countries like Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua either ended in spectacular failure or failed to produce the US-friendly governments American policymakers envisioned.
Maduro’s regime has considerable durability given the military’s loyalty to him, and his use of Cuban intelligence agencies to monitor Venezuela’s military officials and root out dissenters has significantly reduced the likelihood that the military would abandon him in favor of backing a US-supported coup. In 2019, Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó (who the first Trump administration recognized as the country’s legitimate interim president) failed to rally any meaningful support among Venezuela’s military for his efforts to depose Maduro.
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Attempting regime change is often the equivalent of opening Pandora’s Box, resulting in chaotic outcomes far beyond the imagination or control of those who initiate it. The US-backed 1954 Guatemalan coup stands as a perfect example of this; while America succeeded in ousting President Jacobo Árbenz and installing Carlos Castillo Armas as a military dictator, these actions sparked a bloody civil war that lasted over 30 years and resulted in a genocide against Guatemala’s Mayan people.
Regime change efforts in Venezuela could similarly threaten the country’s stability. Even if some Venezuelan generals supported the opposition, Maduro’s loyalists have the arms and manpower to effectively wage guerrilla war from Venezuela’s dense jungles and mountain ranges. It is also unclear how prepared the Venezuelan opposition is to fill a leadership vacuum in the wake of Maduro’s departure. While González and recent Nobel laureate María Corina Machado are both intuitive candidates to replace Maduro, it is equally plausible that one of his loyalists could emerge as his successor and continue Maduro’s policies, or that the military could seize power and impose a dictatorship.
Finally, America has no way of knowing whether the voters who opposed Maduro in 2024 would support an American invasion to remove him. Recent polling suggests that only 17 percent of Venezuelans support American military intervention in their country, and a prolonged American presence in Venezuela could engender resentment and encourage local resistance against US forces or an American-backed government.
Should Venezuela fall into internal conflict as a result of American regime change efforts, regional destabilization would likely follow. Drug cartels, ostensibly the motivation for America’s involvement in Venezuela, would be poised to capitalize on the chaos and expand their presence and operations in the country. A conflict-laden Venezuela could easily become a destination for other militants in the region, particularly those with anti-American sentiments.
American adversaries such as China and Russia, both of whom have strong ties to the Maduro regime, could support proxies as a way to cement their influence in Venezuela and cultivate regional instability in America’s backyard. Neighboring nations such as Colombia would be at risk of destabilization as they are forced to deal with the influx of refugees and weapons into their countries. Finally, instability in Venezuela would increase the number of migrants fleeing to North America, undercutting the Trump administration’s effort to reduce illegal border crossings.
Fortunately, the evidence suggests that regime change is not the Trump administration’s primary goal in its military buildup in the Gulf. Earlier this year, the White House actually rejected an offer from Maduro to abdicate within three years and have his vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, serve out the remainder of his term. This came after President Trump reportedlyturned down an offer negotiated by Special Envoy Rick Grennell to “to open up all existing and future oil and gold projects to American companies, give preferential contracts to American businesses, reverse the flow of Venezuelan oil exports from China to the United States, and slash his country’s energy and mining contracts with Chinese, Iranian and Russian firms.”
It’s certainly possible that the White House rejected these deals because they didn’t trust Maduro to follow through with these promises or believed a Rodriguez presidency would be just as bad. But there’s another possibility: extracting concessions from Maduro or forcing him to leave office has never been the primary goal of Trump’s military posturing in the Caribbean.
A far more likely explanation is that Trump is using the military buildup in the Caribbean to signal to both domestic and regional audiences America’s commitment to stopping the drug trade, protecting America’s borders, and reasserting American power in the Western Hemisphere. Rather than viewing Trump’s posturing on Venezuela in a vacuum, one should consider the White House’s actions in the context of its broader actions in Latin America. The United States recently opted not to certify Colombia as an ally in the War on Drugs for the first time since 1997 and placed sanctionson Colombian president Gustavo Petro for his alleged role in the drug trade.
Similarly, Trump portrays Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum as being “so afraid of the cartels that she can’t even think straight,” and is reportedlyconsidering deploying US troops to Mexico to counter the drug tradedespite Sheinbaum’s opposition to this idea. Trump has vowed to “take back” the Panama Canal, upped tariffs on Brazil to 50 percent in response to the prosecution of Trump-sympathetic former president Jair Bolsonaro, and conditioned his promised $20 billion bailout to Argentina on a strong showing by the conservative La Libertad Avanza party.
Taken together, these actions paint a picture of a White House eager to exert greater influence in Latin America and remake the region in its own image. Given Trump’s tendency to characterize undocumented immigration and narco-trafficking through the lens of a “foreign invasion,” what better way to respond to a military threat than by deploying an aircraft carrier, one of the most iconic symbols of American military might?
If Trump wants to signal his desire to reassert American influence in the Western Hemisphere and pressure regional leaders to crack down on migration and drug smuggling, Venezuela is an intuitive target for him to pursue this strategy aggressively. Americans have negative views of Venezuela, and the fact that Venezuela doesn’t share a border with the United States reduces the risk that any military reprisals resulting from America’s saber-rattling could threaten the homeland.
The despotic Maduro is a villain straight out of central casting. It matters little that Venezuela plays only a minor role in the drug trade (a DEA report commissioned during the first Trump administration found that only 8 percent of cocaine trafficked from South America comes from Venezuela, and Venezuela is not a major source of US-bound Fentanyl). Trump doesn’t have to depose Maduro to remind his base of his commitment to border security or convince Mexico and Colombia to be more proactive in stopping the flow of drugs and migrants northward if threats alone can accomplish these goals.
Trying to effect regime change in Venezuela would be a significant mistake, and analysts are justified in sounding the alarm. However, Trump’s decision to deploy the carrier group to the Caribbean is likely an act of geopolitical theatre rather than a sign of American commitment to a regime change strategy. The White House may yet authorize strikes on targets in Venezuela, and there’s still a chance this standoff ends with Maduro leaving office. But whether the Ford engages targets in Venezuela or returns to the Mediterranean without firing a shot, Trump’s aggressive posture towards Venezuela should be read more as an indication of his broader aims in Latin America than his desire to overthrow the Maduro regime.
About the Author: Matt Reisener
Matt Reisener is the Senior National Security Advisor for the Center for Maritime Strategy. He previously served as the National Democratic Institute’s Senior Program Manager for the Middle East and North Africa, managing international development programs in Yemen and Algeria. Before that, he worked at the Center for the National Interest from 2017 to 2021, where he served as the organization’s chief of staff and co-edited a report entitled “Seapower in Stormy Seas: The Future of American Naval Power in the 21st Century.”
