U.S. Military Buildup in Caribbean Signals Broader Campaign Against Venezuela

The U.S. military strikes this month on three boats that Trump administration officials have asserted were smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea have cast a spotlight on the sizable naval armada and aerial fleet of spy aircraft the Pentagon has dispatched to the region in what it says is a counternarcotics and counterterrorism mission.

Military officials, diplomats and analysts say a main purpose of the force is to ratchet up pressure on Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, as top figures in the Trump administration call him an illegitimate leader and accuse him of directing the actions of criminal gangs and drug cartels.

“We’re not going to have a cartel, operating or masquerading as a government, operating in our own hemisphere,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Fox News this week, adding that Mr. Maduro had been indicted in the United States and was “a fugitive of American justice.”

“There’s a reward out for his capture,” he said.

The heavy military presence in the Caribbean, including F-35 fighters in Puerto Rico, suggests the United States plans to do more than blow up small vessels, analysts said. But the scope of the operation remains unclear.

The 4,500-member force currently aboard eight warships is too small to invade Venezuela or any country harboring traffickers. And it is not operating in the main body of water to carry out a major drug interdiction campaign. That would be the eastern Pacific Ocean, regional experts say. The clandestine deployment of elite Special Operations forces suggests that strikes or commando raids inside Venezuela itself may be in the works, experts note.

Administration officials refuse to say what U.S. military action might come next. Asked on Air Force One en route back to Washington from Britain on Thursday if he had discussed regime change in Venezuela with Mr. Rubio or any of his military leaders, Mr. Trump said no.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said recently that the administration was “prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice.”

In a news conference this week, Mr. Maduro condemned the first strike, carried out on a Venezuelan boat on Sept. 2, as a “heinous crime” and “a military attack on civilians who were not at war and were not militarily threatening any country.”

Several current and former military officials, diplomats and intelligence officers say that while fighting drugs is the pretext for the recent U.S. attacks, the real goal is to drive Mr. Maduro from power, one way or another.

“The massive naval flotilla off the coast of Venezuela and the movement of fifth-generation F-35 fighters to Puerto Rico has little to do with actual drug interdiction — they represent operational overkill,” said Adm. James G. Stavridis, a former head of the Pentagon’s Southern Command.

“Rather, they are a clear signal to Nicolás Maduro that this administration is growing serious about accomplishing either regime or behavioral change from Caracas,” Admiral Stavridis said. “Gunboat diplomacy is back, and it may well work.”

Mr. Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have both said the military would carry out more strikes in the coming weeks as part of what they describe as a counternarcotics and counterterrorism campaign. The military struck a third boat on Friday, killing three people, Mr. Trump said.

“Narco-terrorists are enemies of the United States — actively bringing death to our shores,” Mr. Hegseth said on social media this week after the second strike, adding, “We will track them, kill them, and dismantle their networks throughout our hemisphere — at the times and places of our choosing.”

That’s the kind of language Pentagon leaders have used for years in their battle against terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in the Middle East, Southwest Asia and Africa.

“Given the large number of U.S. military assets that have been deployed to the Caribbean, it is clear that the administration intends to continue such operations,” Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said at a Senate hearing on Thursday.

The U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean has the region on edge.

“Attacks on alleged drug boats so far are being read in the region as warning shots that portend the possibility of a further escalation,” said Elizabeth Dickinson, a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group in Bogotá, Colombia.

Earlier this month, that flashpoint seemed imminent, after two armed but aging Venezuelan F-16 fighter jets buzzed a Navy guided-missile destroyer in the region in a show of force, dialing up tensions between Washington and the Maduro government.

In response, the Pentagon dispatched 10 F-35 stealth fighters to Puerto Rico to deter more Venezuelan flyovers and to be positioned should Mr. Trump order airstrikes against targets in Venezuela.

Mr. Trump claimed on Monday that the boat the U.S. military destroyed on Sept. 15 was heading to the United States and linked it to “drug trafficking cartels” that he said posed a threat to the country. The president said the people killed were “positively identified,” but he did not name a specific organization that they might be associated with.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump said he had relied on conclusive intelligence to determine the targeted boat was laden with drugs. “We’re very careful — the military has been amazing,” he said, adding: “We have recorded proof and evidence. We know what time they were leaving, when they were leaving, what they had, and all of the other things that you’d like to have.”

“We have proof,” he said. “All you have to do is look at the cargo that was like, it spattered all over the ocean. Big bags of cocaine and fentanyl all over the place.”

But the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department have offered no evidence to support Mr. Trump’s claims.

Legal specialists and congressional Democrats have assailed the U.S. strikes as illegal.

“The president’s decision to use lethal military force against civilians based on unproven claims that they are drug traffickers is morally reprehensible and strategically unsound, and will end up making it harder to prevent dangerous drugs from entering our communities,” said Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

Draft legislation is circulating at the White House and on Capitol Hill that would give Mr. Trump broad powers to wage war against drug cartels he deems to be “terrorists,” as well as against any country he says has harbored or helped them, as The New York Times previously reported.

Defense Department officials briefed members of the House Armed Services Committee about the two strikes on Wednesday. Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the senior Democrat on the committee, said Pentagon officials had not offered evidence of legal justification, other than Mr. Trump’s assertion of “self-defense” for the two strikes, and had not provided any information on the location of the strikes or who and what was in the boats.

Mr. Smith also said the officials had offered no details on what the military intended to do next. “If they have plans, they’re not sharing,” he said in a telephone interview.

Mr. Trump in July signed a still-secret order directing the Pentagon to begin using military force against certain Latin American criminal gangs and drug cartels. In August, the U.S. Navy sent a heavy amount of firepower into the southern Caribbean Sea.

The military so far has deployed eight warships, several Navy P-8 surveillance planes and one attack submarine to the region. The Pentagon has offered few details on the force’s objectives and locations other than to combat drug traffickers.

The Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group — including the U.S.S. San Antonio, the U.S.S. Iwo Jima and the U.S.S. Fort Lauderdale, carrying 4,500 service members, sailors — has been steaming near Puerto Rico. So has the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, with 2,200 Marines. The Iwo Jima is equipped with AV-8B Harrier attack aircraft. Mr. Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Puerto Rico last week to meet with commanders.

Two Navy guided-missile destroyers — the U.S.S. Jason Dunham and the U.S.S. Gravely — are operating in the southern Caribbean. Both warships recently joined the campaign against the Houthi militia in the Red Sea. A third destroyer, the U.S.S. Sampson, now in the eastern Pacific, may soon join, one Navy official said.

These warships are Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers, equipped with more than 90 missiles, including surface-to-air missiles. They can conduct antiaircraft and anti-submarine warfare, and shoot down ballistic missiles.

In addition, the guided-missile cruiser U.S.S. Lake Erie and the littoral combat ship Minneapolis-St. Paul are also operating in the Caribbean.

Military historians point to other provocative conditions that preceded important American military episodes in the second half of the 20th century.

In December 1989, the administration of President George H.W. Bush sent more than 20,000 American troops to invade Panama and arrest its strongman leader, Manuel Noriega, who had been indicted in the United States on drug trafficking charges. Mr. Noriega was convicted in 1992 and died in Panama City in 2017.

Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.