On Sunday, October 26, 2025, the guided missile destroyer USS Gravely docked in Trinidad and Tobago, marking a dramatic escalation in the United States’ ongoing counterdrug operations in the Caribbean. Officially, the warship’s presence is part of a joint training exercise with Trinidad and Tobago, set to last until Thursday, October 30. But beneath the surface, the deployment is stirring a hornet’s nest of geopolitical tensions, with Venezuela and its embattled leader, Nicolás Maduro, denouncing the move as a "hostile provocation" and a potential prelude to war.
This latest military maneuver is only one piece of a much larger puzzle. According to CBS News, the Trump administration has been steadily amassing a formidable force in the region over the past two months—warships, fighter jets, marines, spy planes, bombers, and drones—all under the banner of a crackdown on drug trafficking and "narco-terrorists." Yet, many analysts see a broader agenda at play: the removal of Maduro, whose 2024 re-election the U.S. and numerous other nations have refused to recognize, citing widespread fraud and a landslide opposition victory that was never honored.
The arrival of the USS Gravely is only the beginning. The world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, is steaming from Europe to the Caribbean to join the U.S. naval presence, in what CNN describes as the largest military buildup in the region in decades. The Ford’s deployment, with its F/A-18 fighter jets and Tomahawk missile-laden escorts, is widely interpreted as a not-so-subtle message to Maduro: your time is up.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally of President Trump, pulled no punches on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday, declaring, “I think President Trump’s made a decision that Maduro, the leader of Venezuela, is an indicted drug trafficker, that it’s time for him to go, that Venezuela and Colombia have been safe havens for narco-terrorists for too long, and President Trump told me yesterday that he plans to brief members of Congress when he gets back from Asia about future potential military operations against Venezuela and Colombia.”
Indeed, the prospect of land strikes is no longer theoretical. Graham said such operations are “a real possibility,” and three U.S. officials told CNN last week that Trump is actively considering targeting cocaine facilities and alleged trafficking routes inside Venezuela. The president himself, speaking from Asia, was characteristically blunt: “We’re going to kill them, you know, they’re going to be like, dead.”
This aggressive posture has drawn sharp rebukes from Caracas. Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab told the BBC, “There is no doubt that US president Donald Trump is trying to overthrow the Venezuelan government… [he] wants to turn Venezuela into a colony of the US.” Saab insisted that while a land invasion “shouldn’t happen, we are prepared.”
Venezuela’s government went further, accusing the U.S. of preparing a "false flag attack" in the waters between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago, and claiming to have captured a "mercenary group with direct information from the US intelligence agency." President Maduro himself warned that the U.S. military buildup could trigger a “new eternal war” in the Caribbean, and denounced the U.S. presence as a “serious threat to the peace of the Caribbean.”
The United States, for its part, maintains that its actions are aimed squarely at drug traffickers, not governments. Over the past several months, U.S. strikes have reportedly killed at least 43 people on alleged drug boats off South America. The Trump administration has authorized the use of military force against these groups, even declaring gang members “unlawful combatants” to justify targeted killings—an approach that has raised eyebrows among legal scholars and members of Congress alike.
“When you kill someone, you should know … if you’re not in a declared war, you really need to know someone’s name, at least you have to accuse them of something. You have to present evidence,” Kentucky Senator Rand Paul said on NBC’s Meet the Press earlier this month, highlighting the legal gray area in which the administration is operating. The War Powers Act gives a president 60 days to use military force before congressional authorization is required—a window that, if backdated to the first attack on a speedboat on September 2, would expire in early November.
Ryan Goodman, a professor at New York University School of Law, told CNN’s Erin Burnett, “Any action against Venezuela on land would have to be in response to an armed attack against the United States, would have to be necessary, would have to be proportionate, and would have to be authorized by Congress. None of those things, none of those boxes are checked off.”
Beyond the legal wrangling, the political stakes are enormous. Trump’s “America First” base has historically shunned new foreign entanglements, yet the administration’s strategy in Latin America is deeply intertwined with domestic concerns over immigration and drug trafficking. The argument goes that ousting Maduro could stem the tide of Venezuelan migrants at the U.S. border and even encourage some to return home. Still, critics warn that military action risks civilian casualties, could backfire by rallying support around Maduro, and echoes the painful legacy of U.S. interventions in Latin America, from CIA-backed coups to disastrous wars against cartels.
The Trump administration’s ambitions don’t stop at Venezuela. According to CNN, the White House is turning up the heat on leaders in Brazil, Panama, and Colombia, and recently played a pivotal role in Argentina’s midterm elections. Trump’s endorsed candidate, Javier Milei, secured a big win, bolstered by a $20 billion U.S. bailout offer. “BIG WIN in Argentina for Javier Milei, a wonderful Trump Endorsed Candidate! He’s making us all look good. Congratulations Javier!” Trump crowed on Truth Social.
Meanwhile, the administration is seeking to counter Chinese influence in the region, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio writing on X, “The United States is committed to countering China’s corrupt influence in Central America.” The stakes, it seems, extend far beyond Venezuela’s borders.
For many Venezuelans, the prospect of U.S. intervention is fraught with uncertainty. Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who claims her party won last year’s election by a landslide—a result not recognized by the Maduro government—told Fox News, “It was Maduro who declared a war on us Venezuelans after we won by the landslide in the presidential election last year. Maduro is the one who started the war. President Trump is stopping the war.”
Yet, as the U.S. military presence intensifies and the rhetoric on both sides grows more heated, the risk of miscalculation, escalation, or unintended consequences looms large. The world is watching closely as the Caribbean becomes the latest flashpoint in a contest of power, principle, and ambition that could reshape the region for years to come.
