On November 1, 2025, the United States Navy’s newest and largest nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), steamed into Caribbean waters off Venezuela—a move that has sent shockwaves through Latin America and raised eyebrows in Washington and beyond. While the deployment is framed by the Trump administration as a bold step in the ongoing war on drugs and a show of force against the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, critics warn that the decision leaves the U.S. military stretched thin and risks reigniting painful memories of American interventions in the region.
The USS Gerald R. Ford, touted as the Navy’s most advanced supercarrier, is still working through some teething problems. Although she’s the largest and newest of her class, she does not yet carry the stealthy F-35C Lightning II jets—unlike some older Nimitz-class carriers. Instead, her air wing consists solely of F/A-18 Super Hornets. As reported by The National Interest, this limitation stems from the carrier being delivered before all necessary F-35C support equipment and software were installed. The next Ford-class carrier, the now-delayed USS John F. Kennedy, is being built with the F-35C in mind. But for now, the Ford’s deployment is as much about optics as it is about capability.
According to Fox News, the Ford’s arrival near Venezuela is meant to “turn the tide in Trump’s war on drugs,” while The Hill’s Arturo McFields described the carrier as “the best negotiator against Maduro’s regime.” Yet, the Associated Press pointed out that this move leaves a conspicuous absence of U.S. carriers in both Europe and the Middle East, at a time when global tensions are anything but settled. Mark Cancian, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told AP, “It’s such a powerful and scarce resource, there will be a lot of pressure to do something or send it elsewhere. You can imagine the peace negotiations breaking down in the eastern Mediterranean or something happening with Iran.”
Indeed, while the U.S. Navy officially counts 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in its fleet, only about three are typically at sea at any given time. Last year, the Navy extended deployments to maintain a near-constant presence in the Middle East, which had the unintended consequence of leaving the Indo-Pacific region without a carrier. Now, with the Ford in the Caribbean, the U.S. finds itself in a similar bind—unable to quickly reposition its most potent assets if a crisis erupts elsewhere.
But why send a supercarrier to Venezuela in the first place? The U.S. Air Force already has B-52 and B-1B bombers patrolling near South America. Multiple Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers operate in the Caribbean, and U.S. Marine Corps F-35Bs are stationed in Puerto Rico. As The National Interest noted, adding a carrier strike group brings significant firepower, but it may be more than necessary for the stated mission. Unless Washington is planning a shock-and-awe operation, the deployment looks more like a 21st-century version of gunboat diplomacy—a flex of American muscle meant to intimidate Maduro’s regime.
The Trump administration’s aggressive posture isn’t limited to Venezuela. According to Beritaja, the White House has unleashed a “Monroe Doctrine 2.0,” marked by threats, sanctions, and military action across Latin America. The administration has carried out 14 vessel strikes targeting narcotics trafficking in the Caribbean and Pacific, branding cartels as “narco-terrorists”—a first in U.S. policy. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has gone so far as to label drug cartels “the Al Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere,” sharing video-game-like footage of boats being destroyed at sea.
This rhetoric has been matched by action. The USS Stockdale, another Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, docked at Panama City’s naval base in late September, signaling a broader U.S. military presence in the region. President Trump, for his part, has made it clear that he sees no need for congressional approval for military action in Venezuela. In a blunt statement on November 2, 2025, Trump declared, “I don’t think we’re necessarily going to ask for a declaration of war. I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing narcotics into our country. We’re going to kill them. They’re going to be, like, dead.”
Such remarks have set regional leaders on edge. Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who has not shied away from criticizing Trump, accused the U.S. of killing at least one Colombian fisherman during recent boat strikes. Petro sees the operations as part of a larger strategy to destabilize Venezuela’s leftist government. In response, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on Petro, his family, and top aides, and threatened to cut off aid to Colombia—a country that has long been a linchpin in Washington’s anti-drug efforts.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has painted Venezuela’s Maduro as a major narcotics kingpin, placing a $50 million bounty on his head and massing a naval armada off Venezuela’s coast, which happens to hold the world’s largest petroleum reserves. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a longtime advocate for regime change in Havana and Caracas, has pushed for even stronger interdiction strategies. “What will stop them is when you blow them up. You get rid of them,” Rubio told reporters in Mexico City.
But this approach is deeply unsettling for many across Latin America, who remember all too well the long history of U.S. interventions—military, covert, and economic—in the hemisphere. David Adler of Progressive International told Beritaja, “Again, you’re doing extrajudicial killings in the name of a war on drugs.” The analogy to past interventions is hard to miss: from the invasion of Panama in 1989, when President George H.W. Bush targeted “drug-running dictator” Manuel Noriega, to the disastrous 2003 Iraq War justified by nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.
And while the Trump administration has used a carrot-and-stick approach—offering aid and praise to allies like Argentina’s Javier Milei and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele while punishing perceived adversaries—many leaders in the region remain wary. Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum, for example, has managed to avoid Trump’s tariff threats, but the strikes on alleged cartel boats are creeping ever closer to her country’s shores. As Sheinbaum put it, “President Trump has his own, very particular way of communicating.”
For now, the deployment of the USS Gerald R. Ford stands as a stark symbol of a new era in U.S.-Latin American relations—one marked by unpredictability, hard-edged rhetoric, and the ever-present risk of escalation. Whether this show of force will achieve its intended goals or simply open new wounds remains to be seen, but the region is watching closely, and so is the world.