The US military has conducted “a lethal strike” against an alleged “drug vessel” from Venezuela, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has announced amid growing tensions between Washington and Caracas.
Donald Trump trailed the announcement during an address at the White House on Tuesday afternoon, telling reporters the US had “just, over the last few minutes, literally shot out … a drug-carrying boat”.
“And there’s more where that came from. We have a lot of drugs pouring into our country,” the US president added. “We took it out,” he said of the boat.
Shortly after, Rubio offered further details of the incident on social media, tweeting that the military had “conducted a strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela and was being operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization”.
It was not immediately clear what kind of vessel had been targeted, or, crucially, if the incident had taken place inside the South American country’s territorial waters.
“Everything is hinging on where this strike took place,” said Geoff Ramsey, a senior fellow on Venezuela and Colombia from the Atlantic Council’s Latin America Centre.
“If this strike took place in Venezuelan waters, I think that will trigger a massive escalation from the Venezuelan side. However, from what I’ve heard … this took place in international waters, and that suggests that ultimately this is about drug interdiction.”
Ramsey added: “This is a target-rich environment, after all. There are plenty of go-fast boats transporting cocaine through the southern Caribbean, and I think ultimately Washington is more interested in signalling than in actually engaging in any kind of military action inside Venezuela territory.”
Even so, the development will add to fears over a possible military clash between Venezuelan and US troops after the US sent war ships and marines into the Caribbean last month as part of what Trump allies touted as an attempt to force Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, from power.
Officially, Trump’s naval buildup is part of US efforts to combat Latin American drug traffickers, including a Venezuelan group called the Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) which Trump officials accuse Maduro of leading.
Last month the US announced a $50m reward for Maduro’s capture – twice the bounty once offered for Osama bin Laden. In July, Trump signed a secret directive greenlighting military force against Latin American cartels considered terrorist organizations, including the Venezuelan group.
Republican party hawks and Trump allies have celebrated those moves as proof the White House is determined to end Maduro’s 12-year rule. “Your days are seriously numbered,” Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, declared recently, encouraging Maduro to flee to Moscow.
Maduro’s allies have also claimed that a regime-change operation is afoot, with Maduro himself this week warning that White House hardliners were seeking to lead Trump into “a terrible war” that would harm the entire region.
“Mr President Donald Trump, you need to take care because Marco Rubio wants to stain your hands with blood – with South American, Caribbean blood [and] Venezuelan blood. They want to lead you into a bloodbath … with a massacre against the people of Venezuela,” Maduro said.
But many experts are skeptical the US is planning a military intervention. “The idea of there being an invasion, I don’t believe to be true,” James Story, the US’s top diplomat for Venezuela from 2018 to 2023, said last week. He said Trump generally opposed “meddling militarily in the affairs of other countries”.
Ramsey agreed. ”This is not a deployment focused on regime change. This may be an attempt to signal to disaffected elements of the military in Venezuela that now is the time to rise up against Maduro. But we’ve seen that approach be tried and fail repeatedly over the last 25 years.”
Ramsey said the tough talk belied the fact that Trump had actually relaxed its stance towards Venezuela. Sanctions had been softened in recent weeks. The Trump administration was “actively coordinating with the Maduro regime on deportation flights”, about two of which are landing at Venezuela’s main international airport each week.
Ramsey believed that the military mobilization was partly an attempt “to throw some red meat to a part of Trump’s base that has been dissatisfied with the reality of sanctions relief” and what it perceived as his soft policy towards Maduro.
