The Bolivarian National Armed Forces have carried out military exercises throughout the country, as instructed by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Authorities reiterated that this preparation is a direct response to the military threat currently posed by the United States against Venezuela. Photo / Getty Images
The USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, has arrived in Latin America, bringing thousands of United States troops closer to Venezuela and potentially escalating a military campaign that has already killed more than 75 people aboard speedboats and semisubmersibles.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly suggested that land strikes could be next but in recent days has denied that he is considering an imminent military attack inside Venezuela.
If the Trump Administration decided to pursue land strikes, US forces could pursue a range of options as targets, from Venezuelan military bases to cocaine refinery labs, clandestine airstrips or guerrilla camps, according to former US and Venezuelan military and anti-narcotics officials and regional defence analysts.
But the potential impact of such strikes remains uncertain.
Although Trump has signalled the potential for land strikes against drug-traffickers in Venezuela, it remains unclear whether he would target cocaine smuggling sites or the Maduro Government itself.
Trump has alleged that President Nicolas Maduro and his top security officials are leaders of a narcotics organisation, the Cartel de los Soles, sending drugs to the US.
The Administration has designated the Cartel de los Soles a narcoterrorist group and could use this as justification to target the Maduro Government directly, in an attempt to pressure or forcibly remove Maduro from power.
Venezuela’s military has “atrophied” in more recent years, but it retains enough arms and capability that it’s unlikely the Trump Administration would order any significant ground incursion, said Jim Stavridis, a retired US admiral who oversaw operations in the region from 2006 to 2009.
“Look for precision kinetic strikes against narcotics targets and military capability and, if that doesn’t have the desired effect, against leadership,” Stavridis said.
“I think the game here is to convince Maduro that his days are numbered but convincing him of that will take a fair amount of strikes against Venezuela’s infrastructure.”
In the face of such force, Maduro might hunker down, Stavridis said. That would leave the Trump Administration to potentially deliberate whether to carry out strikes against Maduro’s security or a Special Operations mission to capture or kill the authoritarian leader.
Such an effort, Stavridis said, “would be pretty high-stakes, with a lot of potential risk”.
Stavridis suggested the US could begin with strikes on airports or seaports that it identifies as potential shipping hubs for drugs.
It also could strike shipment points near Venezuela’s border with Colombia, where significant quantities of cocaine originate.
The Pentagon also would want to attack Venezuelan air defences to keep its own aircraft safe, the retired admiral said.
US forces could also target clandestine airstrips, such as in Apure state, according to a former agent for the US Drug Enforcement Administration in Venezuela, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details.
Traffickers often stash cocaine near the “parking lots” where planes from Central America land and wait to load up the drugs.
US forces could also target airstrips in the Catatumbo region, which has seen increased air traffic amid the US crackdown on drug boats, according to a former Venezuelan military captain now in exile, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of security concerns.
Large drug storage facilities can also be found in Sucre state, the former military official said.
Destroying the drug supply could neutralise the economic power of corrupt military officials and politicians, the former military captain said.
But if the goal is to pursue Maduro security forces directly, the US military could target Venezuela’s powerful military counterintelligence agency, the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM).
Venezuela’s military is well-armed, with some advanced weapons it obtained under the leadership of former president Hugo Chavez, who died in office in 2013.
They are believed to include a Russian-made S-300VM air-defence system.
It is only partially operational right now, and it was never intended to be used against the US, said Andrei Serbin Pont of the Latin American research group Cries.
According to Global Firepower, Venezuela has 109,000 active military personnel. The former Venezuelan military official said it is probably fewer.
By 2018, Venezuela had fewer than five Russian Sukhois operating, the former Venezuelan military official said. He argued that Maduro does not have the military capacity or support from Venezuelans to fight a war against the US.
“I’m not saying there won’t be any resistance,” he said, but “it won’t be an attack against US forces”.
One of the drug-trafficking groups with the most territorial control in Venezuela has received minimal attention from Trump Administration officials - the National Liberation Army, or ELN, a long-standing and sophisticated leftist Colombian guerrilla group.
The Maduro Government has provided the ELN, along with splinter groups from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, with a haven for drug-trafficking and other illegal activity, said Elizabeth Dickinson, International Crisis Group’s acting deputy director for Latin America.
The Colombian military believes much of the cocaine trafficked from Colombia to Venezuela is refined in labs on the Venezuela side of the border.
The ELN has in recent days begun moving some of its personnel across the border into Colombia, in anticipation of possible US attacks in Venezuela, according to a diplomatic official in the region.
Maduro in recent weeks has touted military operations that have dismantled ELN camps near the border. Dickinson said this was in part an effort to disperse ELN fighters and lower the group’s profile, amid fears that the group - and its territory - could be a US target.
If the ELN were to become a target, the group could retaliate by escalating attacks against the US-backed Colombian military. “The ELN isn’t going to carry out a terrorist attack in New York, but they could absolutely carry out a terrorist attack in Bogota,” Dickinson said.
Venezuela opposition figures, political analysts and a former regime official told US diplomats in the Bogota-based Venezuela Affairs Unit that the Maduro Government is increasingly concerned by US military operations but believes it can ride out the tensions and cling to power, according to internal government documents obtained by the Post. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
These Venezuela observers, according to the documents, largely discarded the possibility that a US strike on drug-trafficking sites in Venezuela could cause the military to turn against Maduro.
Even if strikes are carried out in Venezuela, it’s unlikely to change anything significant about the US drug trade, said current and former US officials familiar with the region.
One retired general said the drug trade coming out of Venezuela is primarily cocaine that is first produced in Colombia and sent to either Europe or the Caribbean islands - not the US.
“The idea that you are stopping the flow of drugs by striking in Venezuela is just bulls***,” the general said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer candour about the Trump Administration.
Trump said in a recent 60 Minutes interview that he doubted the US would go to war with Venezuela. But he warned that Maduro’s days were numbered.
In a classified briefing for some members of Congress last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Administration is not currently preparing to target Venezuela directly and didn’t have a proper legal argument to do so, according to people familiar with the meeting.
A current US official familiar with Administration deliberations this year said he is not sure whether Trump will authorise strikes in Venezuela, or how long those at sea could continue.
As with other military actions carried out by Trump, the official said, the President may declare victory abruptly and move on.
The official drew a comparison to the President ordering strikes beginning in March against Houthi militants in Yemen, citing threats they had posed to ships in the Red Sea.
By May, the operation was over, with Houthi leaders still largely in place and Administration officials saying they would stop launching airstrikes as long as the Houthis stopped shooting at vessels at sea.
“It was an arbitrary line to draw,” the official said. “There was no clear objective.”
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