Highlights:
Today the Pentagon announced that the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft-carrier strike group, a multi-ship force staffed by as many as 5,000 troops, would travel from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean. The intent, the Pentagon said, is to “bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors.” The ships, which are currently on a port visit in Croatia, will take just over a week.
The U.S. hasn’t sent this many ships to the Caribbean since the Cuban missile crisis. There are already roughly 6,500 Marines and sailors in the region, operating from eight Navy vessels, as well as 3,500 troops nearby. Once the Ford arrives, the U.S. will have roughly as many ships in the Caribbean as it used to defend Israel from Iranian missile strikes this summer.
The carrier strike group also provides far more firepower than is necessary for the occasional attack on narco-trafficking targets. But the ships could be ideal for launching a steady stream of air strikes inside Venezuela.
“The only thing you could use the carrier for is attacking targets ashore, because they are not going to be as effective at targeting small boats at sea,” Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told us. “If you are striking inside Venezuela, the carrier is an efficient way to do it due to the lack of basing in the region.”
Posted by the-senat
10 Comments
https://preview.redd.it/mab6etsjk5xf1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bf83cd4fd3ea5ddc3dbe118e53e5bfdb430a4f15
They haven’t even bothered justifying it with some story about boats being fucked with or WMDs. All I’ve heard is some mutterings about drugs and commies but I don’t think that message has gained much salience with the general public.
Can The Atlantic access that Signal chat again please
Highlights from other articles:
>American officials have privately made clear that the objective is to drive President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela from power.
[Source](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/world/americas/trinidad-bodies-us-strike-venezuela.html)
USMC tweet:
>The @USMC conducted an amphibious training exercise in the Caribbean where they are deployed in support of the #SOUTHCOM mission, @DeptofWar-directed operations, and @POTUS’ priorities.
https://preview.redd.it/4pg5kustk5xf1.jpeg?width=1023&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=18cd06ade26f957c5f86138956cfa27059abfe64
[Image Source](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/17/us/politics/trump-caribbean-venezuela-us-military-maps.html)
Trump thinks because they gave the Nobel Prize to a Venezuelan dissident he figures this is what the committee wants for next year
Before someone says this is about oil, Maduro was offering to privatize it and sell it to us.
Anyways, a regime change would obviously require boots on the ground, the only exceptions were obviously Libya and Yugoslavia but those countries were in civil wars before the bombs dropped.
Nevertheless, people on here were saying that Rubio has a personal vendetta against Maduro for being an authoritarian leftist given his upbringing. I think there is some truth to that. Rubio did seem like a bit of neo-con, I remember seeing a video of him claiming that we had a duty to protect the territorial sovereignty of Ukraine awhile ago.
I would imagine sustaining a democratic country would be easier than trying to bring one at gunpoint. Views of our country are bad enough in the EU rn, it seems like Trump is trying to turn us into a rogue state.
This wouldn’t be a war. This would simply be a very special military operation, and therefore Trump’s claim that he wouldn’t start any new wars would remain true.
Should this happen, what’s your take? Considering what Chavez and Maduro did to Venezuela, would an invasion toppling the regime change things for the better or worse?
If a war does start it will look a lot like the US intervention in Libya in which the US provided air support for Libyan rebels which led to the overthrow of Gaddafi. I don’t know enough about Venezuela if there are any serious opposition forces that could fight Maduro’s troops even with US air support. I know Maduro had some serious uprisings in the past though so there is that.
10,000 troops is not enough for a invasion force. If the number of troops start reaching over 100,000 then that’s when we should start worrying about a ground invasion.
They are not even invading. ffs
They are just gonna bomb the country into oblivion and hoping than that somehow topples Maduro.