US naval build-up near Venezuela stokes tensions in Latin America

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**US naval build-up off Venezuela’s coast stokes regional ten­sions**

STEFF CHÁVEZ — WASHINGTON MICHAEL STOTT — RIO DE JANEIRO JOE DANIELS — BOGOTÁ

The Pentagon is deploy­ing war­ships to waters around Cent­ral and South Amer­ica, an unusu­ally large naval build-up that has stoked ten­sions with Venezuela and other Latin Amer­ican coun­tries.

The US Navy has sent at least seven ves­sels, includ­ing three guided-mis­sile des­troy­ers, an amphi­bi­ous assault ship and a guided-mis­sile cruiser, accord­ing to people famil­iar with the mat­ter. A nuc­lear-powered fast attack sub­mar­ine has also been deployed, accord­ing to one per­son.

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has billed the move, which involves thou­sands of sail­ors and mar­ines, as part of its efforts to com­bat drug traf­fick­ing by car­tels.

The White House has used increas­ingly hos­tile rhet­oric about Venezuela’s Pres­id­ent Nicolás Maduro, refer­ring to him as “illegal” and accus­ing him of traf­fick­ing drugs.

Maduro called up mili­tia­men in response to the US deploy­ment, while Colom­bian Pres­id­ent Gust­avo Petro has sug­ges­ted his coun­try’s armed forces could sup­port Venezuela if it is attacked.

Asked whether the US was plan­ning to deploy troops in Venezuela, White House press sec­ret­ary Karoline Leav­itt said last week that Trump was “pre­pared to use every ele­ment of Amer­ican power to stop drugs from flood­ing into our coun­try”.

She added that Maduro was “not a legit­im­ate pres­id­ent”. “He is a fugit­ive head of this car­tel,” she said.

Pentagon spokes­per­son Sean Par­nell said the US counter-nar­cot­ics push needed “a whole-of-gov­ern­ment effort and thor­ough co-ordin­a­tion with regional part­ners”, adding that Trump was seek­ing to “elim­in­ate the abil­ity of these car­tels to threaten the [US’s] ter­rit­ory, safety and secur­ity”.

The Pentagon would not spec­u­late on oper­a­tions, he added.

But ana­lysts said the scale of the deploy­ment sug­ges­ted the US oper­a­tion may go bey­ond its stated focus on drug traf­fick­ing.

“This is a force whose nature and size is not con­sist­ent with counter-drug oper­a­tions,” said Evan Ellis, a mem­ber of former sec­ret­ary of state Mike Pom­peo’s staff in Trump’s first admin­is­tra­tion.

“The logical mis­sion would be a snatch-and-grab oper­a­tion to bring Maduro to justice,” he added, though he was not con­vinced Trump was “com­mit­ted to pulling the trig­ger on it yet”.

Two war­ships, the USS Jason Dun­ham and USS Gravely, are now off Venezuela’s coast, said a per­son famil­iar with the mis­sion. A third, the USS Sampson, is in the Pacific south of Panama, said a US offi­cial. The amphi­bi­ous assault ship USS Iwo Jima and two ves­sels car­ry­ing more than 4,500 mil­it­ary per­son­nel are also on their way, accord­ing to the per­son famil­iar with the mis­sion.

The US Navy is also deploy­ing the guided-mis­sile cruiser USS Lake Erie and the nuc­lear sub­mar­ine USS New­port News to the region, the per­son said.

Five of the eight ves­sels are equipped with Toma­hawk mis­siles, which can hit land tar­gets.

Trump has taken an aggress­ive stance on alleged for­eign drug oper­a­tions, sign­ing an exec­ut­ive order early in his second term des­ig­nat­ing some drug car­tels as for­eign ter­ror­ist organ­isa­tions.

His admin­is­tra­tion’s policy on Venezuela has zig­zagged between verbal attacks on Maduro and behind-thes­cenes nego­ti­ations for host­age releases and oil deals with Cara­cas.

Ellis, who teaches at the US Army War Col­lege, said the com­pos­i­tion of the mil­it­ary off Venezuela would allow Wash­ing­ton to put “a lot of forces on the ground pretty quickly” via air and sea.

Maduro claimed to have called up 4.5mn mili­tia mem­bers to defend the coun­try. “We bow to no one — not today, not ever,” he said on Wed­nes­day. “Let it be clear: we will never accept any­one else’s suprem­acy over us.”

What’s the Navy gonna do though? Invade ?

Im sure this is a nothing burger and just posturing