U.S. warships were seen entering the Panama Canal while navigating east toward the Atlantic, according to photos taken on Aug. 30.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Aug. 19 that President Donald Trump was “prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into [the United States] and to bring those responsible to justice.”
“Many Caribbean nations and many nations in the region have applauded the administration’s counterdrug operations and efforts,” Leavitt added.
As Jacob Burg reports below, the previous day, a White House official told The Epoch Times that U.S. naval and air assets would deploy to the southern Caribbean Sea amid a heightened counternarcotics effort.
That deployment puts U.S. warships a short distance off Venezuela’s northern coastline, following years of strained relations between the United States and Venezuela.
In 2017, Trump told reporters, “We have many options for Venezuela, including a possible military option, if necessary.”
Trump rejected the 2018 snap presidential election, in which Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner. He also backed then-Venezuelan National Assembly President Juan Guaidó’s efforts to declare himself the rightful head of state of Venezuela until new elections commenced.
In 2019, Guaidó led a short-lived attempted uprising against Maduro. A year later, the U.S. Department of Justice declared that Maduro was linked to both drug and weapons trafficking and offered $15 million for information leading to the regime leader’s arrest.
When Maduro claimed he had won Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election, the Biden administration rejected the results, and accusations mounted that the outcome was rigged for Maduro.
Now, the Justice Department is offering $50 million for information leading to Maduro’s arrest.
Maduro denounced the news that U.S. warships were traveling to the Southern Caribbean this week.
On Aug. 28, Venezuela criticized the U.S. naval buildup to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and accused Washington of breaking the founding U.N. Charter.
“It’s a massive propaganda operation to justify what the experts call kinetic action—meaning military intervention in a country which is a sovereign and independent country and is no threat to anyone,” Venezuelan U.N. Ambassador Samuel Moncada told reporters after meeting with Guterres.
In February, the Trump administration designated several transnational gangs, including Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, as global terrorist organizations.
In response to the U.S. actions, Maduro said, “Our diplomacy isn’t the diplomacy of cannons, of threats, because the world cannot be the world of 100 years ago.”
Hellbound and Down 