Maximum pressure has long been President Donald Trump’s stance towards the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela — he slapped crippling sanctions on the country during his first term — but in recent days the administration has pushed the stakes even higher.
The Caribbean is currently hosting an astonishing quantity of American naval and air assets, including four Arleigh Burke–class destroyers, a guided missile cruiser, an attack submarine, a Marine Amphibious Ready Group, and a flight of F-35 multirole fighters.
These are ostensibly deployed as part of an antinarcotic and drug interdiction operation, but the volume of firepower employed for what is normally a relatively sedate task has created broad suspicion at home and in Venezuela that a military intervention against the Bolivarian Republic is on tap. Maduro recently sent a letter to the United Nations stating that he expected an “armed attack” against his country in “a very short time.”
His concerns have probably not been assuaged by the formation of a new Joint Task Force last week (again ostensibly for anti-narcotics operations) in SOUTHCOM under the II Marine Expeditionary Force, precisely the kind of unit that would be deployed in a Venezuelan military intervention, still less by the recent New York Times report that Trump has authorized lethal covert operations by American intelligence agents within his borders.
The administration has made its interest in removing Maduro quite clear: it views him as the head of a narcoterrorist organization that is responsible for exporting crime, drugs, and illegal immigrants to the United States. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has declared that Maduro is not the legitimate president of the country, due to his government’s obvious falsification of results in the 2024 election, and the Justice Department doubled the bounty for his capture to $50 million.
But while Maduro is, without a doubt, a usurper of the presidential office and a tyrannical dictator, he is no less the president and head of state of Venezuela. Ideological harangues about the sanctity of democracy will no more remove him from power or render his government moot than American disapproval of the Chinese Communist Party could affect the democratization of Red China, something both sides are well aware of. Removing Maduro will require more than sanctions, threats, or pressure: it will require war, and that possibility looks increasingly likely with each passing day.
While ending Maduro’s dictatorship would certainly be a boon to the Venezuelan people, the intervention comes with a number of costs and risks American policymakers should bear in mind and carefully weigh against the potential benefits of intervention. There is no free lunch in geopolitics.
The most obvious costs are those of the initial invasion. The American invasion of Panama in 1989, to overthrow the government of General Manuel Noriega, was carried out by a force of some 27,000 U.S. troops, 23 of which were killed and hundreds more wounded. Venezuela is vastly larger than Panama, and while its military is very poorly equipped, it likewise dwarfs the forces that were available to Noriega. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates an invasion of Venezuela would require nearly 50,000 troops, some of which will not return home. Any American government should be extremely conscientious about the causes on which it spends the lives of American soldiers.
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