The Trump administration has developed several alternatives to military action in Venezuela, including direct attacks on units protecting President Nicolás Maduro and moves to take control of the country’s oil fields, according to several US officials. Donald Trump has not yet decided how to proceed or whether to do so. Officials said he doesn’t want to approve operations that could endanger U.S. soldiers or lead to an embarrassing failure.
Many of his advisers, however, are pushing one of the most aggressive options: toppling Maduro. They have asked the Justice Department for guidelines that would provide a legal basis for military action broader than attacks on vessels accused by Washington, without evidence, of being involved in drug trafficking. These guidelines could provide a legal framework for attacking Maduro without the need for congressional authorization to use military force.
The guidelines are still being developed, but according to some officials the thesis supported will be that Maduro and the Venezuelan security leaders are central figures of the cartel de los Soles, defined by the United States as a narco-terrorist group. The Justice Department could determine that this definition makes the Venezuelan president a legitimate target, despite U.S. law prohibiting the assassination of leaders of other countries.
Trump has made a series of contradictory public statements about his intentions, goals and motives for possible military action
The Justice Department declined to comment. The attempt to justify an attack on Maduro would be yet another effort by the US government to expand its legal powers. Washington has already conducted targeted killings of suspected drug traffickers who, until September, were being pursued and arrested at sea, not killed in drone strikes.
Any attempt to oust Maduro would subject the government to greater scrutiny over the legal basis of its operations, given the vague motivations it has adopted so far to attack Maduro: drug trafficking, US interest in access to oil and Trump’s claims that the Venezuelan president has freed some detainees to send them to the United States.
Trump has made a series of contradictory public statements about his intentions, goals and motives for possible military action. He announced that land attacks would be added to attacks on boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, in which more than seventy people have so far died. But it hasn’t happened yet.
When CBS News asked him on November 3 if the United States is heading for war against Venezuela, he responded: “I doubt it. I don’t think so, but they’ve treated us very badly, and not just on drugs.” Trump reiterated his unfounded accusation that Maduro opened prisons and mental institutions to send affiliates of the Tren de Aragua criminal organization to the United States. Then, when asked if Maduro’s days as leader of Venezuela are numbered, he replied: “I think so.”
Pushing for the more aggressive choices are US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also acting national security advisor, and Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff and national security advisor. Privately, Rubio and Miller argue that Maduro must be forced from power.
According to his aides, Trump has repeatedly expressed reservations, partly out of fear that the operation could fail. The president was in no rush to make a decision and asked what the benefits might be for the United States, focusing in particular on the idea that Washington could get some of Venezuela’s oil.
“Trump sent a clear message to Maduro: Stop sending drugs and criminals to our country,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. “The president has made it clear that he will continue to target narco-terrorists involved in the illegal drug trade; everything else is speculation and must be treated as such.”
It is likely that Trump will make a decision after the November 11th arrival in the Caribbean of the Gerald R. Ford, the largest US aircraft carrier carrying around five thousand sailors and more than 75 attack, surveillance and support aircraft, including F/A-18 fighters. Since late August, the number of US military personnel in the region has been increasing. Even without aircraft carriers, there are about ten thousand of them: on board warships and located in bases in Puerto Rico.
In recent weeks, the Pentagon has sent B-52 and B-1 bombers from bases in Louisiana and Texas on air missions off the Venezuelan coast, described by the military as a show of force. The B-52s can carry dozens of precision bombs, while the B-1s have a carrying capacity of 34,000 kilos of guided and unguided munitions. The 160th Special Operations Air Regiment, which has conducted extensive helicopter counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, also recently conducted what the Pentagon called exercises off the coast of Venezuela.
The military deployment was so rapid and in broad daylight that it suggests a campaign of psychological pressure on Maduro. Trump has talked about the possibility of issuing a findinga document that would authorize the CIA, the intelligence agency, to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, a type of operation that presidents rarely discuss in advance.
If Trump chose to order a military intervention on Venezuelan territory, he would expose himself to significant military, legal and political risks. For all the risks he took by authorizing the U.S. bombing of three nuclear facilities in Iran in June, the goal was not to overthrow or replace Tehran’s government.
By deciding to proceed, there would be no guarantee of success or certainty that the fall of Maduro would lead to the establishment of a government closer to the United States. According to Trump’s collaborators, more thought was given to how to attack Maduro’s government than to how to govern Venezuela if the operation was successful. Some of Trump’s most loyal political supporters have warned him against attacking Maduro, reminding him that he was elected to end “eternal wars,” not start new ones.
The CIA could conduct various activities: intelligence missions, support for the creation of an internal opposition, active sabotage of the government or even the capture of Maduro. However, according to various US security officials, if similar operations could have removed the Venezuelan president, it would have happened years ago. This is why the White House is considering the possibility of military intervention. There are three proposals on the table.
The first would involve air strikes against military installations, some of which are linked to drug trafficking, with the aim of dismantling the armed forces’ support for Maduro. If the Venezuelan president feared that he would no longer have their protection, he could try to escape or, by taking refuge within the country, expose himself to a greater risk of capture. Critics warn that such an action could have the opposite effect: bolstering support around an embattled leader.
A second proposal involves the use of special forces, such as the Delta force or Seal team 6, to arrest or kill Maduro. The Trump administration would seek to circumvent prohibitions against killing foreign heads of state by claiming that Maduro is first and foremost the leader of a narco-terrorist cartel, an argument similar to that used to justify air strikes against ships accused of carrying drugs.
The State Department has placed a $50 million bounty on Maduro’s arrest or conviction, an increase from the $25 million offered by the Biden administration. The White House could also argue that, due to the repression of the opposition and the fraud in the last elections, Maduro is not the legitimate head of state.
A third, more complex hypothesis focuses on the use of US anti-terrorism forces to occupy airports and secure control of some oil fields and infrastructure in Venezuela.
These latter two options carry greater risks for US commandos on the ground – not to mention civilians – especially if the goal was to capture or neutralize Maduro in an urban context like Caracas.
Trump has been reluctant to consider operations that put the lives of US soldiers at risk. For this reason, many plans under study include the use of naval drones and long-range weapons.
The president of the United States is interested in Venezuela’s immense oil reserves, the largest in the world. The management of that oil has been an unresolved issue for the administration for ten months, which does not know whether to interrupt US imports or maintain them, in the hope of maintaining a privileged position if Maduro is overthrown.
Even when Trump doubled the bounty on the Venezuelan leader and called him a narco-terrorist, he canceled and then renewed the license that allows Chevron, the US oil company that is a cornerstone of the Venezuelan economy, to continue operating in the South American country.
Under pressure from Secretary of State Rubio, Chevron’s license was revoked in March, and Venezuelan exports to the United States plummeted over the summer. A new license, the details of which were not disclosed, appears to prevent the company from transferring foreign currency into the Venezuelan banking system. Chevron’s oil exports are, however, concrete economic support for Maduro.
Chevron is an exception: the assets of most US oil companies operating in the country were confiscated or transferred to Venezuelan state companies several years ago now. Chevron is one of the few that has been able to manage both Trump and Maduro, who declared: “Chevron has been present in Venezuela for 102 years and I want it to stay there for another hundred.” The firm has hired a major Trump campaign financier as a lobbyist in Washington.
In recent months, Maduro has attempted to win over Trump by offering concessions, including a dominant stake in Venezuela’s oil extraction and other mineral wealth. He has offered US companies preferred contracts for current and future gold and crude oil projects. It said it would reorient exports to China and limit mining contracts with Chinese, Iranian and Russian companies.
US naval units used in some military interventions. (csis, the economist)
In early October, Trump rejected the offer, and the US military escalation accelerated.
If Maduro’s government falls and is replaced by a stable, more Washington-friendly leadership, Chevron would be better positioned to benefit from what the Trump administration envisions as an investment boom in Venezuela’s immense oil reserves. The idea fascinates Trump, as he was fascinated by the control of the Syrian fields, whose reserves are much more limited than those of Venezuela.
“We believe our presence continues to be a stabilizing factor for the local economy, the region and the energy security of the United States,” said Bill Turenne, a Chevron spokesman.
As Trump aides push for the most aggressive military option, Justice Department lawyers are crafting a legal framework that covers all actions under discussion.
White House officials have called for an updated legal analysis before taking further steps, and government lawyers have argued before Congress that the president does not need his authorization for the deadly attacks on vessels from Venezuela.
T. Elliot Gaiser, head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, told Congress that the government believes operations against Venezuelan vessels are not a hostile act as contemplated by the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which requires congressional authorization for military operations lasting more than sixty days. But lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, have expressed concern about the attacks.
Legal justification
Perhaps the closest precedent to a legal justification for targeting a head of state is the opinion developed by the Office of Legal Counsel during Trump’s first term that the president had the authority to order a missile launch to target Major General Qasem Soleimani, the top Iranian intelligence and security commander killed by US drones in 2020. Trump claims that killing as one of the greatest successes of his first term.
In that case, the Office of Legal Counsel ruled that the use of drones was permissible because Suleimani was “actively developing plans for new attacks against U.S. military and diplomatic personnel,” according to a memorandum made public after the attack.
“Military leaders who plan and direct attacks against United States citizens or interests may be considered legitimate military targets,” the memorandum stated, specifying that the operation was designed to “avoid significant civilian casualties or collateral damage” and that it did not aim to “impose by military means a change in the nature of a political regime.”
The document concluded that “given the targeted nature of the mission, the available intelligence information and the measures taken to avoid escalation”, a drone attack against him “would not constitute war under the constitution”. ◆ fr
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