The situation in the Caribbean is thickening. The largest aircraft carrier has arrived off the coast of Venezuela

The United States Navy began deploying aircraft carriers and Marines to the Caribbean Sea in August of this year. The targets are official vessels allegedly belonging to drug cartels classified by US President Donald Trump in January as "narcoterrorist" organisations, with at least twenty dismantled by November.

On the first of September, an amphibious naval group around the cruiser USS Iwo Jima with a crew of nearly 4,500 "marines" struck against the first vessel, which the US War Department said belonged to the Venezuelan cartel Tren de Aragua. The attack killed 11 people, a death toll that has since risen to more than 69 confirmed deaths.

As recently as 20 February, the US State Department classified Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organisation. On 24 November, the Department added the Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) to the same list. This organisation uses insignia similar to that on the uniforms of the Venezuelan army and, according to the White House, is headed by the chavista leader Nicolás Maduro.

According to behind-the-scenes information, Maduro has repeatedly tried to contact Trump with a view to de-escalating the tensions that have managed to spread from the Caribbean to the eastern Pacific. There, Pentagon forces have intervened on at least two occasions, with drug-smuggling boats and submarines apparently setting sail from Colombia or Ecuador.

The largest US aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, with a task force of some 12,000 troops, arrived in the southern Caribbean on 17 November. The vessel was dispatched in October, and it was then that indications first surfaced that the Pentagon was planning ground operations in Venezuela.

Trump dismissed this on 3 November, saying that Maduro's "days are numbered", but later, with the Gerald Ford docked, fears of an imminent invasion resurfaced. In addition to the leader, who, according to official figures, won his third consecutive presidential election, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and her brother Jorge, who is the president of parliament, have also reportedly tried to contact the US. Both have denied this.

A number of airlines have also restricted the entry of their aircraft into Venezuelan airspace in recent days and none flew over Venezuela on the morning of 25 November.

Maduro isn't helped by recruiting or singing

The so-called President of Venezuela, whose legitimacy is disputed by both the US and the European Union, has launched a massive recruitment drive in response to the US ship movements. Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino López announced on 11 November a "large-scale" mobilisation against the "imperialist threat".

Underage girls, old women and obese citizens of the Bolivarian Republic did not escape conscription and training. According to official government estimates to date, nearly eight million people have joined the active reserves or militias.

A week earlier, Maduro tried a new tactic - singing. During a press conference on 16 November, he belted out part of John Lennon's well-known song Imagine. Users on the X network pointed out that this was the same man who had military vehicles rammed into a crowd of anti-government demonstrators in 2019.

At another rally on November 24, he again used a musical interlude, this time it was a song believed to have been created by an artificial intelligence, with the phrase "yes, peace, peace, peace" repeated in the refrain. Maduro also tried to repeat the moves Trump usually dances to to the song YMCA by the band Village People.

Around the same time, the American pacifist NGO Code Pink organized a smaller protest. Its founder, Medea Benjamin, criticised US involvement during the so-called 12-Day War between Israel and Iran, earning praise from MAGA voters, but the current protest has become a laughing stock.

In a recent episode of his podcast, well-known political commentator Tucker Carlson drew attention to the fact that Venezuela is "socially conservative", with abortion illegal in the country and rainbow marches virtually non-existent. The former Fox News anchor used this argument in the context of a possible 'regime change', which, in his view, would do nothing for the United States.

It therefore came as a surprise to observers of this overheated conflict when the military released a recruitment video in early September showing a "trans woman" recruiting related "members of the LGBTQ+ community" into militias operating as militias.

Preparations for the invasion are reportedly underway

Despite Caracas' efforts to secure the country against a potential invasion by US troops, it is still uncertain whether the US defence department is actually planning an invasion. Although there is unconfirmed information from anonymous sources, this should be taken with a pinch of salt.

On 15 October, Trump authorised the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to plan and carry out covert operations on Venezuelan territory, including 'lethal' actions. The New York Times was informed of this by anonymous White House sources.

Pentagon sources, in turn, told CNN on 6 September that the administration was "considering" launching ground operations. So far, however, Trump has only authorised interventions against narco-submarines and submarines, although the defence establishment has reportedly already drawn up several invasion plans, which are awaiting the Commander-in-Chief's (President's) decision.

Four Trump administration officials admitted to Reuters that the Pentagon is "ready to launch a new phase of operations" against Caracas in the coming days. Neither their timetable nor their scope could be ascertained, and Trump has reportedly still not decided whether to activate any of the proposals.

The claims of a possible invasion are supported by the continuously increasing number of troops and combat vessels deployed, as well as the de facto closed airspace mentioned above. Originally, these were only operations against the drug cartels, but the inclusion of the Sunshine Cartel on the sanctions list, with Maduro designated as the gang leader, suggests that they could expand at any time into militant action against another state.

In mid-October, the former head of the military intelligence agency DGCIM, Hugo Armando Carvajal, admitted that Maduro's administration, in collaboration with his agency, the civilian intelligence agency SEBIN, and the aforementioned cartels, smuggled millions of tons of drugs into the US, with these sales allegedly funding leftist movements in South America and Europe.

Carvajal, who is nicknamed "El Pollo" (Spanish for "The Chicken"), was brought back from Spain in 2023 by Americans after five years of exile. The financial support, classified as "donations" in accounting terms, was to be brokered to selected politicians and parties by the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the Venezuelan explained to DEA investigators.

Among the recipients, according to the former head of military intelligence, were Spain's Socialist Party and the radical left-wing Podemos party, Italy's Five Star Movement, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Colombia's Gustavo Petro, Bolivia's Evo Morales, and Peronist ex-president Néstor Kirchner and his wife Cristina.

Thus, there is probably some connection between the cartels and the secret services within the Venezuelan political establishment. However, it is questionable to what extent this is a legitimate reason to invade a sovereign country. This is precisely what has been pointed out by representatives of Russia, China, but also by the US Democratic Party.

Democrats at the level of both the Senate and the House of Representatives have repeatedly referred to the crackdown on drug vessels as 'extrajudicial killing', even though Trump, as commander-in-chief of the US military, has authorised attacks against presumed members of organisations whose activities, according to the White House, threaten US citizens, namely by importing drugs.

Six Democratic leaders, led by Senator Elissa Slotkin, posted videos on social media urging soldiers in the Caribbean to disobey "illegal orders." The Trump administration responded with harsh criticism that the opposition politicians were calling for illegal activity.

"Democratic lawmakers are now openly calling for mutiny," White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller wrote on the X network. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has also turned to the Capitol Police to organize interrogations of the six elected officials.

Although leftist leaders (especially Petro) have criticized the deadly U.S. crackdown, there are a number of countries that are extremely willing to assist the United States in its anti-drug efforts. Most prominent among them are the Dominican Republic, which has opened its ports to U.S. ships since the crackdown began, and Trinidad and Tobago, which borders Venezuela.

This is likely to create a 'coalition of the willing' in the Caribbean, whose leaders will escalate the 'deterrent' movements of combat formations and increase the numbers of sailors and soldiers in order to weaken the cohesion of the Chavista government. It is also possible that this ad hoc alliance will wait for an excuse to attack.