President Donald Trump‘s deployment of warships off the coast of Venezuela and authorization for the use of force against drug trafficking organizations is fueling speculation of potential military action looming in South America.
However, the White House’s moves also speak to a broader shift in policy focus under Trump’s “America First” movement that envisions the Americas as a whole as part of the U.S. zone of interest, an outlook reminiscent of the 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine that served as the basis for U.S. intervention against European colonialism and communist expansion across the region.
With Venezuela and its leftist leader, President Nicolás Maduro, now in the crosshairs, experts and former officials see the dawn of a new era of U.S. power projection across the Western Hemisphere.
“This massive show of force is consistent with the administration’s efforts to assert dominance in the Western Hemisphere, reviving the Monroe Doctrine that declared the region to be uniquely a U.S. sphere of influence,” Cynthia Arnson, a leading Latin America expert serving as adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced and International Studies, told Newsweek.
‘Gunboat Diplomacy’
Arnson warned of the potential regional consequences of such an approach, noting how just because “many Latin American democracies would welcome the end of the Maduro regime, that doesn’t mean that they are lining up to applaud a 21st century version of gunboat diplomacy.”
Observers have debated whether or not the recent naval build-up in the waters of South and Central America would serve as a prelude to real action or constituted mere posturing, meant to deliver a message to Maduro who the U.S. has accused of being complicit in drug trafficking.
Arnson argued that “the utility of such a huge deployment in fighting drug trafficking is questionable, although there undoubtedly will be some seizures that the administration will tout to justify the exercise of military force.”
She added: “The number of troops deployed, although large, is not sufficient to invade Venezuela with the aim of toppling the government.”
José Cárdenas, a former National Security Council and U.S. State Department official who has dealt extensively with Latin America policy, said the latest moves would prove far more than showmanship.
“It would be a mistake to consider the U.S. naval deployment off the Venezuelan coast ‘business as usual’ or mere political theater,” Cárdenas, who today is a principal at the Cormac Group consulting firm, told Newsweek. “It is too big, powerful, and costly for that.”
“Rather,” he added, “it is a signal by the Trump administration that the status quo—Venezuela as a hub for transnational organized crime and a regional destabilizer through mass migration—is no longer tenable.”
Believe What He Says, or Else’
Cárdenas spoke of a “wide range of options” available to the Trump administration, short of a “full-scale invasion” that could effect change in Venezuela.
For one, he felt “it is likely the U.S. is in contact with Venezuelan military personnel not involved in narco-trafficking and others in charge of guns to state that if they don’t remove Maduro from power the U.S. is prepared to unleash an asymmetric offensive that could consume them as well.”
“The Trump administration has carefully constructed a policy rationale that this is not ‘regime change’ for the sake of exporting democracy to the world’s benighted peoples,” Cárdenas said. “It is a national security initiative meant to eliminate a source of tons of cocaine from entering the United States. Main Street, USA, can identify with that.”
He also said that plans were likely already set in place, and any upcoming action would serve to send a message to great power competitors such as China and Russia, which U.S. officials have long warned were gaining influence in the Western Hemisphere.
“Credibility, moreover, is the cornerstone of Donald Trump’s foreign policy. Believe what he says, or else. There is no climb-down from the current deployment,” Cárdenas said. “No doubt anti-American despots in Moscow, Beijing, and elsewhere are watching the unfolding action in the Southern Caribbean carefully.”
When reached for comment, the White House referred Newsweek to remarks made by press secretary Karoline Leavitt during a press conference last week.
“What I’ll say with respect to Venezuela, President Trump has been very clear and consistent,” Leavitt said at the time. “He’s prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice.”
She continued: “The Maduro regime is not the legitimate government of Venezuela, it is a narco-terror cartel. And Maduro, it is the view of this administration, is not a legitimate president. He’s a fugitive head of this cartel who has been indicted in the United States for trafficking drugs into the country.”
The Pentagon, meanwhile, shared with Newsweek a statement attributed to chief spokesperson Sean Parnell.
“On day one of the Trump Administration, the President published an Executive Order designating drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, clearly identifying them as a direct threat to the national security of the United States,” Parnell said. “These cartels have engaged in historic violence and terror throughout our Hemisphere—and around the globe—that has destabilized economies and internal security of countries but also flooded the United States with deadly drugs, violent criminals, and vicious gangs.”
He added: “This requires a whole-of-government effort and through coordination with regional partners, the Department of Defense will undoubtedly play an important role towards meeting the President’s objective to eliminate the ability of these cartels to threaten the territory, safety, and security of the United States and its people. As a matter of security and policy we do not speculate on future operations.”
‘Competing Factions’
The brewing crisis is not the first time Trump has sought to unseat Maduro from power, and instead marks the latest episode in a downturn in ties between Washington and Caracas that came about after the Venezuelan leader’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, rose to power through elections in 1999.
Chávez, who would accuse the U.S. of supporting a brief coup against him in 2002, kickstarted what he and his supporters refer to as a Bolivarian Revolution of social and economic reforms that sought to channel 19th-century anti-Spanish colonial leader Simón Bolívar. Somewhat ironically, Bolívar during his time welcomed U.S. President James Monroe’s 1823 declaration of a new doctrine against European imperialism in the Americas.
Yet Washington’s strategy grew increasingly interventionist over the ages, with the U.S. aiding governments and rebels against communist movements across Latin America during the Cold War.
Chávez’s socialist movement emerged from the ashes of this era, painting the U.S. as a new imperialist hegemon seeking to assert its influence across the region. At home, his policies—bolstered by soaring oil prices—initially led to a massive boom in Venezuela’s economic outlook, yet by the time of his 2013 death from cancer, a mix of runaway public spending, economic mismanagement and sanctions had substantially undercut stability, and a subsequent fall in oil prices from 2014 deepened the crisis.
The political situation also escalated in January 2019, as Maduro’s reelection was challenged by critics and rejected by a number of foreign leaders, including Trump, who began a “maximum pressure” campaign against Venezuela during his first term. An opposition coup led by U.S.-backed National Assembly leader Juan Guaidó was attempted that April only to end in failure.
Like Chávez, Maduro would emerge victorious and went on to easily repel a plot hatched the following year involving dozens of dissidents, as well as at least two former U.S. Green Berets operating as private military contractors.
Tom Shannon, a career diplomat who served as undersecretary for political affairs during the Trump administration, noted how past errors have likely informed the president’s thinking as he grapples with conflicting movements in his second administration.
“When he decides to begin his maximum pressure campaign in Venezuela and recognizes Juan Guaidó as the interim president of Venezuela and slaps on secondary sanctions on oil and gas and even attempts to generate a military coup against Maduro, all of which fail, he does this on the advice of people who were advising him on Venezuela, including the current Secretary of State,” Shannon told Newsweek.
“And they were wrong, and he knows they were wrong,” Shannon, now senior international policy adviser at Arnold & Porter law firm, added.
Upon taking office in January, Trump took a different approach. He sent special envoy Richard Grenell to strike a deal in Caracas, specifically to negotiate the release of imprisoned U.S. citizens and secure a license for oil giant Chevron to resume operations in the country.
Trump went on to revoke this license, a move Shannon pointed out took place as the president sought to secure votes for his “Big, Beautiful Bill,” only to reinstate it once again last month.
“I think part of the confusion is that there are competing factions around the president,” Shannon said. “You have [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio, who would love to do the strike, but then there’s people like [Treasury Secretary] Scott Bessent, whose attitude is, ‘You’re out of your mind.'”
Noting how “Venezuela is sitting on the largest reserves of oil and gas in the world, and OFAC [Office of Foreign Assets Control], through its licensing process, gets to control who works in the oil and gas sector,” Shannon argued that if U.S. or European companies were licensed to work in the country, foreign competitors, including some of the nations viewed as hostile to U.S. interests, would be expelled.
“The Chinese are out. The Iranians are out. The Russians are out,” Shannon said of such a scenario. “We control the oil and gas. And guess what? We get to repatriate some of our earnings.”
‘You Should Use Your Power’
Yet the fight for resources does not entirely encapsulate the stakes over Venezuela, nor the administration’s interest in the country.
Trump’s Western Hemisphere doctrine includes pressure campaigns against a host of nations, including otherwise friendly U.S. neighbors Canada and Mexico, as well as territorial ambitions to seize control of foreign-owned territory like Greenland and the Panama Canal.
Drug cartels, from Mexico to Venezuela, are the latest target of Trump’s rhetoric as he portrays a battle against an “invasion” of narcotics, including fentanyl produced with precursors exported by China.
“He has said he is going to use American power to protect American interests, and he is not tied by diplomatic niceties, or by practice, or even by what we could consider to be the norms of international law,” Shannon said. “He believes that if you are powerful, you should use your power.”
He continued: “He’s focused on drug trafficking, cartels, gangs, whatever you want to call them, because first of all, for him, they’re a political winner. He knows that there is broad support in the United States for the use of the American military and intelligence capabilities against these entities that, in his mind, present a very real threat to the United States, to Americans.”
But Shannon also alluded to the costs of a more assertive position in a region that, despite its complex relationship with Washington, has largely courted U.S. influence and investment. In the globalized 21st century, unlike two centuries ago, he argued that the Trump administration may be better suited to bring China-style infrastructure deals than warships and tariffs to win over South America.
“If there is a new Monroe Doctrine, it’s kind of emasculated in the sense that the president is not bringing what you need to the game in order to win,” he said.
The ‘Ultimate Arbiter’
The dissonance in Trump’s “peace through strength” approach is not lost on his support base. A number of influential voices in the president’s populist “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement voiced displeasure toward his decision in June to conduct limited yet unprecedented strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities and some continue to criticize his continued support for Israel’s ongoing wars in the region.
Francisco Rodríguez, senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said the Trump administration was looking only to mount a “credible threat of force” that “some hardline opposition figures and Washington hawks” believed “could be enough to push Venezuela’s military to abandon Maduro.”
Yet he said that a similar approach to Trump’s isolated strikes on Iran “cannot be ruled out,” citing former U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper‘s memoir in recounting how “targeted strikes on Venezuelan military installations were seriously discussed at the cabinet level” back in 2019.
Today, “some of the same hawkish voices who favored such strikes are again influential in Venezuela policy,” Rodríguez told Newsweek.
And Rodríguez saw neither contradiction nor incoherence in what he called the “broader Trumpian assertion of hemispheric dominance in line with a MAGA interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine,” despite “the coexistence of that vision with a pronounced aversion, in some MAGA circles, to costly military involvement abroad.”
“Rather, it reflects the dynamics of a personalistic regime in which competing factions with divergent preferences overlap, leaving the final decision to the chief executive,” Rodríguez said. “That enhances Trump’s authority as ultimate arbiter, but it also makes policy unpredictable and inconsistent.”
He added: “The Venezuela case illustrates this perfectly: announcing the deployment of warships while simultaneously authorizing Chevron to expand its oil dealings in the country. It is almost as if, after placing a bounty on bin Laden, Washington had turned around and licensed Halliburton to do infrastructure projects with his family business in Afghanistan.”
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