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12:00 23.08.2025 •
US guided-missile destroyers at sea.
Photo: US Navy
The United States is deploying three Aegis guided-missile destroyers to the waters off Venezuela as part of President Trump's effort to combat threats from Latin American drug cartels, a White House official confirmed to CBS News on Wednesday, confirming a report by the Reuters news agency.
A Defense Department official confirmed to The Associated Press that the military assets had been assigned to the region in support of counter narcotics efforts. The official, who was not authorized to comment about military planning, said the vessels would be deployed "over the course of several months."
The deployment of U.S. destroyers and personnel comes as Mr. Trump pushes for using the U.S. military to thwart cartels he blames for the flow of fentanyl and other illicit drugs into American communities, and for perpetuating violence in some U.S. cities, CBS reports.
The press office of Venezuela's government did not respond to a request for comment from the AP on the deployment of the U.S. destroyers. But without mentioning the ships, Foreign Minister Yvan Gil, in a statement on Tuesday, dismissed the Trump administration's drug-trafficking accusations against Venezuela.
"Washington's accusing Venezuela of drug trafficking reveals its lack of credibility and the failure of its policies in the region," Gil said. "While Washington threatens, Venezuela steadily advances in peace and sovereignty, demonstrating that true effectiveness against crime is achieved by respecting the independence of its peoples. Every aggressive statement confirms the inability of imperialism to subdue a free and sovereign people."
The statement was followed by the government's decision to temporarily ban the purchase, sale and operation of drones in Venezuela's airspace. In 2018, drones armed with explosives detonated near Maduro in an apparent assassination attempt while he was delivering a speech to hundreds of soldiers being broadcast live on television.
On Monday, Maduro said the U.S. had increased its threats against Venezuela and announced the planned deployment of more than 4.5 million militia members around the country. The militias were created by then-President Hugo Chávez to incorporate volunteers who could assist the armed forces in the defense of external and domestic attacks.
"The empire has gone mad and has renewed its threats to Venezuela's peace and tranquility," Maduro said at an event in Caracas, without mentioning any specific action.
Washington is sending three amphibious assault vessels carrying a 2,200-strong Marine expeditionary force to Venezuela, anonymous US officials told the Miami Herald. They are to join a group of three US guided missile destroyers that reportedly arrived off the Venezuelan coast.
This shatters the flimsy pretext the Trump administration had earlier advanced to justify sending the three destroyers — namely, the claim that they would prevent ships in the area from trafficking drugs from Venezuela to the United States. The US Marine Corps is not an anti-narcotics police unit. The US government is clearly threatening to invade Venezuela as part of a decades-long regime change operation targeting that oil-rich country.
Asked about the naval deployments on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Trump administration is ready to take any and all military measures against Venezuela. “President Trump has been very clear and consistent. He is prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding our country and to bring those responsible to justice,” Leavitt said. “The Maduro regime is not the legitimate government of Venezuela; it is a narco terror cartel. Maduro, in the view of this administration, is not a legitimate president.”
Leavitt was echoing threats by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who on August 14 said, “the Cartel of the Suns, the Cartel de los Soles… is a criminal organization that happens to masquerade as a government. The Maduro regime is not a government. It’s not a legitimate government. We’ve never recognized them as such. They are a criminal enterprise that basically has taken control of a national territory, of a country.”
However, despite Rubio’s accusations, the US government has provided no court-tested evidence of narcotics trafficking by the Cartel of the Suns or even substantiated its existence. They have only named Maduro and parliamentarian Diosdado Cabello, the interior minister and vice president of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), as the cartel’s alleged leaders.
The US government is again resorting to the method of the Big Lie, seeking to create a pretext for war by telling lies so big that they seem impossible to refute. In the illegal 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, the lie — exposed soon after US and European forces occupied Iraq — was the claim that the Iraqi government had “weapons of mass destruction.” Against Venezuela, the charge is that it is run by a shadowy drug cartel about which Washington provides no information but which it will take drastic action to destroy.
The Venezuelan government, for its part, has denied that the Cartel of the Suns even exists and denounced pseudo-legal US threats against it. When, on August 7, US Attorney General Pam Bondi placed a $50 million bounty on Maduro’s head, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil denounced it as a “crude political propaganda operation.” Gil called it a “desperate distraction” from Trump’s ties to the late convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Maduro responded to the deployment of US destroyers off Venezuela’s coast by calling to arms popular militias friendly to his government. He said, “This week, I will activate a special plan with more than 4.5 million militiamen to ensure coverage of the entire national territory — militias that are prepared, activated and armed.”
…The smell of oil once again!
Venezuela has gigantic oil reserves. The U.S. wants to take control of these riches.
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