How the US is preparing a Caribbean staging ground near Venezuela
133 comments
·November 2, 2025pythonic_hell
cjbgkagh
Foreign wars are used to launder money not stop drugs, Opium production in Afghanistan increased during US occupation, if the actual goal was to stop drug production it would be more effective to put the Taliban in charge of Venezuela.
I see this conflict as the impotent rage of a dying empire.
The invasion of Panama to overthrow a CIA backed dictatorship was needlessly over the top because of concerns that the US had lost its mojo after Vietnam and was seen as a chance to test out a bunch of Reagan's new weapons.
dingaling
> was seen as a chance to test out a bunch of Reagan's new weapons.
The F-117, the wonder-weapon of Panama, was funded by the Carter Administration.
As was the B-2.
mmooss
They were funded by multiple administrations and Congresses for decades.
cjbgkagh
I was thinking more new to combat not new to Reagan, although if Carter buys it and Reagan uses it wouldn't that still be new to Reagan.
woleium
Opium production in Afghanistan more closely tracked the cost of solar to pump water up the hill to grow poppies than any us influence
cjbgkagh
Seems that the Taliban rule reduced Opium production by 95% but the cost of solar didn't go up 20x? At best the US did nothing to stop it. I would include displacing the Taliban as a direct result of US influence.
trueismywork
They don't want to stop drugs. They just want to be the ones to pocket the profit
portaouflop
No idea why you are getting downvoted; this is true.
johnnyanmac
Quite a few Americans who haven't properly realized that we have in fact become the baddies we used to tell tales about defeating 89 years prior.
Real shame it didn't take that long after those soldiers of WW2 died out to forget all the lessons taught.
foofoo12
It's not about the drugs. It's the oil they're after.
treetalker
Don't forget the proof that the Epstein Files are a hoax! We know it's in Venezuela … must be around here somewhere …
jack_tripper
>Nothing good can come from this.
Military industrial complex gets bored quickly.
> Illegal drug production exploded after the 2nd gulf war and invasion of Afghanistan.
Glowies need money too.
throw0101a
> Military industrial complex gets bored quickly.
Eisenhower coined that term. During the Korean War, defence spending was 12% of GDP; in the 1970s during the Cold War, it was 8%. It is currently about 3.5% of GDP:
* https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/1o919po/why_i...
It's not a small amount, being the largest discretionary line programs in the federal budget, but it's no where near what it once was.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget
And it should be noted that keeping that industry (and manufacturing in general) alive is important:
> Democratic countries’ economies are mainly set up as free market economies with redistribution, because this is what maximizes living standards in peacetime. In a free market economy, if a foreign country wants to sell you cheap cars, you let them do it, and you allocate your own productive resources to something more profitable instead. If China is willing to sell you brand-new electric vehicles for $10,000, why should you turn them down? Just make B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps, sell them for a high profit margin, and drive a Chinese car.
> Except then a war comes, and suddenly you find that B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps aren’t very useful for defending your freedoms. Oops! The right time to worry about manufacturing would have been years before the war, except you weren’t able to anticipate and prepare for the future. Manufacturing doesn’t just support war — in a very real way, it’s a war in and of itself.
somenameforme
Percent of budget doesn't really mean much of anything. We currently spend something like $1.2 trillion on interest payments alone thanks to burying ourselves in debt. And on the note of burying ourselves in debt, we also tend to spend on a large deficit each year which artificially increases the budget. These sort of things already make percent of budget fundamentally misleading.
Here [1] is a graph of US military spending, inflation adjusted. It's going up, up, and away.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
ASalazarMX
So USA is exporting the product it still holds a competitive advantage to? It may not have the edge in electric vehicles, or renewables, or manufacturing, etc., but its military is still the biggest.
ajross
> Military industrial complex
That really seems just wrong. The established interests here haven't been pushing for a Venezuela action at all. They want to sell arms (via western assistance) to Ukraine, which is much more lucrative and clearly something the Trump adminstration has stymied at all opportunities.
If you have to push for a Capitalist String Pulling Conspiracy angle here (which I don't buy either) it makes much more sense to view this as an oil industry play. American-driven regime change in Venezuela opens up its state-owned petroleum industry to American petrochemical interests.
But no, 99% of of this is simple pique and bullying. Maduro is a loudmouth antiamerican and weak, Trump is a bully. This is just what bullies do. Pushing around antisocial nerds in the schoolyard is how bullies demonstrate authority to their base.
gengwyn
In line with your comment, I wish people that believed in the military industrial complex theory would look at the defense market cap more often and realize that, even in their own reality, their theory doesn’t make sense.
If money controlled politics to that degree, Trump already wouldn’t be in office right now because every large corporation would be fuming at his stock market nonsense with tariffs. Apple alone has a larger market cap than every public US defense contractor combined and wars tend to not do good things for the rest of the market.
pydry
Capitalist interests and imperialist interests in the US are distinct and often at odds with one another. Usually the former defers to the latter though.
For example, the capitalist interests didn't want to strand their assets in Russia and eat huge losses in 2022 but most of them still did it without much protest.
Half of the imperialists in the deep state seem to have realized that piling money and resources into the war in Ukraine didn't achieve the goal of advancing their power and influence so they're looking elsewhere (China, Venezuela, Panama... Greenland even). The other half wants to escalate the war.
Trump isn't actually very coherent on this issue, probably because he's getting pulled in two directions (e.g. rubio/lindsay graham is pulling him one way, witkoff the other) - hence why he keeps (for example) threatening Tomahawks sometimes and pulling back other times.
The one thing US imperialists can all agree on is that every Latin American country led by an opponent of the US needs to be overthrown. I think they've done this somewhere between 15 and 30 times in the last century.
shadyKeystrokes
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pydry
This upcoming war has absolutely nothing to do with drugs whatsoever, just like the 2003 invasion of Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with WMDs whatsoever.
somenameforme
I rather appreciate that they're not even bothering to try to make some big lie of it. The drug stuff is the most half-hearted messaging I have ever seen. Rare is going to be the person who truly believes we're invading a country, which has the largest oil reserves on the planet, to stop drug smuggling.
I think it's difficult for people to understand the war machine when the messaging is effective. When we make it reasonably clear what's happening, you have a more informed electorate. And I think that's a very good thing.
pydry
>Rare is going to be the person who truly believes we're invading a country, which has the largest oil reserves on the planet, to stop drug smuggling.
Theyre all over this thread - both those who think it is genuine and some who think it is real.
themgt
Venezuela is a narco dictatorship failed state, but its true crimes are violations of the Monroe Doctrine. America's hegemony in Europe, Asia and the Middle East is in serious decline, so it's become all the more important to flex muscle in our hemisphere and make an example out of someone. Pour encourager les autres. Or, from the horse's mouth:
Over the past decade, 12 of China’s 17 loans to Venezuela have been specific to the energy sector—a total of $55 billion. China’s most significant commitment to Venezuela’s oil sector was its investment in the Orinoco Belt, one of the world’s richest oil areas, which produces extra heavy crude oil and sits across central Venezuela. In 2010, China’s national oil company signed a 25-year land grant for a 40 percent investment in one portion of the Orinoco Belt. The energy industry is at the heart of Venezuela—economically, politically, and socially. Oil accounts for 95 percent of the country’s exports and provides the cash to import everything else. Therefore, China’s focus on the energy sector could be viewed as a “power play” to gain authority over the political and social structures of Venezuela, as well as its extensive oil reserves.
A lack of basing infrastructure also creates opportunities for adversaries to gather intelligence on U.S. movements. Several of the ships currently deployed to the Caribbean on counternarcotics missions called into ports where China exercises influence. The Arleigh Burke–class destroyer USS Sampson docked at Manzanillo, Mexico, in July, where Hong Kong–based conglomerate CK Hutchison operates a terminal. More recently, the USS Lake Erie, a guided missile cruiser, docked at Hutchison-operated Port of Balboa in Panama before transiting the Panama Canal on its way from the Pacific to the Caribbean theater. Naval port calls represent potential intelligence vulnerabilities where China can gather data on U.S. standard operating procedures and patterns of life that could be applicable to the Indo-Pacific.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/when-investment-hurts-chinese-...
https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalation-against-maduro-regi...
hermannj314
In HOI4, you got to level up your troops and generals with amphibious assault experience with a minor nation to prepare for the war with the major nation down the road.
I like to think everything is about prepping for what happens when China takes its rightful place in the sun.
jalapenos
If you look at this article with a squint - it seems to be a publicized threat from the US government to the Maduro regime, loosely veiled as an independent news article?
Thorrez
The article is the threat? Or the actual buildup of military assets?
azernik
The leaks that led to the article
Thorrez
Leaks about a military buildup are only possible if there's an actual military buildup. Unless the leaks are false. Is there any indication the information is false?
FrustratedMonky
Or the actual missiles hitting boats.
portaouflop
Idk the actions the US takes in the Caribbean are the threat and Reuters is reporting on those actions?
It would be weirder imo if they didn’t write about it and afaict they are just looking at publicly available OS data.
jalapenos
Just the way the article's formulated, e.g. mixing in a reference to how Maduro's generals will be scared by this - how do they know that?
Looks more like "hey generals & Maduro, here's what's coming for you if you don't bend to us"
portaouflop
Looking at what happened in Iran and how unpredictable the US is recently it would almost be stupid to not be scared.
exasperaited
Daddy wants a fight to prove he's a man and make everyone admire and adore him like he deserves to be admired and adored, so he's picking on the guy everyone wants gone.
If you understand what is going on in terms of Trump's very personal, broken malignant psychology and his very literal tendency to agree with the last person who spoke to him, you can see very old-fashioned US business interests have persuaded him to gin up an old, old fight.
(Always interesting to think that Trump may be projecting his own faults onto Maduro; every accusation a confession)
The last time this happened, Hugo Chavez very nearly had a much shorter trip in a helicopter than was scheduled, and the US ambassador rushed down from the embassy uncomfortably too early to congratulate the new guy only to find that the new guy was still the old guy. Almost as if they were expecting something to happen that didn't.
(Don't read this as a suggestion that I think Maduro is legitimate; I don't.)
cindyllm
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motbus3
Why is not NATO involved in none of this? This seems quite weird stretch to not have any international laws being broken
riffraff
NATO is a defensive alliance, why should it be involved in this?
Also, any sane government would be against starting a war against Venezuela for no reason.
(But I don't think there's gonna be a war)
azernik
NATO only guarantees the mutual defense of its neighbors.
I presume you mean the UN? They can only actually do anything about international law violations if no permanent UNSC member vetoes it. The US is a permanent member, so...
apexalpha
NATO has a clause that says it does not fuck with anything happening in the southern hemisphere. This was done at the request of the US who did not want to defend European colonies.
mmooss
What clause, if you know?
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Vasbarlog
Of course there are international laws being broken. But as always, the laws apply to all except the US.
_heimdall
You honestly think the US is the only country violating international law without being held to account?
lotsofpulp
Venezuela is not part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
jimmis
I'm sure the Trump supporters who voted for him to "end all wars" are going to be strongly opposed to this.
le-mark
Can anyone give an overview of what has happened in Venezuela since Maduro took over and what the beef is between him and Trump? Looks like US going to start exporting Freedom again..
dwood_dev
Let me preface this one with the statement that I am completely against regime change wars.
This is one scenario where it might actually have a positive outcome. Maduro looks to have barely won his reelection in 2018. The 2024 election he lost, badly. All the individual precinct results had him at 30-40%. Conveniently, the central election database was "hacked" and they lost all the final numbers. But not to worry, Maduro definitely won!
Was the CIA/USAID involved? Almost certainly, and in 2018 it was barely hidden. The U.S. has been meddling in Venezuela long before Chavez came to power, and has not helped the situation in any way.
Even given all that, the Venezuelan people want Maduro gone. The help of the U.S. to remove the regime might actually have a positive end. This isn't like other countries where the U.S. foisted democracy upon a population that had never experienced it. Venezuela has been imploding, for years. Nearly 8 million people have left in the last decade. The diaspora represents nearly 1/4 of all Venezuelans.
foogazi
> This is one scenario where it might actually have a positive outcome.
LOL - this is how they always do it
mmooss
Also,
> the Venezuelan people want Maduro gone. The help of the U.S. ...
They don't want us to invade their country, shoot their family and neighbors, bomb their cities .... Imagine how you would feel to have a foreign military on your streets, with guns, tanks, etc. Remember that Venezualan soldiers are family of other Venezualans.
When the US military has 'helped', it hasn't turned out well for civilians. Conservatively, 100,000 died in Iraq. Militaries aren't for helping; they are for destroying things and killing people and only appropriate for self-defense.
Most wars since WWII have ended badly for the US: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan ... Korea ended in stalemate. Wars are political actions - enacted through violence - and only end with political outcomes. What is the peaceful political outcome in Venezuala?
azernik
Why do you think USAID of all groups was involved in election meddling? Their involvement in US foreign policy is usually along the lines of PR and sometimes being used as cover.
dwood_dev
The entire point of USAID was to be a central clearinghouse for funding U.S. government pet projects so that the CIA/DoD/DoS stopped funding opposite sides against each other. Didn't always work (See the Middle East), but that's why it exists.
apexalpha
Would you approve of unilateral military action against the US, including extrajudicial murders by Venezuelan armed forces off the coast of California, if Trump fucks with the next election?
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joyeuse6701
NYTimes had a decent daily podcast episode recently that covered opposing strategies the administration had towards Venezuela. The hawks being led by Rubio.
csomar
Venezuela exports most of its oil to China. Taking control of Venezuela strengthen the US energy system and remove one important supplier for China.
IAmGraydon
Only 4% of China’s oil imports come from Venezuela, and most of it is resold to other nations. It isn’t significant.
thrance
As history has shown, America is perfectly fine with dictatorships in South America, they've even installed several of them, like Pinochet's.
Maduro is the wrong kind of South American dictator, i.e. one that doesn't bend the knee to American interests. Trump threatening to overthrow him and put a nationalist puppet that will sell out to America is not unusual for a US president.
To be clear, I am not defending Maduro. Everyone sucks here, but let's not be fooled, this will not improve Venezuelans lives. Just look at what happened to Chile and the others.
mmooss
That was decades ago, during the Cold War when the US thought right-wing dictators were more stable partners against the Soviet Union. Since then, almost all of the Americas south of the US became democracies.
diego_moita
> Can anyone give an overview of what has happened in Venezuela since Maduro took over
Venezuela became more authoritarian and poorer. The oil industry collapsed because of mismanagement and the production of drugs rose. Venezuelans fled to Colombia, Brazil, the U.S., everywhere. The usual stuff for 3rd World dictatorships.
> what the beef is between him and Trump?
The same beef Trump has with everyone that he can blame for anything. Trump just wants a scapegoat for his own incompetence, to blame someone else. He thrives on confrontation. That's why he sends troops to Chicago and L.A. and battleships to the Caribean.
pydry
The world is filled with poor, authoritarian countries. That has nothing to do with why the US would send a carrier group their way.
This is about empire and oil.
Venezuela could be an identical country in every respect and if Maduro was a puppet of the United States sitting on the world's largest oil reserves instead of an opponent the New York Times would be writing stories about how they're reforming and improving.
gengwyn
To be fair, going by the track record, if Venezuela was an oil rich government under a U.S. supported authoritarian, Caracas would look more like Riyadh and there’d be no need for cruisers.
Not saying it justifies Trump’s action in the slightest. Just a point of order.
exasperaited
Maduro manipulated and arguably stole an election in 2019 rather than give up power to interests who the US prefers.
I mean, this time round: the man is unequivocally not good. No one thinks Maduro's regime is legitimate — there's pretty broad consensus in North and South America. Internationally he has less support than Hugo Chavez had, because he has no legitimacy at home.
But the reality is still the same: old-fashioned interests in the USA want much more control over what happens in Venezuela, what Venezuela sells to and to whom.
Trump, spurned for admiration and a Nobel peace prize, wants a war presidency now, because that's an easier source of narcissistic supply.
(And also as he has mused in the past, perhaps a source of "wartime powers", which may most simply explain why he's renamed the DoD to the Department of War: it's all part of the narrative he is building for himself and his supporters.)
He knows nobody is going to have a credible argument that Maduro is legitimate but we're back in the second gulf war territory: the "why now" of it.
He is picking a fight and waiting for them to lash out.
eagerpace
You seem to have formed an opinion without an understand of what has happened in Venezuela. I suggest you look up the history of the recent 2025 Noble Peace Prize winner and let her explain to you what has gone on in the country over the last 20 years.
nielsbot
summarize? or do you have a preferred source?
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shadyKeystrokes
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theturtle
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FridayoLeary
[flagged]
jLaForest
You are advocating for extrajudicial murder for alleged crimes that are not even punishable by death. The US government has admitted it doesn't even know the names of the people it is slaughtering.
FridayoLeary
You call it extrajudicial murder, they call it war. Hundreds of thousands of dead americans back them up. What can you bring to support your case. A distaste for the reality of violence? I'm not going to bother explaining the nuances of war and why some things that are unacceptable in times of peace are justified in the context of war. I'm sure you are intelligent enough to understand that in theory.
Nobody has managed to deal with the crisis because they've been looking at it the wrong way. I don't even know that this new direction will help. What is clear is that everything that's been tried up until now hasn't worked.
vel0city
So Trump can use the military to go kill anyone anywhere for any reason just by saying the word "war", with no oversight or actually reasoned justification at all?
The President doesn't declare war. Congress does.
nickthegreek
there is no proof they are drug boats. many weren’t even heading in the direction of the usa. even if drugs are there, they are most likely cocaine and not even fent. also, i see no judge saying they are guilty and I see no administration providing justification as to how their actions are legal.
Epa095
You don't see the problem with the same actor being the prosecutor, judge and executor, killing people it does not even know for a crime it has not bothered to prove?
portaouflop
> why military action won't help
Look the “war on drugs” has been running all my life and it’s just been getting worse for the US.
What helps against drug addiction and abuse is not more death and bombs - madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
There are many social programs that have __proven__ results in reducing drug deaths and addiction.
Those would need to be implemented, funded and supported; instead of being cut.
It’s pretty simple actually: listen to the people who work with addicts everyday and design programs after their recommendations.
whycome
what the perdue are you on
Nothing good can come from this. Illegal drug production exploded after the 2nd gulf war and invasion of Afghanistan.
This is going to be a repeat of this if the Americans decides to invade Venezuela.