Operation Southern Spear: The U.S. Military Campaign Targeting Venezuela

Since early September 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump has authorized more than twenty lethal strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean Sea. The strikes are part of an escalating pressure campaign against Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, whom U.S. officials accuse of being the leader of a drug cartel that the State Department designated a foreign terrorist organization in November. In recent weeks, Washington significantly increased its air and naval presence in the region as part of Operation Southern Spear, a U.S. military campaign that it says targets drug trafficking in the Caribbean.

The Trump administration has framed the operation as necessary to curb the flow of drugs from Latin America to the United States, but some experts say the campaign’s scope and intensity go beyond counternarcotics objectives, possibly reflecting a broader effort to force regime change in Venezuela. Meanwhile, heightened U.S. pressure on Venezuela—including a naval blockade on all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving the country, which followed expanded sanctions against several Venezuelan oil shipping companies—has raised concerns about escalation toward war and broader regional instability.

What is Operation Southern Spear?

On November 13, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the formal launch of Operation Southern Spear, which he said was aimed at targeting “narco-terrorist” organizations and disrupting illegal drug trafficking in the Western Hemisphere. The Pentagon has described the effort as a U.S. military “counter-narco-terrorism campaign” intended to safeguard U.S. national security. 

Hegseth’s announcement came shortly after the Senate voted down a bipartisan war power resolution that would have blocked the Trump administration from using military force within or against Venezuela without congressional authorization. The vote followed a substantial buildup of U.S. military forces in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean, as well as reports that the administration was considering land strikes inside Venezuelan territory. 

How is the operation being carried out?

Led by U.S. Southern Command and Joint Task Force Southern Spear, the operation involves extensive air and naval assets, including bombers, drones, aircraft carriers, and amphibious assault ships. The name “Southern Spear” was first introduced by the U.S. Navy in January to describe a maritime mission that uses a hybrid fleet of vessels with robotic and autonomous systems to “increase presence in, and awareness of, strategically and economically important maritime regions.” The effort was later expanded into a broader, formal military operation focused on interdicting drug cartels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. 

But when it comes to the operation’s goals of disrupting illegal drug trafficking and dismantling “narco-terrorist” networks in the Western Hemisphere, “there’s a lot of mismatch,” said Roxanna Vigil, a CFR international affairs fellow in national security, noting that the United States is using “a huge naval deployment against small, little drug boats.” More traditional law enforcement approaches, such as targeted interdictions, have historically been the standard response to maritime drug trafficking in the Caribbean.

Approximately fifteen thousand U.S. military personnel have reportedly been deployed so far, making it one of the largest U.S. military buildups in the region since the Cold War era. As of December 2, the Pentagon said the operation has involved twenty-one strikes resulting in eighty-two deaths.

How serious is the drug trafficking threat in the Caribbean?

The Trump administration has argued that drug trafficking poses a direct national security threat warranting the use of military force. In early October, the administration notified Congress that the United States was engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, arguing that the cartel’s actions constitute “an armed attack” against the country. The declaration represented a sweeping assertion of war powers without prior approval from Congress and permitted the United States to use lethal force against cartel members—whom the administration considers “unlawful combatants.” (During a congressional briefing, Pentagon officials reportedly said that they don’t need to positively identify individuals on the targeted vessels as specific cartel members to carry out lethal strikes.)

The Trump administration also elevated drug trafficking as a priority in its 2025 National Security Strategy [PDF], which calls for efforts to “neutralize” and target “narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations” using lethal force.

“The administration calls the current situation a ‘non-international armed conflict,’” said Will Freeman, CFR fellow for Latin American studies. The use of that term “seems to allow arbitrary designation of combatants; certainly, near-total discretion for the president, possibly violating Article II of the Constitution.”

The Caribbean has long served as a major transit corridor for cocaine, heroin, and marijuana moving from South America to the United States and Europe. According to U.S. government estimates, about one-third of all cocaine entering the United States passes through the Caribbean, facilitated by the region’s vast, dispersed geography and limited maritime law enforcement capabilities. 

Yet trafficked cocaine accounts for far fewer U.S. overdose deaths than synthetic opioids like fentanyl, virtually all of which—as well as about three-fourths of trafficked cocaine—actually comes from Mexico, Freeman said. As a result, “whatever actions are taken in the Caribbean have no effect on fentanyl,” Vanda Felbab-Brown, an expert on drugs and counternarcotics policies at the Brookings Institution, told NPR.

Is the U.S. moving toward regime change against Maduro?

Although framed as a counternarcotics campaign, some critics argue the operation’s scope and scale—including the administration’s authorization of covert CIA action in Venezuela—suggest the administration could be considering a broader plan to oust Maduro. “If Maduro is not the legitimate leader of Venezuela and is instead a narco-terrorist and a cartel kingpin, it would be difficult to understand why the Trump administration would surround the country with a gigantic armada only to leave him in power,” CFR Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies Elliott Abrams, who served as special representative for Venezuela in the first Trump administration, wrote for Foreign Affairs.

Maduro has accused the Trump administration of “fabricating” a war and trying to take control of Venezuela’s lucrative oil resources. Venezuela possesses the world’s largest proven oil reserves, but decades of government mismanagement, underinvestment in the sector, corruption, and U.S. sanctions have led to a drastic decline in the country’s production and export capacity. 

On December 10, the United States seized a Venezuelan oil tanker for alleged sanctions violations, a move Maduro denounced as “an act of international piracy.” A day later, the Trump administration announced new sanctions targeting several Venezuelan shipping companies and members of Maduro’s family. The following week, the administration announced a naval blockade on sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela, and claimed the Maduro regime was using stolen oil to finance activities like drug and human trafficking. However, the administration has yet to define the scope, enforcement, and duration of the blockade.

In addition to economic and military action, Trump has seemingly applied direct diplomatic pressure, reportedly pressing Maduro to step down in a November 21 call. “Washington is already obviously trying to pressure out Maduro,” said Freeman. “Administration officials have said so many times, including Trump… [but] only a ground invasion or assassination is likely to remove Maduro, at potentially high cost to U.S. lives and with very uncertain outcomes.”

Abrams, however, contends that a regime-change strategy would not require U.S. forces to be deployed on the ground in Venezuela, with the potential exception of “Special Forces raids against regime figures who have already been indicted for narco-terrorism by U.S. law enforcement,” he wrote, arguing that “the potential gain for the United States from the collapse of the Maduro regime far outweighs the risk.”

How are other governments responding?

The region’s response has been mixed. Several U.S. partners, including El Salvador and the Dominican Republic, have expressed support for U.S. operations, with some allowing U.S. forces access to their bases and airports. The U.S. military has also increased its presence in its Caribbean territories, reopening the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in Puerto Rico and deploying additional forces to the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Other governments have been more critical. On November 11, Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced that the country had suspended intelligence sharing efforts with the United States, while Ecuador overwhelmingly rejected President Daniel Noboa’s proposal to allow foreign military bases in the country—including a potential U.S. presence.

Still, while the region’s response to U.S. actions in the Caribbean has so far been ad hoc, land strikes inside Venezuela would be a “test” of the region’s willingness to push back on the U.S. military’s use of force, CFR’s Vigil said. She noted that Latin America is currently “quite divided,” with countries largely acting in pursuit of their own interests, so any such strikes would reveal if governments respond critically or not.

Russia has also signaled support for Venezuela, a longtime ally. Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly called Maduro a day after the December 10 tanker seizure to “reaffirm” Moscow’s support, and the two countries finalized a major strategic partnership treaty in October that expands bilateral cooperation on energy, mining, defense, and counterterrorism. Both Russia and Venezuela are under extensive U.S. sanctions.

Will Merrow created the graphic for this article.