A wannabe emperor goes in search of an empire.
Donald Trump steps off the Marine One helicopter at the White House in Washington, DC, on September 30, 2025. Trump said on Tuesday the White House is weighing actions to crack down on drug cartels “coming by land” from Venezuela.(Hu Yousong / Getty Images)
Any day now, a US Navy strike force, led by the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, will join an armada of war ships already positioned off the coast of Venezuela. Described in the naval media as “the most capable, adaptable, and lethal combat platform in the world,” the USS Gerald R. Ford bristles with state-of-the-art attack aircraft on its massive deck: Super Hornet fighters, Growler electronic warfare jets, and Seahawk helicopters among them. And the battleship carries some 5,000 seamen and Marines, adding to the phalanx of 10,000 military personnel already deployed on bases in Puerto Rico and on at least ten other war ships now aiming their artillery, cruise missiles and bomb-dropping drones at Caracas.
This show of force is unprecedented in the 21st century. Not since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis has the United States assembled such a lethal array of firepower in the Caribbean. Trump administration officials have begun leaking attack plans to media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and the Miami Herald, which have reported that initial raids would target Venezuelan military installations and that US airstrikes “could begin within days, even hours.” An unprovoked US military assault on one of Latin America’s largest nations appears likely in the near future.
Shock and Awe in the Caribbean
Since the Venezuelan armed forces have not attacked or even threatened to attack the United States, the Trump administration has been forced to concoct a public justification for its actions—the widely reported but spurious claim that Washington is combatting “narco-terrorists.” The post-9/11 war on terrorism established a precedent for waging war against so-called “non-state actors;” defining low level speedboat pilots and alleged drug smugglers as “terrorists” is intended to provide a dubious legal cover for killing them.
But Al-Qaeda actually launched murderous attacks on the United States and Congress authorized a military response. Arguing that unidentified people in boats that might be carrying drugs that might be destined for the United States are armed combatants who pose an imminent threat—and can therefore be killed with impunity—stretches common sense beyond the breaking point.
On Trump’s orders, over the last two months US military forces have turned the Caribbean into a killing field, destroying 15 small boats and taking the lives of over 60 unidentified individuals who were on them. Proud of this accomplishment, the president and his secretary of defense have repeatedly posted what can only be described as “snuff films” of the ships and their crews bobbing in the ocean and then exploding into flames as Hellfire missiles and laser-guided bombs dropped from US drones and attack helicopters obliterate everyone on board.
Similar shock and awe operations are now targeting the Venezuelan mainland under similarly false premises. The “enhanced US force presence” in the Caribbean, according to the Pentagon, “will bolster US capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities…. These forces will enhance and augment existing capabilities to disrupt narcotics trafficking and degrade and dismantle TCOs”—transnational criminal organizations which President Trump alleges are being directed by Venezuela’s embattled and illegitimate president, Nicolás Maduro.
Target Maduro
Overthrowing Maduro is the Trump administration’s true goal; just as it has been since his first term in office. “Why can’t the US just invade Venezuela?” the president repeatedly asked his national security aides back in 2018 citing successful episodes of gunboat diplomacy against Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989. In his memoir In the Room Where it Happened, former national security adviser John Bolton recalled that President Trump suggested it would be “cool” to invade Venezuela. He considered the South American nation to be “really part of the United States.”
At the time, Trump had seasoned national security aides willing and able to explain to him the folly of military intervention in Venezuela for US foreign policy interests: A unilateral invasion would violate international law and the UN charter; Washington would face opposition from all of Latin America; and military intervention would require occupying and pacifying a major nation of over 30 million people through a protracted deployment of US troops on the ground.
Those arguments remain valid. But today, the president is surrounded by sycophants appointed to do his bidding rather than to advise him of its costs. To avoid the quagmire of occupation, military options on Trump’s desk are reportedly focused on strategic airstrikes targeting Maduro for assassination, and on bombing raids to coerce the Venezuelan military into taking out Maduro themselves or turning him over to US authorities. And since flagrantly stealing an election he overwhelmingly lost in July 2024, Maduro has no allies in the region—aside from Cuba. While Mexico and Colombia have criticized the US boat attacks, at home and abroad Maduro remains a pariah president with few friends to come to his defense.
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War Powers Resolution
The reluctance to be seen as defending Maduro extends to Capitol Hill, complicating political efforts to restrain Trump’s interventionist impulses. Democrats, joined by Senate Republicans Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski, have criticized the boat attacks as illegal; they have tried to invoke the 1973 War Powers Resolution that requires the president to seek congressional authorization to engage in sustained armed hostilities—so far without success. In early October, Senate Joint Resolution 83, directing the president to halt hostilities against narcotics traffickers without congressional authorization failed in the Senate by a vote of 51-48.
Still pending is Senate Joint Resolution 90 intended “To direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against Venezuela that have not been authorized by Congress.” The resolution expresses Congressional concern that “The publicly reported authorization for the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct covert lethal operations within Venezuela, the significant augmentation of United States Armed Forces assets, personnel, and operations in proximity to Venezuela, and statements from United States Government officials regarding planning for ground strikes within Venezuela indicate imminent involvement of United States Armed Forces in hostilities within or against Venezuela.” And it calls on the president to cease and desist: “Congress hereby directs the president to terminate the use of United States Armed Forces for hostilities within or against Venezuela, unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific authorization for use of military force.” But senior Senate aides interviewed for this article remain unsure that enough Republican votes exist to move the resolution forward.
Might Makes Right
Even if Congress miraculously passed a resolution to invoke the War Powers Act, it is unlikely that Trump will heed the law and adhere to the Constitution. Just this past weekend, the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, T. Elliott Gaiser, informed members of Congress that the War Powers Resolution does not apply to the ongoing military operations against small boats in the Caribbean because US troops were not in danger. “The operation comprises precise strikes conducted largely by unmanned aerial vehicles launched from naval vessels in international waters at distances too far away for the crews of the targeted vessels to endanger American personnel,” another senior official explained.
To further circumvent the War Powers Act to conduct bombing raids on land, the New York Times reported this week, Trump’s Justice Department is drawing up a “legal rationale” for the assassination of Maduro and his top generals accusing them of being high-ranking members of a “narcoterrorist” entity. “The Justice Department is expected to contend that designation makes Mr. Maduro a legitimate target,” according to the Times, “despite longstanding American legal prohibitions on assassinating national leaders.”
Since his inaugural speech on January 20, when Trump announced the US would “take back” the Panama Canal, the president has made it clear that his foreign policy will not respect the sovereignty of other nations. Despite opposition from his MAGA constituents to expending US resources abroad, Trump seems dedicated to enhancing his power through the subjugation of other countries. Unable to coerce Canada into becoming the 51st state, he is now turning his attention southward, toward a region which Washington has historically treated as its “backyard.”
After all, an emperor needs an empire. “Trump’s ambitions will not stop with Venezuela,” warns former Obama deputy national security advisor, Benjamin Rhodes. Already, Trump has falsely labeled Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, “an illegal drug leader” and threatened to take aggressive action against Colombia. Trump has reportedly ordered the Pentagon to draw up plans for the deployment of US troops and intelligence operatives for ground operations against cartels inside Mexico. If the United States manages to capture or kill Maduro, the administration could be emboldened to escalate regime change efforts against Cuba.
“Within the Western Hemisphere,” Rhodes suggests, “Mr. Trump is beginning to act like Mr. Netanyahu in the Middle East or Mr. Putin within the former Soviet Union—a right-wing leader claiming a sphere of influence where he is free to act as he chooses.”
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Trump has the power to resurrect the era of gunboat diplomacy for his own edification. Congressional Democrats don’t have the votes to stop him, and Republicans don’t have the will. Latin Americans can protest, but they are too outgunned to resist. Russia and China may well find a division of the globe into spheres of influence to their advantage.
But sustaining empires is expensive and inevitably breeds ill-will among the subjugated. All empires collapse eventually. In time, the inter-American community, and the American people—in whose name these abuses of power are being conducted—will rise to challenge Trump’s imperial, and imperious ambitions and it will become clear, at home and abroad, that the emperor has no clothes.
Peter KornbluhTwitterPeter Kornbluh, a longtime contributor to The Nation on Cuba, is co-author, with William M. LeoGrande, of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana. Kornbluh is also the author of The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability.
William M. LeoGrandeWilliam LeoGrande, is a professor of government at American University, author of Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, and coauthor with Peter Kornbluh of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana.