Adds update on US operations, Venezuelan opposition comment.
US president Donald Trump's administration is pushing back on allies' criticism of its strong-arm approach toward Venezuela — the latest point of disagreement within the G7 group of major economies.
The US has built up a large naval presence near Venezuela since early September — including the Gerald R Ford aircraft carrier strike group as of 11 November — and has carried out almost 20 lethal attacks on small boats it accuses of ferrying drugs.
US defense secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday labeled efforts to remove "narco-terrorists from our hemisphere" as Operation Southern Spear, to be led by the Southern Command which oversees military forces in Central America, South America and the Caribbean.
The US administration's legal pretext for the build up and Trump's statements that he is considering attacks on Venezuela's soil have come under skeptical review from US lawmakers from both parties.
G7 foreign ministers ahead and during their meeting in Canada on 10-11 November expressed similar sentiments. The US strikes against boats disregard international law, French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot said. There is no legal basis for the US attacks, EU foreign affairs commissioner Kaja Kallas told NBC News on Wednesday.
"I don't think that the EU gets to determine what international law is," US secretary of state Marco Rubio told reporters late on Wednesday. "I do find it interesting that all of these countries want us to send and supply, for example, nuclear-capable Tomahawk missiles to defend Europe, but when the US positions aircraft carriers in our hemisphere where we live, somehow that's a problem."
The EU has backed Ukraine's request last month to equip Ukrainian forces with Tomahawk missiles to enable Kyiv to strike targets deep inside Russia. But Trump appears to have denied the request.
The US armada assembled near Venezuela, including the Gerald R Ford group, carries an estimated 170 Tomahawks, defense experts Mark Cancian and Chris Park with think tank the Center for Security and International Studies wrote on 10 November. The Tomahawk inventory is comparable with the number of missiles the US military previously used in campaigns of limited duration, such as in Libya in 2011, the experts said.
US naval maneuvers and boat strikes so far have had no impact on Venezuela's oil exports and energy shipments across the Caribbean. Chevron — allowed to resume business in Venezuela just before the naval build up began — appears to have imported 155,000 b/d to the US from Venezuela in October, based on data from Kpler ship tracking.
Venezuela's crude output was at an estimated 1.1mn b/d in October. Independent refiners in China absorb the bulk of Venezuelan crude exports not loaded by Chevron. Venezuelan imports to China were at an estimated 500,000 b/d in October, with many more cargoes available than there are buyers, despite Merey discounts widening to $12/bl against Ice Brent.
What next?
The US has not carried out a unilateral military intervention in the western hemisphere since 1989, when it toppled Panamanian president Manuel Noriega's government and transported him to the US where he was convicted in court of involvement in drug trafficking.
Trump, Rubio and other US officials have made public statements suggesting that removing Maduro from power is among possible options for the US naval force. Maduro faces a US prosecutors' indictment over alleged drug trafficking and the US has offered a $50mn bounty for his capture.
Venezuela this week passed a law obligating the general population to defend Maduro's regime, with the president calling for "maximum preparation". Additional military forces have not been highly visible in the capital of Caracas in recent days.
Interior minister Diosdado Cabello threatened members of Venezuela's political opposition, saying "don't say we didn't warn you" if the US "does anything to any of us."
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said from hiding late on Wednesday that Venezuela is "in the final hours" of what will be a "peaceful transition."
But the US military resources assembled in the Caribbean suggest that a full blown invasion is not likely. Trump's deployment of the US military has been more limited so far this year — bombing Yemen's Houthis and Iran, and quickly declaring victory.
"Attacks on the cartels have the advantage that the US can walk away at any time ... claiming that it damaged cartel operations and thereby reduced the flow of drugs into the US," Cancian and Park wrote.
The Trump administration has told US lawmakers that its military operations are a "non-international armed conflict" with an unspecified group of "designated terrorist organizations".
A legal opinion written by Trump's Justice Department in late July — and shared with the US Congress in early November — did not explicitly mention Venezuela and merely asserted the right to target trans-national criminal organizations anywhere, by all means.
