US president Donald Trump on Wednesday publicly mulled possible military strikes on Venezuelan soil, which would expand US operations against alleged drug traffickers in the south Caribbean.
"We are certainly looking at land now because we've got the sea under control," Trump told reporters in response to a question about the future scope of US operations against Venezuela.
The Pentagon has assembled a naval task force off Venezuela's coast and, since early September, has destroyed five boats allegedly carrying drugs in international waters, resulting in 27 casualties. Trump previously discussed the possibility of strikes on Venezuela's mainland, but his comments on Wednesday are the most explicit confirmation that the Pentagon is planning such attacks on the country.
Trump made his comments at a joint press briefing with FBI director Kash Patel — an event scheduled to highlight the US administration's aggressive stance against immigrants living in the US, whom Trump routinely maligns as violent criminals and drug traffickers. Trump claims that the Tren de Aragua and other criminal gangs allegedly directed by Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro are crucial for transporting drugs into the US.
"A lot of the Venezuela drugs come in through the sea," Trump said on Wednesday. "So you get to see that, but we're going to stop them by land also."
The Trump administration, which is required to ask Congress for authorization to use military force or to provide a legal justification for ongoing strikes, has merely informed lawmakers that it is engaged in a "non-international armed conflict" with an unspecified group of "designated terrorist organizations".
An attempt by Democratic senators to compel Trump's administration to stop its military strikes off Venezuela's coast failed to advance last week.
The first US strikes took place a month after the US allowed Chevron to resume crude exports to the US. The US naval operations so far have not affected the flow of crude and LNG in the Caribbean. But they prompted Caracas to step up preparations for a possible US invasion.
The US military force assembled off Venezuela's coast included 3,500 Marines and 3,400 US naval personnel as of early October, Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates. "Assets currently deployed fall short of what an invasion or a raid would require," the think tank said in a report last week. It estimated that, at a minimum, a force of over 48,000 US military personnel from all branches of the military would be required for a ground invasion.
