The US Needs a Strategy in Venezuela, Not Airstrikes

With the deployment of the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the US has amassed a fearsome array of assets off the shores of Venezuela: dozens of advanced fighter jets, thousands of troops, guided-missile destroyers, special operations forces, armed drones, gunships, possibly a nuclear submarine. More useful, however, would be a strategy.

What purpose this armada is meant to serve remains stubbornly opaque. Strikes on speedboats allegedly running drugs in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific — which have killed more than 80 people since early September — hardly require such firepower. The Pentagon has reportedly generated options to expand the campaign to targets in Venezuela itself, presumably in hopes of driving dictator Nicolas Maduro from power. At the same time, the president denied any such plans late last month, and White House officials seem unclear about the legal basis for an attack.