By Débora Guedes Falcão and Cinthya Araújo*
This column analyzes the latest developments in the relationship between the United States and Venezuela, which entered a new chapter in recent weeks as the world watched apprehensively as the already troubled relationship between the two countries escalated. Upon beginning his second term in January 2025, President Donald Trump surprised everyone by announcing the end of hostilities between Washington and Caracas and expressing his intention to reestablish diplomatic ties with the government of Nicolás Maduro. However, these efforts have fallen apart in recent weeks following US attacks on four vessels in international waters near the Venezuelan coast. Washington justified the actions by claiming that the ships were carrying “substantial quantities of narcotics” and were operated by “narco-terrorists,” although no evidence was presented. Amid hostile statements and accusations exchanged between the Maduro and Trump administrations, the already deteriorated relationship between the countries threatens to escalate into a diplomatic conflict with military implications.
Contextualization
The current state of discord in relations between Venezuela and the United States is not new, as mentioned above. Venezuela was officially classified as a threat to US national security in 2015, in an executive order signed by the then-acting president, Barack Obama. This classification was motivated by investigations being conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which had detected signs of involvement by high-ranking officials in the Maduro government with organized crime organizations, and by sanctions imposed by the United States on seven members of the government on charges of human rights violations. Another crucial moment for the worsening of relations between the two countries was during the 2018 presidential election in Venezuela. During this election period, there were several allegations of political persecution of parties opposed to the current government and electoral fraud that motivated the international community, under the clear leadership of the Trump administration, to question the legitimacy of Nicolas Maduro’s reelection. The United States then launched an international campaign to recognize Juan Guaidó, leader of the now defunct Venezuelan National Assembly and Maduro’s main political opponent, as interim president of the Venezuelan republic. Although several countries in Latin America and Europe recognized Guaidó as the new head of state, this recognition was temporary, and even in the face of international pressure, Maduro remained in power and came to view this episode as the first attempt by the US government to remove him from power.
To conclude our recap and move on to the analysis of recent developments in the disagreement between Caracas and Washington, it is worth noting that the current US anti-narcotics operations in the Caribbean Sea were not the Trump administration’s first offensive in the region. In March 2020, the US Court of Justice indicted Nicolás Maduro for narco-terrorism and conspiracy to traffic cocaine to US soil. It is in this context that, on April 1, 2020, then-US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper announced the start of the Expanded Counter-Narcotics Operation in the Caribbean Sea, at different points along the Venezuelan coast and in the western Pacific Ocean, near the border region between Colombia and Ecuador. During this operation, 120 metric tons of illicit narcotics were seized, representing a significant temporary increase in additional military resources directed to the Latin American region. Although the operation was considered a tactical success by the US Department of Defense, international policy analysts concluded that the operation went beyond the realm of law enforcement and sent a clear message to the Maduro government. That message was that if the national security of the United States were jeopardized by an increase in the flow of narcotics into the country, the US would be prepared to use not only economic pressure, i.e., economic sanctions, but also its military forces for coercive purposes.
From rapprochement to rupture
Given the escalation in tensions between the United States and Venezuela described above, when President Trump returns to office for his second term in 2025, the international community expected relations between the two countries to return to the state of conflict that existed at the end of his first term in early 2021. Although diplomatic relations between Caracas and Washington remained formally severed, there was a significant increase in Venezuelan oil exports to the US under the Joe Biden administration. Therefore, Trump surprises by taking a step further in this rapprochement and suggesting the start of negotiations for a diplomatic agreement with the Maduro government. On January 31, Trump’s representative, Richard Grenell, met with Maduro in Caracas and claimed to have obtained the Venezuelan leader’s commitment to welcome Venezuelans deported from the US into his country in exchange for a reward that represented hope for a different future in bilateral relations. During that visit, Grenell returned to his home country with American prisoners who had been imprisoned in Venezuela and were released with Maduro’s authorization. This was the first in a series of prisoner exchanges that continued throughout the first months of 2025.
However, the agreement between the two countries began to face obstacles and was stalled in early July due to internal disagreements within the US government, according to The New York Times. This disagreement reportedly stemmed from differences between the agreement offered by Grenell to Maduro, which, according to the US media outlet, involved permission for the American oil company Chevron to continue operating in Venezuela. A crucial source for sustaining Venezuela’s economy, the country’s oil industry had an important and lucrative partnership with Chevron, which had been terminated in May this year. Washington had announced that the license for the company’s operations in the Caribbean country would not be renewed, a position defended by Marco Rubio, Secretary of State and one of the main architects of US foreign policy for Latin America in both Trump administrations, as well as other Republican congressmen. Unlike Grendel, Rubio and the Republicans are not willing to ease the economic sanctions imposed on Venezuela.
It is worth noting that there is no real evidence of Chevron’s involvement in the attempted agreement between the US and Venezuela, and official bodies linked to the US political bureaucracy, such as the State Department and the Department of Defense, have adopted a more reserved and selective stance regarding the announcement of their activities. Therefore, it is not possible at this time to say exactly what motivated this rapid turnaround in relations between the countries. This lack of transparency ultimately fuels a conflict of narratives that is increasingly inflaming the already tense relationship between the Trump and Maduro administrations.
The moment of rupture
Given this scenario of deadlock in the agreement and attempts at diplomatic rapprochement between Caracas and Washington, July ended up being a moment of rupture in this process of possible reconciliation. As mentioned earlier, Maduro had already been indicted by the US Court of Justice for direct involvement in drug trafficking, and at the time, a reward of $15 million was announced in exchange for information that could lead to the Venezuelan president’s arrest. At the end of July 2025, the US justice system announced a $25 million reward for Maduro’s capture, and at the beginning of the following month, in August, Attorney General Pam Bondi doubled the reward to $50 million. In response, Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez made a statement on national television refuting all accusations made by the US against Maduro and other high-ranking members of the Caracas government, such as Minister of the Interior, Justice, and Peace Diosdado Cabello, who has been accused by the US court of involvement in criminal activities since 2015, when he was president of the Venezuelan Congress. The American response consists of speculation that at least 10 F-35 fighter jets, amphibious ships such as the USS Iwo Jima (LHD-7) amphibious assault ship, the amphibious transport ships USS San Antonio (LPD-28) and USS San Antonio (LPD-17), destroyers such as the USS Gravely (DDG-107), USS Jason Dunham (DDG-109) and USS Sammpson (DDG-102), the cruiser USS Lake Erie (CG-70), a nuclear attack submarine, the USS Newport News (SSN-750), patrol and reconnaissance aircraft such as the P-8a Poseidon, and the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit detachment. On August 19, US government spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Washington would use “all its strength” against the Venezuelan regime and to stop drug trafficking. On the same day, Maduro announced the mobilization of 4.5 million militiamen to defend Venezuelan territory against threats from the White House.
From this point on, we can observe a dizzying escalation in the narrative dispute between Caracas and Washington, with Maduro’s statement, dressed in military uniform, during his visit to the militia troops on August 28, that they were there to “defend peace and national sovereignty against the psychological warfare” employed by the White House. That same day, US warships arrived in the southern Caribbean Sea. Contradicting Maduro’s strong national defense rhetoric on the 28th, he sent a letter to the United Nations (UN) denouncing the advance of the US naval fleet to the coast of Venezuela and requesting help from the international community. On September 1, the Venezuelan leader declared on national television that if he were attacked during what he called “the greatest threat to Latin America in the last century,” he would not bow to external pressure and would engage in armed struggle to defend himself. The next day, September 2, the United States attacked the first vessel in the Caribbean Sea. They claimed that the boat was loaded with drugs and crewed by members of the organized crime group Tren de Aragua, classified by the country as a terrorist organization. Although no substantial evidence was provided regarding the identification of the vessel or the identity of the people on board, US authorities said the attack resulted in 11 officially announced deaths.
After the first attack, the Secretary of Defense gave a speech during his visit to troops stationed in the Caribbean region in which he declared that the US government would not tolerate the presence of narco-terrorists in international waters. He also stated that the “War Department,” as the Department of Defense has been referred to during the current Trump administration, was aware of the identity of the traffickers operating in the region, what illegal substances they were trafficking, what routes they were taking, and, most importantly, which leaders were supporting their actions. Subsequently, the secretary stated in an interview with the American TV channel Fox News that they were prepared to use all the military power at their disposal to destroy narco-terrorists who are sending drugs to the United States and that leader Maduro had “many decisions to make” in response to the military operation carried out in the southern Caribbean Sea. On September 15, President Trump stated on social media that a new attack had been launched against what he called “Venezuelan narco-terrorists” in international waters, resulting in three deaths. After the second attack, Maduro sent a letter to the White House reiterating that the accusations against him were false and offering to begin direct talks with Washington in order to end the attacks.
However, at the time of writing, the US government claims that four attacks were carried out on “narco-terrorist” vessels in international waters near the Venezuelan coast, resulting in a total of 17 officially announced deaths. No evidence has been provided to date to substantiate the accusations made against the Venezuelan leader or to confirm the true identity of the vessels. Despite this, a memo leaked to the US Congress and widely reported in the US press revealed that the US government had decided it was engaged in a “non-international armed conflict” against drug cartels. In addition, Trump declared during a speech to the US Navy that he was considering launching a new phase in the offensive against drug cartels in the Caribbean. He justified the decision by stating that after the attacks in international waters, the “criminals” would no longer be using the sea route, so they were considering launching a new offensive, this time by land. Amid these statements from the US side, Maduro says he is investigating a plan for a terrorist attack on the US embassy in Caracas, which is currently inactive, and that all information about this plan has been passed on to Washington.
Still responding to the events that took place between October 3 and 5, Venezuela’s interior minister said on Wednesday, October 8, that a new military mobilization was underway on the country’s northern coast and hinted that a surveillance plan involving the use of drones and the country’s military and militia was underway to protect the country’s territory against possible new attacks by the United States. Due to the fact that the phenomenon described in this column is still ongoing, it is impossible to predict a possible outcome for the conflict analyzed. The dispute over narrative inflames the increasingly high tensions between the countries, and although the Venezuelan leader has shown himself willing to resume dialogue and back down in the conflict, Maduro is equally firm in his position of defending the national territory against external attacks. In contrast, Trump, who previously seemed so willing to engage in dialogue and reestablish relations with Caracas, has been increasingly radical in his direct attacks against drug cartels and, less directly, against the Maduro government. His stance has been criticized by the international community, which claims that the attacks carried out by the Pentagon in international waters violate principles of international law and even the US Constitution itself.
*Débora Guedes Falcão, master’s student in Political Science and International Relations at UFPB, Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB), member of the Research Group on Strategic Studies and International Security (GEESI-UFPB).
This article is based on information obtained up to October 10, 2025.
Referências
https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/articles/c628m836rldo
https://www.scielo.br/j/ln/a/YBbVhbbsVfrRnpH7z8VmpZQ/?format=pdf&lang=pt
https://www.csis.org/analysis/will-venezuelan-state-fail
https://repositorio.ufpb.br/jspui/bitstream/123456789/27158/1/DGF21062023.pdf
https://www.southcom.mil/EnhancedCounterNarcoticsOps
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdjzw3gplv7o
