President Trump is sending Venezuela’s strongman dictator a gentle nudge, a sort of reminder to behave himself. That reminder is in the form of a United States Navy task group, including the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit. This would be, of course, far more than El Presidente Maduro’s country could take on. 

This isn’t a new tactic. Historically, sending warships to patrol up and down an unfriendly nation’s coast is a time-tested way to remind these kinds of people to behave themselves. There’s a possibility these ships may have more than one mission, as well.

This military activity follows White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s statement last week that President Donald Trump was committed to using “every element of American power” to confront Venezuelan drug smuggling. Leavitt added, “The Maduro regime is not the legitimate government of Venezuela, it is a narco-terror cartel, and Maduro, it is the view of this administration, is not a legitimate president. He is a fugitive head of this cartel who has been indicted in the United States.” The Trump administration has offered a $50 million reward for Maduro’s arrest and receipt by U.S. authorities and has increased bounties on other regime officials.

The force isn’t sufficient to go after Maduro personally. There’s a fair amount of hitting power in this task group, which reportedly consists of three destroyers, an attack submarine, and a guided-missile cruiser, but Marines or no Marines, it’s not an invasion force. It’s enough to intimidate, but not to invade. That’s almost certainly not what President Trump intends. 

They may have some serious missions beyond thumbing America’s nose at a narco-state dictator, though.

While an oil embargo would put extraordinary financial pressure on Maduro’s regime that might actually lead it to reduce its drug export extravaganzas, Trump has sent mixed signals. In July, for example, the Trump administration granted Chevron Corporation a sanctions waiver to resume oil extraction operations inside Venezuela.

Still, this task force appears too large in scale, too expensive in operating costs, and too demanding of military assets already in very short supply to simply be for show. Unilateral U.S. military inspections of Venezuelan cargo ships suspected of carrying drugs and evading oil export sanctions are thus likely. Limited strikes on land-based Venezuelan drug facilities and personnel are also possible.

Drug interdiction is traditionally a Coast Guard operation, and it’s not like the Coast Guard hasn’t been deployed outside American territorial waters before. But a few Coast Guard cutters may be able to carry out the boarding and inspection role, but they wouldn’t induce quite the pucker factor in Maduro as several Navy warships and a bunch of Marines.