The Trump administration has taken a decisive step by imposing a comprehensive naval blockade on sanctioned oil tankers in Venezuela, marking a significant intensification of its hemispheric security strategy. This bold action, which includes classifying Nicolás Maduro’s government as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, aims to cut off the regime’s primary financial lifeline while addressing what the White House perceives as an escalating threat of cartel-driven “drug terrorism” and foreign interference in the region.

President Trump unveiled this strategic move through social media, declaring that Venezuela is now “completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the history of South America.” This maneuver targets Venezuela’s oil sector, the backbone of its economy, responsible for approximately 88% of the nation’s export earnings.

The recently released National Security Strategy (NSS) places a significant emphasis on the Western Hemisphere within the broader context of U.S. national security. It elevates regional instability, massive migration flows, cartel activities, and external influences as immediate threats to American safety. While the document does not explicitly mention Venezuela, it clearly underscores the importance of addressing crises like Venezuela’s collapse to safeguard what the strategy describes as America’s “immediate security perimeter.”

Under the NSS, the United States aims to prevent large-scale migration, combat “narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations,” and ensure regional stability to dissuade mass migration. The strategy also introduces the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, designed to thwart “hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets” by strategic rivals.

A senior White House official explained that the Western Hemisphere chapter of the strategy seeks to “reassert American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” by bolstering regional security alliances, curbing drug trafficking, and alleviating the pressures that lead to mass migration. The official emphasized that this strategic approach positions the hemisphere as a cornerstone of U.S. defense and prosperity.

Newly released footage shows U.S. forces securing a Venezuelan oil tanker. (@AGPamBondi via X)

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said the NSS reflects what the administration sees as a historic realignment of U.S. foreign policy. “President Trump’s National Security Strategy builds upon the historic achievements of his first year back in office, which has seen his Administration move with historic speed to restore American strength at home and abroad and bring peace to the world,” Kelly told Fox News Digital.

“In less than a year, President Trump has ended eight wars, persuaded Europe to take greater responsibility for its own defense, facilitated U.S.-made weapons sales to NATO allies, negotiated fairer trade deals, obliterated Iran’s nuclear facilities, and more.” The strategy, she added, is designed to ensure “America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history.”

Melissa Ford Maldonado, director of the Western Hemisphere Initiative at the America First Policy Institute, said Venezuela illustrates why the hemisphere is now treated as America’s “first line of defense.”

“The Maduro regime functions as a narco-dictatorship closely tied to criminal cartels, which are now considered foreign terror organizations, and supported by China, Iran and Russia,” she said. “Confronting this criminal regime is about keeping poison off our streets and chaos off our shores.”

President Donald Trump signs a series of executive orders at the White House on Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Trump’s new National Security Strategy puts the Western Hemisphere at the center of U.S. security planning, a senior official said. (Jabin Botsford /The Washington Post via Getty Images)

She called the NSS “the most radical and long-overdue change in U.S. foreign policy in a generation,” arguing that instability in Latin America now reaches the United States “in real time” through migration surges, narcotics trafficking and foreign intelligence networks.

Some analysts caution that the strategy’s sharper posture could become destabilizing if pressure escalates into a confrontation.

Roxanna Vigil, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the path ahead depends heavily on how forceful the administration’s approach becomes. “If it goes in the direction of escalation and conflict, that means there’s going to be very little control,” she said. “If there is a power vacuum, who fills it?”

Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro. (AP)

Vigil warned that without a negotiated transition, a sudden collapse could produce outcomes “potentially worse than Maduro.” She said armed groups, hardline regime actors and cartel-linked networks would all compete for power, with potential spillover effects across a region already strained by mass displacement.

Jason Marczak, vice president of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, said the NSS underscores why the administration views Maduro’s continued rule as incompatible with its regional priorities.

“All of those goals cannot be accomplished as long as Nicolás Maduro or anybody close to him remains in power,” he said, pointing to the strategy’s focus on migration, regional security and countering foreign influence. “Venezuela is a conduit for foreign influence in the hemisphere.”

In this April 13, 2019 file photo, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, speaks flanked by Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez, right, and Gen. Ivan Hernandez, second from right, head of both the presidential guard and military counterintelligence in Caracas, Venezuela. (Ariana Cubillos/AP Photo)

Marczak said Venezuelans “were ready for change” in the 2024 election, but warned that replacing Maduro with another insider “doesn’t really accomplish anything.” He argued that only a democratic transition would allow Venezuela to re-enter global markets and stabilize the region.

Both Marczak and Vigil noted that the danger extends beyond Maduro to the criminal ecosystem and foreign partnerships that sustain his rule. Without a negotiated transition, Vigil said, the forces most likely to prevail are those already controlling territory: militias, cartel-linked groups and pro-Chavista power brokers.

Ford-Maldonado said that reality is precisely why the administration’s strategy elevates Venezuela’s crisis within its broader Western Hemisphere doctrine.

Military strikes on suspected narco-trafficking vessels have killed some 37 people since September. (Department of War)

“Confronting a narco-regime tied to foreign adversaries is not a distraction from America First — it’s the clearest expression of it,” she said. “What’s ultimately being defended are American lives, American children, and American communities.”

The administration’s adoption of a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine indicates a more assertive U.S. stance toward the hemisphere, framing Venezuela not only as a humanitarian or political crisis but as a critical test of the strategy’s core principles: migration control, counter-cartel operations and limiting foreign adversaries’ reach. Within this framework, experts say the consequences of inaction could create security risks that extend well beyond Venezuela’s borders.