In January, President Donald Trump’s Special Presidential Envoy, Richard Grenell, engaged in significant diplomatic talks with Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. These discussions covered various topics, including the potential repatriation of deported illegal immigrants to Venezuela and culminated in the release of six American prisoners held in Caracas.

Fast forward eight months to last Friday, when President Trump announced the complete closure of Venezuelan airspace. This announcement has fueled speculation in Washington about potential ground operations.

Adding to the tension, recent reports suggest that Trump has warned Maduro to leave the country with his family if they wish to remain safe.

As Ron Burgundy might quip, “That escalated quickly.”

Maduro’s regime has been marked by a brutal clampdown on dissent, resulting in the deaths, torture, and imprisonment of thousands of opposition members. He has overturned legitimate elections and misappropriated both the national treasury and Venezuela’s rich fossil fuel resources. A tyrant by any definition, Maduro’s departure would be unwelcome only to those in his circle of corrupt allies.

And Secretary of State Marco Rubio wants nothing less than the removal of Maduro and his cronies and the installation of the opposition leaders duly elected in July 2024.

In his first term, Trump was no friend of Maduro, but his aggressive turn now is notable.

In theory, this is about homeland security — and more specifically about the threat of drugs to US prosperity. 

And very specifically the alleged role that Maduro and his Interior and Justice Minister, Diosdado Cabello, play as narcotic-cartel leaders.

Trump routinely points out that fentanyl has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and that Maduro runs a cartel that deal illegal drugs.

Yet fentanyl comes into America almost solely through Mexico, and the precursor agents for making it come to Mexico from Communist China; Venezuelan narco-cartels deal mostly in cocaine, and they distribute as much to Europe as to the United States. 

The president has declared the fentanyl plague a “national security emergency,” and certainly a compelling argument can be made for that. But why is his first target the drug cartels of Venezuela?

Simply put, Venezuela is an easier target than Mexico — America’s closest trading partner and neighbor — or China — a nuclear armed adversary who might not take a liking to the US Navy sinking merchant ships carrying precursor agents.

In support of this effort, Washington has deployed a large number of warships and servicemembers into the Caribbean — the most at any time in the past three decades. This includes naval forces (a carrier strike group, destroyers, and amphibious ships), manned and unmanned air power (both afloat and ashore), special operators and 4,000 Marines on ships.

These forces have been used as a demonstration of power, but also to affect 20- plus attacks on small boats allegedly ferrying drugs in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.

These kinetic attacks are a stark departure from nearly 40 years of law enforcement-based drug operations, where Navy, Coast Guard and other federal assets stopped ships, searched them and arrested those ferrying narcotics.

This current effort has been heavily criticized for its lack of probable cause and potential for error, and is focused too much on the cocaine after it’s been broken down into small shipments.Now we have the rumors of “ground operations.”

Logically, the primary target for this effort would be striking the drugs at cartel concentration points — factories and warehouses; these targets should be well understood by US forces by now.

An accompanying target set would be the relevant parts of the Venezuelan armed forces — military airfields, fighter aircraft and air defense systems — that might oppose US strikes on narcotic targets: Venezuela has limited number of these weapons, and they are thought to be poorly maintained systems, but operational safety would dictate that they be removed. 

Again, these targets should be well scoped by US forces by now; striking them will have the added benefit of convincing the Venezuelan military that this is not a fight they want to play in.

Actual ground operations with US soldiers in Venezuela are not a logical option: Venezuela is twice the size of California, with a population of 35 million. Yet ruling out large numbers of boots on the ground would not eliminate the possibility of special operations, by unique highly trained forces.

The short-term goal should be convincing Maduro to leave, or convincing those around him to remove him themselves.

The longer-term goal is to create the conditions where those in power, the military and police forces, allow those legally elected to power to take the presidency — Edmundo Gonzalez or Maria Corina Machado, who Gonzalez stood in for when she was barred from running.

Donald Trump did not run for president as an agent of regime change anywhere, but he seems to have decided to pursue this agenda in the most unusual of places — South America, for the most unexpected of reasons — cocaine distribution.

But if he keeps up the pressure campaign he has started, regime change is likely what we will be seeing in Venezuela later this month.

Rear Adm. (ret.) Mark Montgomery is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.