President Donald Trump’s increasingly militarized confrontation with Venezuela is entering a dangerous new phase, with rising casualties from U.S. strikes on alleged drug boats and a unilateral blockade of sanctioned Venezuelan oil tankers leaving Washington with fewer viable options and mounting political and legal risks.

Image Illustration. Photo by Road Ahead on Unsplash

Since early September, U.S. forces operating under what the Pentagon calls Operation Southern Spear have carried out at least 28 air and sea strikes on vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing 104 people identified by the administration as “narco-terrorists,” according to official tallies compiled by independent monitors. The campaign, initially sold as a targeted effort to disrupt drug flows, is now tightly intertwined with Trump’s bid to squeeze the government of President Nicolás Maduro, raising fears among lawmakers and legal experts that the United States is edging toward an undeclared conflict with a foreign state.

A Deadly Campaign at Sea

The U.S. campaign began on September 1, when Trump disclosed that a Navy aircraft had destroyed a boat he said was carrying Venezuelan drug traffickers. That first strike killed all 11 people on board, according to U.S. accounts and subsequent reporting from regional officials. Since then, the operation has expanded to both the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean, with at least 104 people killed in 28 strikes on 29 vessels as of December 18, according to an open-source aggregation of Pentagon statements and public data.

Recent incidents underscore the pace and lethality of the mission. On December 18, U.S. Southern Command said a strike in the eastern Pacific killed four people aboard a vessel it described as operated by “narco-terrorists” on a known trafficking route, bringing the acknowledged death toll to at least 99 at that point. The next day, two more vessels were hit in international waters, killing five and pushing the total number of dead over 100, according to European and U.S. media tallies based on official releases. A separate count by one major international outlet attributes 104 deaths to the strikes, citing U.S. and allied sources.

Yet despite the administration’s insistence that every destroyed boat is a blow to criminal cartels, officials have released no verifiable evidence that the targeted vessels were carrying narcotics or were operated by designated terrorist groups. Independent analysts say most of the footage shared publicly shows small craft followed by a sudden explosion, with no obvious signs of drugs on board. Fact-checkers note that Trump’s own claims about the scale of the threat — including assertions that each strike saves tens of thousands of lives by stopping fentanyl shipments — are not supported by available data and conflict with what is known about the main routes of synthetic opioids into the United States.

From Drug War to Pressure Campaign on Maduro

What began as a maritime extension of the “war on cartels” is now openly tied to the White House’s long-standing goal of weakening the Maduro government. In recent weeks, Trump has accused Venezuela of “stealing” U.S.-linked oil assets and announced what he describes as a blockade on all sanctioned Venezuelan oil tankers entering or leaving the country’s ports. The measure adds a quasi-naval embargo to an already sweeping set of U.S. sanctions targeting Venezuela’s state oil company and financial system, tightening a pressure campaign that dates back years.

Trump’s national security team portrays the strategy as an effort to choke off funding for what the Justice Department has called a “narco-terrorist” regime. Maduro and several senior Venezuelan officials were indicted in U.S. courts on drug-trafficking charges in 2020 and remain the subject of multimillion‑dollar rewards for information leading to their arrest, bounties the current administration has reaffirmed and expanded. Maduro, for his part, has mobilized tens of thousands of reservists and accused Washington of plotting a “Panama-style” invasion reminiscent of the 1989 U.S. intervention that toppled Gen. Manuel Noriega.

Legal and Human Rights Questions

As the body count climbs, the operation is drawing intense scrutiny from human rights advocates and legal scholars. Several experts in international humanitarian law argue that using lethal force against suspected traffickers on the high seas, without transparent evidence or due process, risks violating both U.S. constitutional protections and global norms against extrajudicial killing. One controversial incident in September involved a second strike on survivors from a previously hit boat, prompting some observers to warn that the United States may have committed a war crime under the laws of armed conflict.

Human rights organizations have called for independent investigations into each strike and for the release of unredacted targeting assessments. They also question whether the United States can plausibly claim to be in an “armed conflict” with loosely defined cartels that span multiple countries — the legal rationale the administration cites to bypass normal law-enforcement standards. Rights groups argue that the lack of clear, publicly available evidence linking specific boats to imminent threats undermines U.S. claims that the killings are lawful acts of self‑defense.

Congress Divided and War Powers in the Spotlight

On Capitol Hill, response to the campaign has fractured largely along partisan lines, though not entirely. Democratic lawmakers have introduced resolutions under the War Powers Act seeking to halt “hostilities in or against Venezuela” absent explicit authorization from Congress. Those measures were defeated in the House this past week, but the votes highlighted unease over the open‑ended nature of the mission and the prospect of escalation. The Trump administration has relied on existing counterterrorism and anti-drug authorities to justify the strikes, a legal interpretation that many in Congress say stretches statutory language beyond its intent.

Some Republicans, including hawkish allies who once pushed for direct action against Maduro, have applauded the maritime strikes as a show of resolve. Others, such as Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, warn that a policy of killing suspected traffickers at sea risks normalizing targeted killings far from traditional battlefields and could drag U.S. forces into a broader conflict. “If the new policy is that we will blow you up if we think you might be a drug dealer,” Paul has said, “that’s kind of a worrisome policy.”

Strategic Choices: Escalate, Recalibrate or Pull Back

Behind the scenes, current and former officials describe a White House increasingly boxed in by its own rhetoric. Trump has repeatedly signaled that regime change in Caracas is a desirable outcome, linking the boat strikes and oil blockade to a wider push to topple Maduro and curb the influence of Venezuela and Cuba across the region. But analysts say the administration now faces a stark set of choices: further escalate the use of force against targets tied more directly to the Venezuelan state, risking U.S. casualties and a direct confrontation; quietly scale back the strikes as international criticism grows; or seek a negotiated off‑ramp that might involve easing sanctions in exchange for political concessions in Caracas.

Each option carries political costs at home. Escalation could alienate voters wary of new foreign entanglements, particularly if U.S. personnel are killed or detained. De-escalation, on the other hand, might be painted by critics as a retreat in the face of what the administration has branded “narco-terrorism.” And diplomacy with Maduro, whose government Washington has long deemed illegitimate, would be a hard sell to a domestic audience conditioned to see Venezuela’s leaders as criminals rather than counterparts.

Regional Fallout and Human Costs

For countries across Latin America and the Caribbean, the U.S. campaign is reviving painful memories of decades when Washington used military power to shape political outcomes in the hemisphere. Governments in Caracas and Bogotá have condemned the strikes as violations of their sovereignty, and several regional bodies have called for restraint and adherence to international law. Humanitarian organizations warn that a prolonged naval and air campaign, combined with tighter oil sanctions, could further cripple Venezuela’s already devastated economy, accelerating outward migration that has already driven more than 7 million Venezuelans to leave their country in recent years.

At sea, meanwhile, the identities of many of the dead remain unknown. With no transparent post‑strike investigations made public and limited access for independent observers, families in coastal communities from Venezuela to Colombia are left to wonder whether missing relatives were among those killed. Analysts caution that if evidence eventually emerges that some of the destroyed vessels were not involved in drug trafficking, the political backlash in the region could be severe, undermining U.S. efforts to build coalitions against transnational crime.

Conclusion: A Shrinking Pathway Out

As Trump continues to tout boat strikes and oil blockades as proof of toughness on crime and foreign adversaries, the room for maneuver is narrowing. Each additional casualty at sea, each tanker turned back from Venezuelan ports, deepens the political investment in a strategy whose endgame remains uncertain.

For now, the administration is pressing ahead, betting that sustained pressure will eventually force a break in Caracas without triggering a wider war. But with the death toll already above 100, legal challenges mounting, and regional allies uneasy, the United States finds itself on a risky trajectory — one that may soon demand a choice between escalation, compromise, or a costly climbdown.