Why is the U.S. Sending Airstrikes to Venezuela?

After recent air strikes and military pressure in Venezuela, the United States’ true motives are still in question.

Over the last three months, 21 airstrikes on mostly Venezuelan vessels have been carried out by the U.S., killing 83 people and destroying 22 boats in international waters (specifically the Caribbean Ocean and Eastern Pacific Ocean). The Trump Administration has classified the strikes as a “war on drugs” and the people killed as “unlawful combatants.” As the current crisis in Venezuela is worsening and as the United States’ relationship with Venezuela is only going downhill, the question of “Why is the U.S. actually targeting airstrikes on Venezuelan vessels?” is posed. 

The reason provided by the U.S. government for the multiple strikes against Venezuelan vessels is drugs. Secretary of State Pete Hegseth justifies, “We have the absolute and complete authority,” citing that "100,000 Americans were killed each year under the previous administration because of an open border and open drug traffic flow. That is an assault on the American people.” 

Trump is supposedly attacking groups Tren de Aragua (a Venezuelan organized crime syndicate) and Cartel de los Soles (a term to describe alleged Venezuelan criminal networks), who he claims are foreign terrorist organizations. Currently, there is no evidence available to the public that the people killed on the Caribbean vessels struck were “narco-terrorists.” Trump also describes Venezuela as one of the largest cocaine trafficking networks in the world. However, Al Jazeera states, “The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) released an annual cocaine report in 2024, which identified Colombia as the primary source of cocaine seized by the US. About 84 percent of the cocaine seized in the US was found to be originating from Colombian coca. The report does not mention Venezuela.” 

(Photograph: ABC)

To explode a vessel in international waters instead of intercepting or seizing the boat, regardless of whether “narco-terrorists” are aboard, raises legal questions from both U.S. and international experts. “They’re breaking the law either way,” says Sarah Harrison, a former associate general counsel at the Pentagon who now serves as a senior analyst at the Crisis Group think tank. “They’re killing civilians in the first place, and then if you assume they’re combatants, it’s also unlawful — under the law of armed conflict, if somebody is ‘hors de combat’ (out of action due to injury or damage) and no longer able to fight, then they have to be treated humanely.” 

Regardless that this is not classified as an armed conflict, “It would be against international law to fire on the alleged drug traffickers,” as, “the only legitimate targets would be military objectives, which would include active members of the Venezuelan military,” says Kate Mackintosh, an international human rights lawyer and advocate who’s worked across international criminal tribunals, with Doctors without Borders, and in post-conflict field operations in Rwanda and Bosnia, currently serving as the Executive Director of the UCLA Law Promise Institute Europe with a focus on environmental and climate justice issues. She also explains, “A state (The U.S.) is not punished exactly, but under international law, there are consequences for committing an internationally unlawful act. These are:

1. Cessation and non-repetition, in other words, the state (the US) is 

obliged to stop immediately and to ensure this does not happen again.

2. The US owes full reparation for injury caused, including financial  

compensation and, if required, a public apology.

But there is no obvious place that Venezuela (or any other state) can go to 

get this obligation enforced. You might have thought that the International 

Court of Justice in The Hague would be able to order this, and in theory it 

could, but the US has not accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of the 

court, so it is not possible to bring a case there on this basis.” 

The BBC interviewed former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, Mr Moreno Ocampo: "For me, it's very clear. A crime against humanity is a systematic attack against a civilian population, and there is no clarity why these people are not civilians, even though they could be criminals... and it's clearly systematic, because President Trump says they have planned and they organised this, so that should be the charge."

(Photograph: The Guardian)

If Venezuela isn’t actually the “cocaine factory” that Trump claims, and if the act of striking vessels in foreign waters is internationally illegal, what is the real reason for violence? Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s president (for whom Trump has put a $50 million bounty for his arrest), says the massive military buildup and strikes are because of the impressive oil reserves across the South American country. Colombian leftist president Gustavo Petro says, “Oil is the heart of the matter. He’s not thinking about the democratization of Venezuela, let alone the narco-trafficking.” Venezuela accounts for more than a fifth of the world’s oil reserves, around 303 million barrels of oil, but has large production challenges due to mismanagement, sanctions, and underinvestment. If a US-backed regime change were to occur, important companies like Chevron (whose operations are nearly a quarter of the country’s oil output and whose oil transportation licensing faced recent setbacks) would prosper. But although Maduro offered to open up all existing and future oil and gold projects to American companies, the US refused. 

Although Trump has hinted that his ultimate end goal is the idea of regime change in Venezuela, his plans remain extremely unclear. The secrecy, shifting justifications, and human cost of these operations leave the United States’ true intentions hidden. Without full transparency or accountability, the American choices in the Caribbean risk escalating an already fragile crisis with consequences beyond even Venezuela.