Global & US Headlines
Trump Vows Imminent Land Offensive Against Venezuelan ‘Narco-Terrorists’
In a Thanksgiving video call on 28 Nov 2025, President Trump said U.S. forces will shift their anti-drug campaign from maritime strikes to land operations in and around Venezuela “very soon.”
Focusing Facts
- Pentagon figures show 21 U.S. strikes on suspected drug boats since early September, leaving at least 83 dead.
- The USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group was moved into U.S. Southern Command waters on 14 Nov 2025 to back Operation Southern Spear.
- Three days earlier, 25 Nov 2025, Washington designated Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles a Foreign Terrorist Organization and named President Nicolás Maduro as its leader.
Context
Washington last invoked drug-trafficking to justify a major Latin American incursion during Operation Just Cause (Dec 1989) when it toppled Panama’s Manuel Noriega—also after branding him a narco-terrorist. The current move fits a two-century Monroe-Doctrine pattern of U.S. policing in its self-defined hemisphere and a 50-year trend—since Nixon’s 1971 “war on drugs”—of militarising crime control abroad. By tying Venezuelan gangs to terrorism, the White House taps the post-9/11 legal toolkit that enabled drone strikes from Yemen to Somalia, potentially normalising lethal force without adjudication inside the Americas. Over a century, such precedents could erode the prohibition on cross-border use of force and harden Latin American resistance, driving the region toward alternative security partners. Whether the land campaign succeeds or not, it signals that resource politics (Venezuela’s oil, gold) and domestic U.S. election optics now override multilateral drug-control frameworks—an inflection that historians may liken to the 1846–48 Mexican-American War’s long shadow on hemispheric sovereignty.
Perspectives
Right leaning US media
e.g., Fox News, Newsweek — Portrays Trump’s promised land operations as a decisive next phase of a successful anti-drug crusade that will protect Americans after already stemming 85% of maritime trafficking. Echoes administration talking-points, largely ignores questions about civilian casualties or the lack of publicly released evidence for the drug-running claims.
Mainstream U.S. political outlets
e.g., Axios, The Hill — Report that Trump is preparing ground action against alleged Venezuelan traffickers while noting prior naval strikes and raising policy and geopolitical questions such as oil interests and legal concerns. Presents itself as straight news yet still centers the U.S. political narrative, balancing official statements and criticisms without independently verifying competing factual claims.
International & progressive critical media
e.g., Al Jazeera, Deutsche Welle, Raw Story, SBS, Sky News — Frames the move as a dangerous escalation and likely pretext for regime change, stressing the death toll from previous strikes and the absence of evidence for U.S. trafficking accusations. Highlights casualty figures and ulterior motives, which can amplify anti-U.S. narratives and may rely heavily on statements from Maduro’s government or other skeptical officials.