The American super carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN—78, with about 5,000 sailors and 78 various combat aircraft) passed Gibraltar on November 4th from the direction of the Mediterranean, on its way to the Caribbean Sea, where it should arrive in mid-November. On the same that day, US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth announced that US naval forces in the waters of the eastern Pacific acted against a ship suspected of drug smuggling (and killed two people in the process). It would otherwise be at least the 16th such action by the US Navy south of the equator since the beginning of the year.
“We will find and eliminate every ship that intends to transport drugs to America in order to poison our fellow citizens,” said Hegseth on the same occasion.
If, as the 47th US President Donald Trump says, America is in a “war conflict” with drug cartels, how far south of the US Gulf could Washington deploy its military?
The answer for now seems uncertain.
As things stand now, Washington announced the possible action of US military forces in Mexico (https://militarnyi.com/en/news/us-may-launch-military-strikes-against-drug-labs-in-mexico); with the already strengthened presence of US troops in Panama (https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/us-troops-train-panama-jungle-210531677.html); the reactivation of the former air base in Puerto Rico (https://www.military.com/daily-news/investigations-and-features/2025/11/03/us-deploys-f-35-fighters-cold-war-era-puerto-rico-base-venezuela-tensions-escalate.html), and the largest military concentration in the Eastern Caribbean since the Cold War—targeted toward Venezuela.
By the way, in that “military-anti-narco” movement of Washington to the south of the Western Hemisphere, Bloomberg these days publishes a lengthy text about the extensive drug trade along the Amazon, especially in the Solimoes area in Brazil (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-10-30/cocaine-smuggled-on-oil-barges-threatens-to-draw-trump-anger-to-brazil ).
In the meantime, numerous political actors in Latin America and observers, question Washington’s announcement that the fight against drug cartels is the key motive for the impressive deployment of the US Navy to the waters of the South Atlantic (https://www.intellinews.com/is-venezuela-s-resource-wealth-trump-s-real-target-409446/?source=venezuela).
How much truth there is in such speculations about Washington’s motives is uncertain.
Be that as it may, US President Donald Trump this week sounds convinced that the “days” of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in power are “numbered”, while he points out that a final decision has not yet been made on the profile of US action in relation to Venezuela—the country with the largest proven oil and gas reserves in the world.
On that occasion, there are hints that one of Washington’s options in this case could be “taking steps to take control of oil fields” (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/us/politics/trump-weighs-attacks-venezuela.html).
In the meantime, global oil market is already worried that a possible American invasion of Venezuela (even if only up to the key petro-terminal of Jose in the northeast of that country) could immediately cause uncomfortable chain of consequences for the operations of refineries in the American Gulf and in Asia, the price of diesel…..(https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/What-a-US-Invasion-of-Venezuela-Would-Mean-for-Global-Oil-Prices.html).
Thus, one could assume that the decision on Washington’s next step in the “Venezuela case” will be made after the arrival of the USS Gerald R. Ford in the Caribbean Sea. What happens there after that, remains to be seen.
In the meantime, further geographical expansion of the American fight against drug traffickers in that part of the world could be foreseen. “From Argentina to Mexico, the same pattern repeats itself: (there operate) loose networks of traders, brokers and local groups that are fluid, adaptable and far from the ‘cartel’ structures of the past” (https://insightcrime.org/news/why-is-us-attacking-cartels-that-dont-exist/).
If so, Tierra del Fuego( on the photo) doesn’t seem far off either.
