US deploys world’s largest warship towards Caribbean

The US is deploying the world’s largest warship to the Caribbean; This marks a major escalation in the campaign it says targets drug traffickers.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford, which can carry up to 90 aircraft, to depart from the Mediterranean on Friday.

The United States has been increasing its military presence in the Caribbean in recent weeks, now including eight warships, a nuclear submarine and F-35 aircraft.

It has carried out airstrikes on boats it says belong to drug traffickers, including on Friday when Hegseth said “six male narco-terrorists” were killed.

The operation was carried out in the Caribbean Sea against a ship that Hegseth said belonged to the Tren de Aragua criminal organization.

The strikes were condemned across the region and experts questioned their legality. The Trump administration says it is waging a war against drug trafficking, but it has also been accused by experts and members of Congress of waging a scare campaign aimed at destabilizing the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Maduro is a long-time foe of Trump, and the US president accuses him of being the leader of a drug-trafficking organization, which he denies.

Latin America senior fellow at the Chatham House think tank, Dr. Christopher Sabatini told the BBC: “This is about regime change. They probably won’t invade; the hope is that it’s about signaling.”

He argued that the military build-up was aimed at “striking fear” in the hearts of the Venezuelan military and Maduro’s inner circle, thus prompting them to take action against Maduro.

The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford will be deployed to the US Southern Command area of ​​responsibility, which includes Central America and South America as well as the Caribbean, the Pentagon announced on Friday.

Spokesman Sean Parnell said the additional forces “will enhance and augment existing capabilities to disrupt narcotics trafficking and weaken and dismantle TCOs, or transnational criminal organizations.”

Deployment of the carrier will provide the necessary resources to launch attacks against targets on the ground. Trump has repeatedly raised the possibility of what he calls a “ground operation” in Venezuela.

“We’re definitely looking at land right now, because we’ve got the sea under very good control,” he said earlier this week.

It sounds like this CNN reports Trump is considering targeting cocaine facilities and drug trafficking routes within Venezuela, but has not yet made a final decision.

The aircraft carrier last publicly announced its location off the coast of Croatia in the Adriatic Sea three days ago.

Its deployment marks a significant increase in the US military buildup in the region. At the same time, tensions are likely to increase with Venezuela, which Washington has long accused of harboring drug traffickers.

The carrier’s large aircraft payload may include jets and planes for transport and reconnaissance purposes. Its first long-term deployment took place in 2023.

It is unclear which ships will accompany it when it moves into the region, but it could operate as part of a strike group that includes destroyers carrying missiles and other equipment.

USA carried out a series of strikes Boats have been searched in recent weeks in what President Donald Trump described as an effort to reduce drug trafficking.

The strike announced Friday was the Trump administration’s 10th strike against alleged drug traffickers since early September. Most of the attacks took place in the Caribbean off the coast of South America, but there were also attacks in the Pacific Ocean on 21 and 22 October.

Both Democratic and Republican members of the US Congress have expressed concerns about the legality of the attacks and the president’s authority to order them.

On September 10, 25 Democratic U.S. senators wrote to the White House, claiming that the administration had attacked a ship days earlier “without any evidence that the persons on board and the ship’s cargo posed a threat to the United States.”

Republican Kentucky Senator Rand Paul argued that such strikes require congressional approval.

Trump said he had the legal authority to order the attack and designated Tren de Aragua as a terrorist organization.

“We’re allowed to do this and if we do [it] We can get back to Congress by ground,” Trump told White House reporters on Wednesday.

“If people don’t want to see drug ships blow up, stop sending drugs to the United States,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.

The death toll from the operation, which Hegseth announced on Friday, brings the total number of deaths in US strikes to at least 43.