Description: The US Southern Command, or US SOCOM, has announced that carrier strike group Gerald R. Ford would be dispatched to the Caribbean from its natural area of responsibility, the Mediterranean. The Strike Group features the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford which is the newest and the largest in the US Navy with the capacity to carry of up to 90 aircraft and marks the most substantial escalation in the bilateral tensions between the US and Venezuela so far. US Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, previously announced that another attack on an illegal drug trafficking boat has been conducted in the Caribbean, off the Venezuelan coast. Republican Senator, Lindsey Graham, stated that Trump’s statements for a land intervention in Venezuela currently represented a real possibility while the President also planned on briefing members of the Congress as soon as he returns from Asia where he is set to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Impact: The deployment of an entire carrier strike group, let alone the largest one in the US Navy, significantly increases the pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The US has engaged on a large-scale reintegration foreign policy in South America through boasting its military might and pressuring ideologically opposing leaders such as Maduro and Petro. The continent has become a proxy war battleground between China and the US, where China has significantly increased its involvement through economic coercion and leading capital investment projects in several countries. The US endgame would ideally constitute in ousting Maduro from office and stopping illegal migration all at once, however, both the Venezuelan and Colombian presidents have remained resolute in their positions. The prospects of a direct military land intervention remain low, however, with the carrier strike group present in the Caribbean, the probability for sophisticated special operations activities raises even further, as such strike groups are known to have been used as floating military bases for special operations teams such as the Navy SEALs.