Why is US President Trump threatening Venezuela’s President Maduro?

US President Donald Trump has intensified pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

The Trump administration has doubled the reward for information leading to Maduro’s capture, and its warships are within striking distance of Venezuela. Dozens were killed in attacks on boats allegedly transporting drugs from the South American country.

Trump also reportedly gave Maduro an ultimatum to leave Venezuela, in a phone call the two men made on November 21.

Nicolas Maduro has risen to prominence under the leadership of leftist President Hugo Chavez and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela.

Maduro, a former bus driver and union leader, succeeded Chavez and has been president since 2013.

During the twenty-six years that Chávez and Maduro were in power, their party gained control of key institutions, including the National Assembly, much of the judiciary, and the Electoral Council.

In 2024, the Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner of the presidential election, although vote statistics compiled by the opposition indicated that its candidate, Edmundo González, had won by an overwhelming majority.

The United States is one of several countries that have declared the election illegal and recognized Gonzalez as “president-elect.”

But with Maduro tightly controlling the army, police and legislature, he remained in power and Gonzalez fled into exile for fear of arrest.

Trump has made stopping migration a priority during his second term and blames Maduro for the arrival of a large number of Venezuelan migrants to the United States.

Since 2013, it is estimated that nearly eight million Venezuelans have fled Venezuela’s economic crisis and political repression, which have worsened under Maduro.

Most of them fled to Latin American countries, but hundreds of thousands went to the United States.

Without providing evidence, Trump accused Maduro of “emptying his prisons and mental institutions” and “forcing” his inmates to immigrate to the United States.

Trump has also focused on combating the flow of drugs — especially fentanyl and cocaine — into the United States.

As part of his war on drugs, he has designated two Venezuelan criminal groups – the Tren de Aragua and the Cartel de los Soles – as foreign terrorist organizations and has claimed that the latter is led by Maduro himself.

Maduro has vehemently denied being a cartel leader and accused the United States of using its “war on drugs” as an excuse to try to isolate him and get his hands on Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.

Analysts also pointed out that Cartel de los Soles is not a hierarchical group but an umbrella term. They say it is used to describe corrupt Venezuelan officials who allowed cocaine to pass through the country.

The United States has deployed 15,000 troops and a group of aircraft carriers, guided missile destroyers, and amphibious assault ships in the Caribbean.

The stated goal of the deployment – the largest since the US invasion of Panama in 1989 – is to stop the flow of fentanyl and cocaine into the United States.

Since early September, US forces have carried out more than 20 raids in international waters on boats allegedly carrying drugs. More than 80 people were killed in the raids.

The Trump administration says it is involved in a non-international armed conflict with alleged drug traffickers, whom it accuses of waging an irregular war against the United States.

The US also described those on board as “narco-terrorists”, but legal experts say the strikes were unlawful because that designation “did not turn them into legitimate military targets”.

Former Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court He told the BBC that the US military campaign falls within the category of a systematic, planned attack against civilians in peacetime.

In response, the White House said President Donald Trump acted in accordance with the laws of armed conflict to protect the United States from gangs “trying to bring poison to our shores… and destroy American lives.”

Anti-drug experts noted that Venezuela is a relatively small player in drug trafficking globally, and that it acts as a transit country through which drugs produced elsewhere are smuggled on their way to their final destination.

Its neighbor, Colombia, is the largest producer of cocaine in the world, but most of it is smuggled into the United States through other routes, not through Venezuela.

According to a 2020 US Drug Enforcement Agency report, it is estimated that nearly three-quarters of the cocaine that reaches the United States is smuggled across the Pacific Ocean, with only a small percentage coming via speedboats in the Caribbean.

In September, Trump told US military commanders that the targeted boats were “stacked with bags of white powder, mostly fentanyl, and other drugs as well.”

However, fentanyl is mainly produced in Mexico and reaches the United States almost exclusively by land via its southern border.

Trump confirmed that he spoke with Maduro by phone on November 21.

While he did not reveal what was in the call, Reuters reported that Trump gave Maduro a one-week deadline to leave Venezuela with his close family. She said Maduro did not accept the offer of safe passage for him.

One day after the expiry of the specified period, Trump announced the closure of the airspace around Venezuela.

Trump has already threatened to take action against Venezuelan drug traffickers “on land”, but has not specified how such an operation would be carried out.

Trump’s press secretary also did not rule out the possibility of deploying American forces on the ground in Venezuela, and told reporters that “there are options at the president’s disposal and they are on the table.”

It did not provide further details about the options, but military analysts have indicated for weeks that the US deployment in the Caribbean is much larger than what is required for the counter-narcotics operation.