What are United States forces doing in the Caribbean? The 6,000 American sailors and Marines who have been waiting off the coast of Venezuela since the middle of this month do not seem like a big enough force to launch an outright war. A ground invasion of that country would take 50,000 troops at a minimum. But since September the U.S. has attacked at least 10 South American speedboats, killing 43 people, alleging many of them were trafficking drugs with the connivance of the Venezuelan government. Add to that the deployment of new weaponry into the theater—B-52s a week ago, B-1 stealth bombers on Thursday, the advanced aircraft carrier the USS Gerald R. Ford a day later—and President Donald Trump’s announcement that “we are certainly looking at land now” brings a ring of menace, not to mention a sense of déjà vu.
Trump, the mocker of neoconservatism, humanitarian invasion, and democracy promotion ever since his appearance on the national political stage, seems about to launch one of those wars of choice that tainted the good name of the Bush family, and he is making a broad coalition of supporters and detractors correspondingly nervous. What does Trump think he’s doing?
