U.S. deploys aircraft carrier to waters off South America : NPR

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military is sending an aircraft carrier to South American waters, the Pentagon announced Friday, in the latest escalation of military firepower in the region where the Trump administration in recent days has carried out quicker strikes on ships it accuses of carrying drugs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group to deploy to the U.S. Southern Command region to “strengthen U.S. capabilities to detect, monitor and disrupt rogue actors and activities that threaten the security and prosperity of the United States,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said on social media.

USS Ford, which has five destroyers in its strike group, is now deployed to the Mediterranean. One of its destroyers is in the Arabian Sea and another in the Red Sea, a person familiar with the operation told The Associated Press. As of Friday, the aircraft carrier was in a Croatian port on the Adriatic Sea.

The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations, did not say how long it would take the strike group to arrive in South American waters or whether all five destroyers would be able to make the journey.

The carrier's deployment would bring significant additional resources to a region that has already seen an unusually large U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean and waters off Venezuela.

The latest deployment and the accelerating pace of U.S. strikes, including one Friday, have prompted new speculation about how far the Trump administration might go in operations it says are aimed at combating drug trafficking, including whether it might try to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. He has been charged with drug terrorism in the United States.

Transfer of thousands more soldiers to the region

There are already more than 6,000 sailors and marines in the region on eight warships. If the entire USS Ford strike group arrives, it could add nearly 4,500 more sailors, as well as nine squadrons of aircraft assigned to the carrier.

Complicating matters is Tropical Storm Melissa, which has largely stalled in the central Caribbean and forecasters warn it could soon develop into a powerful hurricane.

Hours before Parnell announced the news, Hegseth said the military had carried out its 10th strike on a suspected drug ship, killing six people and bringing the death toll from attacks that began in early September to at least 43.

Hegseth said on social media that the vessel that was damaged overnight belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang. This is the second time the Trump administration has linked one of its operations to a gang that originated in a Venezuelan prison.

“If you are a narco-terrorist smuggling drugs into our hemisphere, we will treat you the same as al-Qaeda,” Hegseth said in the post. “Day or NIGHT we will map your networks, track your people, hunt you down and kill you.”

The number of strikes has increased from one every few weeks when they first began last month to three this week, killing at least 43 people in total. The two latest strikes took place in the eastern Pacific, expanding the area where the military carries out attacks to where much of the cocaine from the world's biggest producers is smuggled, including Colombia.

Exacerbating tensions with Colombia, the Trump administration on Friday imposed sanctions on Colombian President Gustavo Petro, his family and a member of his government over allegations of involvement in the global drug trade.

US focuses on Venezuela and Tren de Aragua

Friday's strike drew parallels with the first strike called by the United States last month, focusing on Tren de Aragua, which the Trump administration has designated as a foreign terrorist organization and accused of being at the root of the violence and drug trade that has plagued some cities.

Without mentioning the origin of the latest boat, the Republican administration says at least four of the boats it shot down came from Venezuela. On Thursday, the US military sent a pair of supersonic heavy bombers to the coast of Venezuela.

Maduro claims the US operations are the latest attempt to force him from office.

Maduro on Thursday praised security forces and civilian militias for holding defense exercises along about 1,200 miles of coastline to prepare for the possibility of a U.S. attack.

In six hours, “100% of the country's entire coastline was covered in real time, with all the equipment and heavy weapons to defend all of Venezuela's coasts if necessary,” Maduro said during a government event shown on state television.

According to Elizabeth Dickinson, senior analyst for the Andean region at the International Crisis Group, the presence of US military forces is less about drugs and more about signaling to countries in the region to align themselves with US interests.

“I often hear the expression: “Drugs are an excuse.” And everyone knows it,” Dickinson said. “And I think that signal is very clear in regional capitals. So the signal here is that the US intends to pursue specific goals. And they will use military force against leaders and countries that do not toe their line.”

Comparing the War on Drugs to the War on Terror

Hegseth's remarks on the strikes have recently begun to draw direct comparisons between the war on terrorism that the United States declared after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Trump administration's crackdown on drug traffickers.

President Trump this month declared the drug cartels illegal combatants and said the U.S. was in “armed conflict” with them, drawing on the same legal powers the Bush administration enjoyed after 9/11.

When reporters asked Trump on Thursday whether he would press Congress to declare war on the cartels, he said that was not his plan.

“I think we're just going to kill the people who bring drugs into our country, okay? We're going to kill them, you know? They will be as dead,” Trump said during a roundtable at the White House.

Lawmakers from both major political parties have expressed concern that Trump ordered military action without obtaining congressional authorization or providing many details.

“I've never seen anything like this before,” said Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., who previously worked at the Pentagon and State Department, including as an adviser in Afghanistan.

“We have no idea how far this will go, how this could potentially lead to this being just boots on the ground? Will this be an escalation that we could see ourselves stuck in for a long time?” – he said.

Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, who has long been involved in foreign affairs in the hemisphere, said of Trump's approach: “It's time.”

Diaz-Balart said while Trump “obviously hates war,” he is also not afraid to use the U.S. military in targeted operations. “I wouldn't want to be in the shoes of any of these drug cartels.”