by Dave DeCamp
Nov 11, 2025
The USS Gerald Ford, the US military’s largest aircraft carrier, has arrived in the Caribbean as part of a major US military buildup in the region aimed at ousting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
According to a report from USNI News, the carrier has arrived with three US Navy destroyers from its strike group, joining other US warships already in the region. The additional forces bring the total number of US military personnel in the Caribbean to about 15,000.
In response to the US military buildup, Venezuela said on Tuesday that it was launching a “massive mobilization” of troops, weapons, and equipment along its coast.
Citing Trump administration officials, The New York Times reported that with the arrival of the Gerald Ford, pressure will build to use the threat of force to remove Maduro under some kind of diplomatic deal, or to use the vast firepower of the carrier and other military assets in the region to forcibly oust the Venezuelan leader.
The Times previously reported that President Trump has reviewed several options for launching attacks on Venezuela, including bombing military sites, sending in a special operations force to kill or capture Maduro, or deploying a much larger force to seize strategic airfields and oil infrastructure inside the country.
Last week, ahead of a Senate vote on a bill to block Trump from starting a war with Venezuela without congressional authorization, Trump officials told lawmakers that they didn’t currently have plans to bomb the country and that they lacked the legal authorization to do so. But the administration also conveyed that they planned on getting a legal opinion from the Department of Justice to justify strikes in Venezuela, which would still be illegal without approval from Congress, per the Constitution.
The Senate voted down the Venezuela War Powers in a vote of 49-51, with only two Republicans, Senators Rand Paul (KY) and Lisa Murkowski (AK), voting with Democrats to stop a potential illegal war.
Writing in Responsible Statecraft after the vote, Paul warned that a war in Venezuela risks “creating more instability, not less” and said that in addition to the potential disaster, there is “also the inconvenient fact that no president has the authority to unilaterally launch wars as he sees fit.”
“Our founders had the foresight to recognize that the executive is the branch most prone to seek war. They therefore made clear in the Constitution that Congress maintains the exclusive power to declare war,” said Paul, who has also been very critical of the illegal bombing campaign against alleged drug-running boats in the region.
Read also: defenddemocracy.press/pentagon-chief-likens-current-world-situation-with-1939-when-world-war-ii-began/
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