The United States is massing an unusual buildup of warships, fighter jets, and surveillance aircraft off the coast of Venezuela as the Trump administration expands its military campaign against what it says are transnational criminal organizations.

Deploying an aircraft carrier is a major escalation of military power in a region that has already seen an unusually large US military buildup in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off Venezuela.View on

A US warship arrived in Trinidad and Tobago on Sunday for joint exercises near the coast of Venezuela, as Washington ratcheted up pressure on drug traffickers and Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.The exercises are part of a mounting military campaign by US President Donald Trump against drug-trafficking organizations in Latin America,

Experts call it "21st-century gunboat diplomacy" as U.S. positions strike-capable forces in Caribbean amid tensions with Maduro regime and cartels.

As President Donald Trump weighs military action inside Venezuela, building up forces in the Caribbean and flying B-52 bombers off the country’s coast this week, Nicolás Maduro is responding in kind,

Venezuela accused Trinidad and Tobago and the US of a "military provocation" and claimed a CIA-backed false flag attack, amid joint Caribbean exercises and the docking of USS Gravely near Venezuelan waters.

The US military bombed two more suspected drug smuggling vessels — this time in the Eastern Pacific — killing five “narco-terrorists” on board, War Secretary Pete Hegseth revealed

The 10,000 U.S. troops now operating in the Caribbean were sent to interdict drug boats. But Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's Sept. 30 state of external emergency fundamentally changed what they're facing: a military on full wartime alert,

The drawdown and ultimate evacuation of the American troops from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021 marked the end of the longest war in United States history. According to the National Security Archive,

Deploying an aircraft carrier is a major escalation of military power in a region already seeing a large U.S. military buildup.

The attacks and an unusually large U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off Venezuela have raised speculation that the administration could try to topple Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who faces charges of narcoterrorism in the U.S.