Tension as Trump declares total closure of Venezuelan airspace

 

United States President,  Donald Trump, issued a warning on Saturday declaring the skies around Venezuela off-limits, intensifying what his administration has described as its fight against drug cartels.

In a social media message addressed to “all airlines, pilots, drug dealers and human traffickers,” he announced that the airspace “above and surrounding Venezuela” should be treated as “closed in its entirety.”

The post followed remarks he made Thursday night suggesting that the United States could “very soon” broaden its maritime strikes on suspected drug-trafficking vessels off Venezuela’s coast to include targets on Venezuelan soil. Those U.S. operations have killed more than 80 people since early September.

Although the American president has no legal authority over another nation’s airspace, other countries and major airlines often take their cues from Washington. Earlier in the month, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a safety alert for Venezuela, prompting several international carriers to suspend service. Cirium, an aviation analytics firm, still lists several hundred flights into Venezuela for December, largely from regional airlines.

Travel between the United States and Venezuela is already minimal. Cirium shows no scheduled direct flights between the two, and most routes from the United States to South America avoid Venezuelan skies.

The Trump administration has bolstered its military footprint in the Caribbean, saying the objective is to curb drug trafficking while also signaling a desire to see Nicolás Maduro forced from power. According to people familiar with internal discussions, early strike proposals included hitting drug-related facilities used by Colombian cartels moving cocaine through Venezuela, relying on intelligence provided by U.S. agencies about locations in both countries.

It remains uncertain whether the president intends to initiate strikes inside Venezuela soon. Still, the combination of public warnings and military planning has placed additional pressure on Mr. Maduro.

Two people with knowledge of the matter said that Mr. Trump spoke by phone with Mr. Maduro late last week, despite ongoing threats of U.S. military action. The call included talk of a possible meeting in the United States, though one person said no such meeting is currently planned. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was on the line during the conversation.

Days after the call, the State Department formally labeled Mr. Maduro the head of what it considers a foreign terrorist organization and drug cartel, known as the Cartel de los Soles.

Military planners have prepared multiple strike options for the president, including Venezuelan military units aligned with Mr. Maduro or believed to profit from drug activity. Oil infrastructure has also been discussed as a potential target — choices that could be framed as counternarcotics actions but that would also weaken Mr. Maduro’s grip on power by constraining revenue.

Mr. Trump has long portrayed Venezuela as a source of narcotics and illegal migration to the United States. The reality is far more complex: many Venezuelans arriving in the United States have been fleeing Mr. Maduro’s authoritarian rule. While the administration has blamed a Venezuelan prison gang for contributing to violence, intelligence assessments say the group, Tren de Aragua, is not under Mr. Maduro’s control — conclusions the administration has tried to sidestep.

Drug experts and U.S. assessments show Venezuela plays only a limited role in supplying drugs to American markets. Cocaine produced in Colombia does travel through Venezuela, but most of it is bound for Europe. Shipments headed to the United States move primarily through the Pacific, and U.S. agencies say fentanyl originates almost entirely in Mexico, using chemicals from China.

From the start, the maritime strikes have drawn criticism from Democrats, who say the operations are unauthorized, illegal, and amount to extrajudicial killings. Critics also accused the administration on Saturday of further escalating its threats.

“Threats of the use of force, much less an actual attack on Venezuela, would violate the U.N. Charter,” said Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer specializing in the laws of armed conflict. “Any such attack would also lack congressional authorization.”

Republican reactions have been more restrained. But Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the Republican chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Friday that he plans to look into the boat strikes.