WASHINGTON — War ships are cruising the Caribbean. U.S. missiles are obliterating motorboats in two oceans. And bombers are buzzing Venezuela, where sources say the Trump administration has identified targets on land for future strikes.

To much of the world, it all looks like a push for regime change in Venezuela, where the United States has offered a $50 million reward for the capture of authoritarian ruler Nicolás Maduro.

But according to President Donald Trump, the purpose for the military escalation is closer to home: Each missile strike prevents deadly drugs from reaching U.S. shores and each drug-toting vessel struck saves 25,000 U.S. lives, he says.

Despite historical evidence that narcotics trafficked through Venezuela aren’t likely bound for the United States, Trump is casting the military campaign as a literal war on drugs, perhaps making the idea of intervention more palpable to the country, particularly the isolationist supporters who helped return him to the White House.

“This is a base that’s pretty skeptical of U.S. entanglements,” said Will Freeman, a fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “I don’t think they’d be more in favor of it in Latin America than other parts of the world, but as long as it is presented as and maybe motivated by concern with U.S. drug deaths and what his supporters view as dangerous forms of illegal immigration, then it’s maybe more justifiable.”

Part of the administration’s campaign is putting on a show for supporters. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have posted grainy footage of boats exploding to social media, garnering cheers from the president’s fans.

The White House also declared Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua and other drug gangs as “foreign terrorist organizations,” which the administration argues gives them justification to act unilaterally and without Congressional approval.

“Narcoterrorist cartels illegally and directly cause the deaths of tens of thousands of American citizens each year,” a senior administration official told The Miami Herald Friday. “The president has closed the northern and southern border to address every possible vehicle for drug smuggling, and is continuing to use every tool at his disposal to stop this scourge.”

The administration has doubled down on marketing the strikes as a drug war, especially after prominent conservative figures like Laura Loomer and Stephen Bannon expressed concern about the military action.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a staunch Trump ally, has dismissed concerns the public won’t support the president’s action.

“I love this debate,” he told MSNBC earlier this week. “The president has all the authority in the world and if you want to fight over this, let’s fight over this. I think most Americans are going to be with Trump.”

Trump and his officials have spent the past few months framing the strikes as a domestic issue.

The president declared the drug cartels to be “unlawful combatants” and informed members of Congress on Oct. 2 that the United States is in an “non-international armed conflict” with them as he sought to justify the strikes in the Caribbean.

And he’s bluntly said his administration will kill drug traffickers.

“We’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. We’re going to kill them. They’re going to be, like, dead,” Trump said earlier this month at a roundtable at the White House, claiming the destroyed boats were carrying fentanyl.

The opioid epidemic remains a major problem in America, particularly deaths from fentanyl. About 100,000 people die from drug overdoses every year, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Provisional data released in May by the CDC found that overdoses dropped last year to about 80,000, with fentanyl responsible for 48,000 fatalities.

While the drug argument may be more politically palatable to a base to whom Trump promised to “END the endless foreign wars,” the argument is also plagued by the fact that most drugs coming to the U.S don’t travel through the Caribbean or from Venezuela, according to government reports.

The vast majority of all drugs headed to the U.S. — 80% — travel through the Eastern Pacific, not through Atlantic routes from Venezuela, former Southern Command General Laura Richardson told Congress in 2022. “If you’re looking at it from a narcotics policy point of view, more drugs come up on the Pacific side than the Atlantic side. So why not put the flotilla on the other side of Panama? I don’t quite get it,” Elliot Abrams, a Republican and special representative to Venezuela in the first Trump administration, told the Herald in September.

The White House did not directly address the questions about the drug routes but a senior administration official argued that the international reach of drug cartels means any damage to those networks results in fewer narcotics crossing into the U.S.

“Over decades, the cartels involved have grown more armed, well organized, and violent,” the official told the Herald. “They have the financial means, sophistication, and paramilitary capabilities needed to operate with impunity.”

“These groups are now transnational and conduct ongoing attacks throughout the Western Hemisphere as organized cartels.”

On Friday, United Nations human rights commissioner Volker Türk accused the U.S. authorities of providing “very sparse information” to justify its military actions.

There are large amounts of cocaine trafficked through Venezuela “representing roughly 10 to 13 percent of estimated global production,” according to a State department report earlier this year. But Caribbean routes represented just 8% of total cocaine movement, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency in 2020. In March, the State Department “identified Mexico as the only significant source of illicit fentanyl and fentanyl analogues significantly affecting the United States.” The White House has not provided evidence of fentanyl, a much larger driver of drug-related deaths in the U.S., being trafficked through Venezuela.

In response to questions from the Herald about data showing most drug routes are in the Eastern Pacific, not the Caribbean, a senior administration official said, Trump has “significantly reduced drug trafficking from Mexico,” and is now “using every tool at his disposal to stop the narcoterrorism that results in the needless deaths of thousands of Americans.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller have partnered when it comes to action regarding Venezuela.

Miller, who heads homeland security policy for the administration, argues that the drug trade in South America affects every city in America, making it a significant domestic issue.

“Every major city in America is suffering from cartel violence,” he told reporters at the White House last month. “Even the U.S. based gangs are working directly with these cartels.”

“President Trump is finally allowing and directing the United States military to use its authorities under the Constitution to defend America from the terrorist organizations that have run free for too long in our own hemisphere,” he added.

Rubio has long been an advocate of removing Maduro, who is accused of stealing last year’s presidential election. The Venezuelan leader faces criminal charges in the United States.

But Rubio, who also serves as national security adviser, also sees the matter as a domestic issue.

“When our whole region is crumbling, it’s bad for our country,” a Rubio adviser told The Miami Herald. “Foreign policy can have a direct impact on improving the lives of Americans in a meaningful, tangible way.”

Rubio and Miller — both of whom have huge influence with Trump — have sidelined a contingent in the administration that wanted to normalize relations with Venezuela in the hopes of accessing its massive cache of oil reserves.

The duo also have the support of Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Vice President JD Vance.

“There are people who are bringing — literal terrorists — who are bringing deadly drugs into our country and the president of the United States ran on a promise of stopping this poison from coming into our country,” Vance has said.

But officials have been careful to say how much of the military action is about the war on drugs and how much is diplomatic pressure to get Maduro to step down even as others read the tea leaves.

“The president has been careful not to say it’s about regime change,” one former Trump official said, but added the underlying message was all about regime change.

Trump, too, has been careful not to publicly say he wants Maduro out. Many experts, however, believe that is the ultimate goal, pointing to the fact that the U.S. military presence in the Caribbean is almost too large to target small vessels.

“Multimillion-dollar weapons are blowing up dinghies,” was the way one former Pentagon official described it.

At the same time, the American armada and troops in the region aren’t substantial enough for a land invasion. It is, however, big enough to exert diplomatic pressure on Maduro and on those around him who may worry about missile strikes targeting Venezuela.

And that may be Trump’s plan.

“The president is very skeptical of war because he knows that it’s unpredictable,” Vance told The New York Post’s “Pod Force One” podcast.

“You’ve got to kind of be in the middle somewhere, and I think that’s where the president’s foreign policy is. He’s both skeptical of foreign entanglements, but he’s not afraid to use American military power when he has to.”

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