When asked if the CIA had been given the authority to take out Maduro, Donald Trump dodged the question and said it would be “ridiculous” to answer.
He has also said that the US is “looking at land now”, referring to possible military operations on Venezuelan soil.
The CIA is viewed with a lot of suspicion by many in Latin America because of a long history of covert interventions, attempts at regime-change, and support for past right-wing military dictatorships, notably in Chile and Brazil.
Ned Price, deputy to the US representative to the United Nations and formerly a CIA senior analyst and State Department senior adviser, said CIA covert action can take “many forms.”
“It can be information operations. It can be sabotage operations. It can be funding opposition parties. It can go as far as the overthrow of a regime. There are a lot of options between the low-end and high-end option.”
This could include agents being used to target trafficking suspects inside Venezuela. By the US’s own definition, this could include Maduro himself.
Dr Sabatini says given Venezuela isn’t a major production point for drugs, there are no cocaine or fentanyl labs to “take out” but there are airstrips or ports which the US could target.
“If he wants to be aggressive, he could send a missile to a military barrack. There is pretty good intelligence certain sectors of the military are involved in cocaine trafficking.”
Or it could be a “smash and grab situation”, he notes, where they attempt to seize Maduro or some of his lieutenants and bring them to justice in the US.
The big question, he argues, is how long Trump is willing to keep so many US assets parked in the Caribbean.
If the prime purpose of this military build-up is to threaten Maduro, it is unclear whether it is enough to prompt defections.
Whether that goes as far as an actual attempt to dislodge the Maduro regime through force, ponders Professor Albertus, it is hard to know.
