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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nWhile President Donald Trump has been publicly coy about his precise aims regarding Venezuela, he has privately pressured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to flee the nation, Reuters has reported. Trump said on Monday it would be smart for Maduro to leave power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe efforts so far have put tremendous pressure on Maduro, and the belief is that by late January, Venezuela will be facing an economic calamity unless it agrees to make significant concessions to the U.S.,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
U.S. SEEKING TO SEIZE THIRD VESSEL
Trump has accused the South American country of flooding the U.S. with drugs, and his administration has for months been bombing boats originating in South America that it alleges were carrying drugs. Many nations have condemned the attacks as extrajudicial killings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump has also frequently threatened to start bombing drug infrastructure on land, and has authorized covert CIA activity directed at Caracas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So far this month, the U.S. Coast Guard has intercepted two tankers in the Caribbean Sea, both fully loaded with Venezuelan crude. The comments by the White House official on Wednesday come after Reuters reported that the Coast Guard was waiting for additional forces to carry out a third seizure, first attempted on Sunday, against an empty sanctioned vessel known as the Bella-1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Venezuela\u2019s U.N. Ambassador Samuel Moncada said on Tuesday: \u201cThe threat is not Venezuela. The threat is the U.S. government.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n HUGE U.S. MILITARY PRESENCE IN CARIBBEAN The Pentagon has amassed a huge military presence in the Caribbean with more than 15,000 troops. That includes an aircraft carrier, 11 other warships and more than a dozen F-35 aircraft. While many assets can be used to help with enforcing sanctions, many others, like fighter jets, are not well-suited for that task.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Tuesday, the United States told the United Nations it will impose and enforce sanctions \u201cto the maximum extent\u201d to deprive Maduro of resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Earlier this month Trump ordered a \u201cblockade\u201d of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela, but the White House official\u2019s use instead of the word \u201cquarantine\u201d appears to echo language used during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when the administration of U.S. President John F. Kennedy wanted to avoid an escalation. Robert McNamara, Kennedy\u2019s defense secretary at the time, said in 2002: \u201cWe called it a quarantine because blockade is a word of war.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The White House has ordered U.S. military forces to focus almost exclusively on enforcing a \u201cquarantine\u201d of Venezuelan oil for at least the next two months, a U.S. official told Reuters, indicating Washington is currently more interested in using economic rather than military means to pressure Caracas. \u201cWhile military options still exist, the focus is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":14336,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1702,3254,2117],"class_list":["post-14334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-house","tag-orders","tag-white"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/\u4f01\u4e1a\u5fae\u4fe1\u622a\u56fe_20251225112206.png\")
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The White House official did not elaborate on precisely what it meant for the military to focus \u201calmost exclusively\u201d on interdicting Venezuelan oil. The U.S. military\u2019s footprint sprawls across the globe, and most missions and capabilities are unrelated to maritime interdiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n