Three U.S. Missile Destroyers Sail Toward Venezuela To Combat Narco-Terrorists 

More details are emerging about President Trump’s latest show of force in Latin America aimed at narco-terrorist cartels fueling America’s drug crisis, which claims 100,000 lives a year. According to Reuters, three Aegis destroyers, surveillance aircraft, and an attack submarine are being deployed to international waters off Venezuela.  

Sources close to the media outlet say 4,000 sailors and Marines will support the large force projection mission that includes three U.S. Aegis guided-missile destroyers (USS Gravely, USS Jason Dunham, and USS Sampson), along with P-8 surveillance planes, other warships, and at least one attack submarine. 

The operation will run for several months and focus on enhancing hemispheric defense to dismantle narco-terrorist cartels’ command and control nodes that funnel drugs into the U.S. Also, this force projection is a signal to Beijing to limit Chinese activity in the region, particularly around critical infrastructure and trade chokepoints. The Trump administration has put Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua on notice, classifying them as foreign terrorist organizations. The broader understanding is that this is all a part of hemispheric defense. 

The deployment also signals to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government that Washington is not playing around. Maduro told the nation on Monday that his country will “defend our seas, our skies and our lands.” He hinted at what he called “the outlandish, bizarre threat of a declining empire.”

On Tuesday, Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said combating drugs is a shared responsibility around the world: “But we hope that major countries should play the role responsibly, maintain regional peace and stability, and properly handle the issue together with relevant countries.” 

Related:

• U.S. SOUTHCOM Deploying 4,000 Troops To Latin American Waters As Counter-Narco-Terror Operations Loom

• Mexico’s President Draws Red Line: U.S. Kinetic Operations Against Drug Cartels Not Welcome On Her Soil

• U.S. MQ-9 Reaper Drone Flies Rare Drug-Cartel Hunting Mission In Mexico

• Schweizer: Chinese Chemists Working With Mexican Cartels Creating Fentanyl To Kill Americans

• China’s “Assassin’s Mace” Irregular Warfare Campaign May Render Trump’s Golden Dome Useless

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