Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Over the last two months, the United States has launched
Speaker 2: a series of strikes off the coast of Venezuela.
Speaker 1: The US military carried out another lethal air striker, another
Speaker 1: US Stride.
Speaker 3: New strike go to suspect the drug boat in the cribbe.
Speaker 2: The massive explosion sending debris raining down in international waters.
Speaker 2: Despite questions about evidence and due process, the administration insists
Speaker 2: lethal strikes like these will continue. The Trump administration says
Speaker 2: it's targeting narco traffickers.
Speaker 1: The President keeps making this claim that every time he
Speaker 1: strikes one of these boats, he prevents about twenty four
Speaker 1: thousand drug related deaths in the United States.
Speaker 2: Nick Wadhams heads up Bloomberg's National Security team.
Speaker 1: That is obviously a highly dubious claim, but he's basically
Speaker 1: making the equation. You know, if you have x tons
Speaker 1: of fentanyl on the boat, and a tiny dose of
Speaker 1: fentanyl can kill a person, that's how many drug related
Speaker 1: deaths are being saved in the US. So they essentially
Speaker 1: see this as an invasion by drug runners flooding the
Speaker 1: US market, and this is the way they're going to
Speaker 1: stop it.
Speaker 2: Experts say these strikes violate international law.
Speaker 1: The real motivation for why these are actually happening is
Speaker 1: something that has remained a very elusive reporting target.
Speaker 2: The US is also building up its military presence in
Speaker 2: the Caribbean, which is fueling intense speculation over what the
Speaker 2: White House is planning to do next and what its
Speaker 2: overall objective is. CBS News is Nora O'Donnell asked President
Speaker 2: Trump about that in an interview that aired on Sixty
Speaker 2: Minutes on Sunday on Venezuela.
Speaker 4: In particular, are Maduro's days as president numbers?
Speaker 3: Oh so, yeah?
Speaker 2: I think so you. I'm David Gera, and this is
Speaker 2: the big take from Bloomberg News Today. On the show,
Speaker 2: as the Trump administration continues to authorize strikes on boats
Speaker 2: off South America, we take a look at the military
Speaker 2: hardware President Trump has ordered to the region, Why he's
Speaker 2: taking aim at Venezuela now, and what could happen next.
Speaker 2: Over the last two months, strikes carried out by the
Speaker 2: US military on vessels in the Pacific and Caribbean have
Speaker 2: killed more than sixty people. The Trump administration says those
Speaker 2: strikes and a growing military presence off the coast of
Speaker 2: Venezuela are meant to hinder the flow of drugs from
Speaker 2: South America to the United States. I asked Bloomberg's Nick
Speaker 2: Wadhams if there is more to the story.
Speaker 1: The element that's very high in a lot of people's
Speaker 1: minds is Venezuela is leadership president Nicholas Maduro. The US
Speaker 1: says he's essentially the head of this drug running criminal enterprise,
Speaker 1: though as far as we know, not a lot of
Speaker 1: drugs are produced in Venezuela. It's mostly a transit point
Speaker 1: for drugs flowing from elsewhere. But that has fueled a
Speaker 1: lot of suspicion that the US basically wants regime change
Speaker 1: in Venezuela. I mean, we know for a lot long
Speaker 1: time that the US has wanted Nicholas Maduro out. They've
Speaker 1: put a multimillion dollar bounty on his head for any
Speaker 1: information leading to his arrest. They tried in Trump's first
Speaker 1: term to usher him from power. They failed, And now
Speaker 1: you have a Secretary of State and Marco Rubio who
Speaker 1: has been even far more explicit about his desire to
Speaker 1: see Adua leave power. And so that has then fueled
Speaker 1: a lot of speculation that the military build up is
Speaker 1: not really about targeting these boats, but it's laying the
Speaker 1: groundwork for airstrikes or possibly even an invasion that would
Speaker 1: lead to Maduro's ouster.
Speaker 2: Nick, how effective has this campaign been as a way
Speaker 2: of ratcheting up pressure on President Maduro? What do we
Speaker 2: know about what's happening on the ground in Venezuela.
Speaker 1: It has ratcheted up a great deal of pressure on
Speaker 1: Nicholas Maduro. There's no question that he is feeling the heat.
Speaker 1: He has called up troops, he's put his country on
Speaker 1: high alert. The question, though, is what the ultimate effect
Speaker 1: will actually be the opposition in Venezuela. You may recall
Speaker 1: that opposition leader Machado just won the Nobel Peace Prize
Speaker 1: for her efforts, but she essentially argues that all this
Speaker 1: pressure is going to put so much of a squeeze
Speaker 1: on Nicholas Maduro that he's going to be.
Speaker 3: Forced to leave power.
Speaker 1: The flip side of that is the argument that actually,
Speaker 1: by creating this extremely tense environment, that only gives Maduro
Speaker 1: additional strength and support and attracts more people to his
Speaker 1: side and essentially entrenches his position so that he emerges
Speaker 1: from this even stronger. So there are a lot of
Speaker 1: questions about how tenuous his grip on power really is.
Speaker 1: But you know, there has been a great deal of reporting,
Speaker 1: including by Bloomberg, that he is looking for a way
Speaker 1: out and he would vastly prefer a diplomatic solution to this.
Speaker 3: There had been some.
Speaker 1: Reporting that he was even looking for a strong economic
Speaker 1: deal where he would essentially sell all Venezuela's oil to
Speaker 1: the United States.
Speaker 2: I asked Beco Wawer, the defense lead at Bloomberg Economics,
Speaker 2: to detail just how much military might the US is
Speaker 2: mobilized off of South America.
Speaker 4: Well, we've got a lot of seapower, airpower, and firepower
Speaker 4: now in the Caribbean and in the Eastern Pacific, and honestly,
Speaker 4: this is probably the most that we've seen in those
Speaker 4: two regions for quite some time. So we've got multiple
Speaker 4: guided missile destroyers which tend to carry missiles, including Tomahawk
Speaker 4: land attack missiles that could be used in potential strikes.
Speaker 4: We also have an amphibious Ready Group, which allows the
Speaker 4: US to have a number of forces in the region.
Speaker 4: So this is where you see a marine expeditionary unit
Speaker 4: embarked upon and it should be there in about a week.
Speaker 4: Or so, and that's going to bring not only sizeable
Speaker 4: number of sailors aboard, but also aircraft fighter aircraft that
Speaker 4: can take off from the decks of the carrier and
Speaker 4: potentially do strikes on either ships, whether it's these narco
Speaker 4: trafficking boats or perhaps even strikes on land. In addition
Speaker 4: to that, we've seen some special Forces assets in the
Speaker 4: region as well, which is added to some of the
Speaker 4: potential pressure campaign that right now, this build up is
Speaker 4: likely placing on Maduro, where it is almost a bit
Speaker 4: of a psychological operation. It's not just about the build
Speaker 4: up itself and what those capabilities could bring, but as
Speaker 4: Nick was talking about, what it is that that pressure
Speaker 4: could force Maduro to actually end up doing, which could
Speaker 4: be potentially stepping down from power.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Nick, I think of this piece that retired Admiral
Speaker 2: James Uvritis road for Bloomberg Opinion, which he said, Look,
Speaker 2: if the goal here is to take out narco traffickers,
Speaker 2: take out these boats, there's no way you would need
Speaker 2: this much manpower and this much military equipment. So what
Speaker 2: does it indicate to you just all that's being marshaled.
Speaker 1: There right I Mean, it's a great question because when
Speaker 1: you're deploying an aircraft carrier strike grew and then you
Speaker 1: look at the size of the boats that the administration
Speaker 1: has essentially been blowing out of the water.
Speaker 3: There does seem to be a real imbalance there.
Speaker 1: So, you know, the big question we've really been trying
Speaker 1: to answer is how much of this is actually heading
Speaker 1: toward some sort of massive conflict where the US would
Speaker 1: strike the land, which after all, is something that President
Speaker 1: Trump has said he's willing to do. And how much
Speaker 1: of it is essentially the president using military assets at
Speaker 1: his disposal to basically act as a deterrent, to send
Speaker 1: a threatening message.
Speaker 3: That it's all bluster. You know.
Speaker 1: The administration, when we have asked him about this, have said, hey,
Speaker 1: we've deployed military assets all around the world for many years,
Speaker 1: and then when we deploy them in our own backyard,
Speaker 1: suddenly the media freaks out. Why shouldn't we be interested
Speaker 1: in what's going on in our own hemisphere? And that
Speaker 1: really is sort of part of the problem. Where in
Speaker 1: past administrations when you had strikes like this, a lot
Speaker 1: of it was done in secrecy, but then there would
Speaker 1: at least be some attempt to sort of explain or
Speaker 1: walk people through a lot of the details, maybe on
Speaker 1: background or even off the record, sort of making the
Speaker 1: case in a very clear way about what the strategy
Speaker 1: actually was for doing all of these things, which on
Speaker 1: the surface seemed to be rather contradictory. And right now,
Speaker 1: aside from some pronouncements, we have not really been able
Speaker 1: to interrogate the administration in a public way about why
Speaker 1: precisely they feel if this is a campaign designed to
Speaker 1: target narco traffickers, they need to deploy an aircraft carrier
Speaker 1: strike group and a submarine and all of these other
Speaker 1: assets which would in any other circumstance be seen as
Speaker 1: essentially a prelude to an invasion.
Speaker 2: After the break, what a US attack on Venezuela could
Speaker 2: look like, and how that country's oil reserves are shaping
Speaker 2: the Trump administration's plans. Because something you have a lot
Speaker 2: of experience with are war games gaming out sort of
Speaker 2: what might happen in a scenario like this, How do
Speaker 2: you look at sort of the way that this might
Speaker 2: evolve and what that might mean, how it might play on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so with my war gaming hat on, thinking about
Speaker 4: all of the games that I've run for the Department
Speaker 4: of Defense and for other militaries around the globe. I
Speaker 4: sort of see this as there being a few different options.
Speaker 4: You know, one would be using some of the covert
Speaker 4: assets that the US uses, trying to use special operations
Speaker 4: forces to do some type of regime change from within.
Speaker 4: I think that that's a little bit more of a
Speaker 4: less likely scenario. So instead, that makes me think that
Speaker 4: there's probably two potential strike options if we're looking at
Speaker 4: the assets that are currently in theater. The first one
Speaker 4: is going after infrastructure, having these big, showy strikes that
Speaker 4: are very visible and very public and can last for
Speaker 4: several days, maybe a few weeks. The second option would
Speaker 4: be one that's more so going after the various nodes
Speaker 4: of the cartels, so going after different transportation routes, going
Speaker 4: after cartel leadership, particularly when they're on the move. And
Speaker 4: this is going to look a lot like some of
Speaker 4: the counter terrorism operations that we've seen in places like
Speaker 4: Afghanistan and Iraq. It's going to require a bunch of
Speaker 4: air power and air strikes. So really I think what
Speaker 4: we're seeing here are two kind of options. These big
Speaker 4: attacks kind of a little bit like what we saw
Speaker 4: the administration do against the Huthi's earlier this year, and
Speaker 4: then also these almost counter terrorism style attacks where they're
Speaker 4: going to go after transportation nodes and key leadership. In
Speaker 4: both cases, there's a fairly limited track record of success.
Speaker 4: So that doesn't necessarily give me a lot of hope
Speaker 4: that if the US were to conduct any of these
Speaker 4: strikes that they would be successful at going after and
Speaker 4: stabbing the flow of drugs, if that truly is what
Speaker 4: the impetus for these attacks would be.
Speaker 2: Nick, I know that Venezuela has an awful lot of oil,
Speaker 2: and I wonder how that might be shaping the way
Speaker 2: the administration is thinking about its course forward.
Speaker 1: David, that is really at the heart of so much
Speaker 1: of this, because when you look at this conflict through
Speaker 1: the perspective of oil, you really start to peel back
Speaker 1: a lot of layers and see some hidden currents that
Speaker 1: have been coursing through this administration since Trump came back.
Speaker 3: So you've essentially got two pulls.
Speaker 1: One is Marco Rubio, who wants to ramp up even
Speaker 1: further the sanctions that have been imposed on Venezuela to
Speaker 1: choke off its oil industry, stop the flow of oil,
Speaker 1: and really starve Maduro of the hard currency.
Speaker 3: He needs to stay afloat.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, you have a Trump advisor who's
Speaker 1: now actually run the Kennedy Center for Donald Trump. He's
Speaker 1: the former ambassador to Germany, someone named Richard Grenell, and
Speaker 1: he had been pushing this idea that no, let's open
Speaker 1: it up entirely. Let's essentially create a situation where we
Speaker 1: lift all the sanctions and then the United States buys
Speaker 1: all of Venezuela's oil, and then we can tear iff
Speaker 1: the heck out of everything coming in from Venezuela and
Speaker 1: essentially make Venezuela the fifty first state of the United States.
Speaker 3: So a very different approach and sort of playing.
Speaker 1: Do you have these two advisors playing to different aspects
Speaker 1: or different impulses from the president, one being his desired
Speaker 1: piece through strength and desire to get tough, and then
Speaker 1: the other, Hey, tariffs and business deals and let's make
Speaker 1: a deal art of the deal. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: care so much about your values and whether you believe
Speaker 1: in democracy as long as we have a business partnership
Speaker 1: between the two countries. And safe to say, right now,
Speaker 1: the Rubio approach has definitely won. There is absolutely no
Speaker 1: indication that present and Trump is going to be willing
Speaker 1: anytime soon to lift those sanctions and pursue any sort
Speaker 1: of oil deals with Venezuela. But he is getting pressure
Speaker 1: from some of his allies. Obviously, the oil majors. Chevron
Speaker 1: still does some business in Venezuela. They would love to
Speaker 1: get into that market. And the question is, well, how
Speaker 1: long does Trump's patients last? Is he really after coming
Speaker 1: to the presidency billing himself as the peace president, He's
Speaker 1: solved a bunch of wars, he didn't start any new ones.
Speaker 1: Is he really going to commit to the idea of
Speaker 1: a massive campaign? I mean, right now there essentially there's
Speaker 1: very little notion that the US would put actual boots
Speaker 1: on the ground in Venezuela. But is he willing to
Speaker 1: enter into a lengthy air campaign against Venezuela when it
Speaker 1: goes against so much of the reasons why he said
Speaker 1: he deserved to be president a second time? And how
Speaker 1: much is he going to lose patients for that effort
Speaker 1: and then try to lean into some other effort where
Speaker 1: he could essentially cut a deal with Maduro the way
Speaker 1: you saw him try to cut a deal with Vladimir
Speaker 1: putin North Korea? Is Kim jong Un and even in
Speaker 1: some cases you know has said he wants to cut
Speaker 1: a deal with a run.
Speaker 2: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gurat.
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