This month, as President Trump travelled to his Mar-a-Lago estate, he told reporters aboard Air Force One that he had “sort of” made up his mind about whether to launch US military strikes on Venezuela. “I can’t tell you what it would be,” he added.
Publicly the president has been keeping his options open. But behind the scenes, some of the most powerful people around him have been trying to persuade him to attack Venezuela — and remove its president, Nicolás Maduro — in what would be an extraordinary escalation of months-long military build-up in the Caribbean.
Those in favour of the strikes say they could bring democracy and prosperity to Venezuela and provide a way for the eight million people who have fled the country in the past ten years to return. These include hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who came to the US and who the Trump administration would like to deport from the country.
