Brazil's Lula warns U.S. over Caribbean military surge: "Hard to predict how it will end"

When the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group slipped through the Anegada Passage into the Caribbean on November 16, 2025, it marked the largest concentration of U.S. naval power in these waters in decades. One week later, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva stood before reporters in Johannesburg and issued a warning his counterparts across Latin America had been reluctant to voice publicly. "I am very concerned about the military apparatus that the United States has placed in the Caribbean Sea," Lula told the press after the G20 summit. "There is no reason to have a war now. Let us not repeat the mistake that happened in the war between Russia and Ukraine. That is to say, once a shot is fired, it is hard to predict how it will end."

The Brazilian president's invocation of Ukraine was deliberate. Operation Southern Spear, framed by U.S. Southern Command as a mission to dismantle transnational criminal organizations and counter narco-terrorism, has assembled assets that far exceed what interdiction of drug-running speedboats requires—and that point toward coercive pressure on Venezuela's Maduro government. Brazil shares a 1,400-mile border with Venezuela. For Lula, the question is not whether Washington has grievances against Caracas, but whether militarization of those grievances creates escalation dynamics no one can control.

A force designed to cause pain, not seize terrain

The Ford carrier strike group's arrival brought the full weight of American naval aviation into a confined maritime space already hosting the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group, the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (more than 4,500 Marines and sailors), guided-missile cruisers USS Gettysburg and USS Lake Erie, and destroyers USS Gravely and USS Stockdale. The Pentagon has reactivated Naval Station Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico, deployed ten F-35 stealth fighters to the island, and positioned AC-130J Ghostrider gunships—aircraft designed for close air support and armed overwatch, not drug interdiction. Between mid-August and mid-October, U.S. military aircraft flew more than 200 sorties across the Caribbean, a tempo that includes P-8 Poseidon submarine hunters, MQ-9 Reaper drones, and aerial refueling tankers.

B-52 strategic bombers have flown within 48 nautical miles of Venezuela's Los Roques archipelago, loitering for roughly four hours in patterns that Venezuelan radar would read as strike rehearsals. At sea, U.S. destroyers and the cruiser carry Tomahawk land-attack missiles capable of hitting targets hundreds of miles inland from standoff positions. Elliott Abrams, a former senior official for Latin America policy, captured the strategic paradox in an interview with CNN: the force is "too big for just speedboats, not big enough for an invasion." Defense analyst Peter Singer echoed the assessment—Washington has deployed enough capability "to cause pain but not to seize terrain."

That pain has already been inflicted, at least on the water. Since September, U.S. forces have conducted at least 21 strikes against suspected drug vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, killing 83 people according to official counts. The administration has provided no public evidence linking those killed to specific trafficking operations. UN human rights experts have criticized the marine strikes as violations of international law; some U.S. lawmakers question whether the executive branch has congressional authorization to conduct what amounts to sustained hostilities in international and foreign waters.

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Regional powers hedge between cooperation and alarm

Washington has paired the show of force with partnership engagement, conducting joint exercises with allies including Trinidad and Tobago, where the 22nd MEU trained with local defense forces from November 16 to 21. These drills serve a dual function: they signal U.S. commitment to countering transnational crime, and they provide political cover for governments wary of being seen as endorsing unilateral military action. Several Latin American governments have criticized the legality of the boat strikes; others worry privately that the U.S. could expand operations to include strikes inside Venezuelan territory, turning a regional stability problem into a hemispheric crisis.

Lula's public concern reflects Brazil's strategic position. Brasília has no love for Maduro's authoritarian governance, but it calculates that military conflict would send hundreds of thousands more Venezuelan refugees across borders already strained by over seven million displaced since 2015. Colombian President Gustavo Petro has similarly signaled unease, though more quietly. The War on Drugs has a long record in Latin America—not of dismantling cartels, but of displacing violence, corroding institutions, and generating adaptive criminal markets. Militarizing the Venezuela crisis risks repeating that pattern at scale, with spillover that no wall or naval blockade can contain.

Lula's invocation of Ukraine was not hyperbole; it was structural analysis. In February 2022, most observers expected a limited Russian operation or a negotiated climb-down. Three years later, the war grinds on with no clear endgame. The Brazilian president's message to Washington is that the Caribbean in 2025 carries similar dangers: confined geography, entrenched actors, limited diplomatic dialogue, and a force posture that creates pressure to use capabilities before they lose tactical surprise. "Once a shot is fired, it is hard to predict how it will end."