The White House has ordered the US military to focus on enforcing a “quarantine” of Venezuelan oil for the next two months, according to a US official.
The move indicates that the Trump administration is currently more interested in using economic rather than military means to increase pressure on President Nicolas Maduro.
“While military options still exist, the focus is to first use economic pressure by enforcing sanctions to reach the outcome the White House is looking [for],” the official said on Wednesday, speaking anonymously to Reuters news agency.
The official said the belief is Venezuela will be facing huge economic trouble by late January unless it agrees to make significant concessions to the US.
It follows Donald Trump ordering a “blockade” of oil tankers into and out of the South American country last month. The official’s use of “quarantine” appearing to tone down the US president’s previous language.
Mr Trump said the US military would remain in place until Venezuela returns “all of the oil, land, and other assets that they previously stole from us”.
Over several months the US has amassed a huge military presence in the Caribbean, with more than 15,000 troops, an aircraft carrier, 11 other warships and more than a dozen F-35 aircraft.
The US president maintains it is to crack down on “narco-terrorists” and boats being used by alleged cartels to smuggle drugs into America.
He has pressured Mr Maduro, who the US does not recognise as Venezuela’s leader, to flee the nation. On Monday, Mr Trump reiterated that it would be wise for the president, who he accuses of heading up the Cartel de los Soles, to leave.
So far this month, the US Coast Guard has intercepted two tankers in the Caribbean Sea, both fully loaded with Venezuelan crude oil, and is in “active pursuit” of a third, a US official said on Monday.
At an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council called by Venezuela, US ambassador Mike Waltz said sanctioned oil tankers “operate as the primary economic lifeline for Maduro and his illegitimate regime”.
But Mr Maduro also claims Mr Trump is trying to overthrow him with the aim of seizing Venezuela’s oil reserves.
Read more:
The US-Venezuela crisis explained
Maduro’s ‘narco nephews’ hit with sanctions
Venezuela’s UN ambassador Samuel Moncada accused the US of acting “outside international law” and its own domestic laws.
She asked: “What right does the United States government have to appropriate, to date, almost four million barrels of Venezuelan oil?
“This alleged naval blockade is essentially a military act aimed at laying siege to the Venezuelan nation, degrading its economic and military apparatus, weakening its social and political cohesion, and causing internal chaos to facilitate aggression by external forces.”
