WASHINGTON — The United States has launched its most aggressive campaign against Nicolás Maduro’s regime in years, combining overwhelming naval power, imminent terrorist designations, and quiet contingency planning for the Venezuelan leader’s removal.

The centerpiece is the arrival of the USS Gerald R. Ford, the U.S. Navy’s newest and most advanced aircraft carrier, in the Caribbean Sea. On November 16 the Ford and its strike group, including the guided-missile destroyers USS Bainbridge, USS Mahan, and USS Winston S. Churchill, transited the Anegada Passage east of Puerto Rico and entered U.S. Southern Command’s area of responsibility. Roughly a dozen warships and 12,000 sailors and Marines are now taking part in Operation Southern Spear, the largest concentration of American forces in the region in decades.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described the mission as a direct assault on “narco-terrorists” and the drug routes that feed the United States. Admiral Alvin Holsey, commander of Southern Command, called the carrier’s presence “a clear message that we will defend the security of the Western Hemisphere and the American homeland.” Since September, U.S. forces have already conducted 21 strikes on suspected narco-vessels, including at least one lethal action in the days immediately preceding the Ford’s arrival.

In a parallel move, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Sunday that the State Department will formally designate the Cartel de los Soles, the Venezuelan drug-trafficking network allegedly headed by Maduro himself, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization effective November 24. The cartel, whose name comes from the sun insignias worn by high-ranking Venezuelan officers, is accused of having corrupted the country’s military, intelligence services, legislature, and judiciary to flood the United States and Europe with cocaine and fentanyl. Washington also claims it collaborates with designated terrorist groups such as Tren de Aragua and Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel.

The new designation will unlock sweeping additional sanctions, asset seizures, and travel bans, and will further blur the line between counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism operations in the region.

Behind closed doors, the White House is actively gaming out Maduro’s endgame. Administration officials have drafted “concept plans” that range from arranging a dignified exile for Maduro and his inner circle to a third country, possibly Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan, or Cuba, to arresting and extraditing him to face trial in the United States. While no final decision has been taken, sources emphasize that everything now hinges on the rapidly evolving situation inside Venezuela. Contacts with the Venezuelan opposition remain deliberately vague; opposition leaders are being given only general assurances rather than detailed blueprints for a post-Maduro government.

President Trump has publicly left the door open to dialogue with Caracas even as the pressure mounts. Yet the synchronized arrival of the Gerald R. Ford, the terrorist designation, and the quiet planning for regime change make one thing clear: Washington is no longer content to contain Maduro. It intends to remove him, by coercion if possible, by force if necessary.