What's happening in Venezuela?
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 6 November 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Something is going in the southern Caribbean. The world’s largest aircraft carrier - the American USS Gerald R Ford- is on its way to the region. Small boats said to belong to Venezuelan drug smugglers are being blown up by the US military. Old US bases are being de-mothballed. And there’s media talk of Trump-induced regime change in Caracas, with Venezuela’s authoritarian, leftist president Nicolas Maduro in the crosshairs. In this week's Briefing Room, David Aaronovitch and guests ask what this military show of strength is really about and what it mean for the region?
Guests:
Will Grant, BBC Mexico, Central America and Cuba Correspondent. Jeremy McDermott, co-founder and co-director of InSight Crime, a Colombia-based think tank that studies organised crime in the Americas. Dr Christopher Sabatini, Senior Fellow for Latin America at Chatham House Dr Annette Idler, Associate Professor in Global Security at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford.
Presenter: David Aaronovitch Producers: Caroline Bayley, Kirsteen Knight and Cordelia Hemming Production co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele Sound Engineer: Gareth Jones Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:10.7 | Something is going on in the Southern Caribbean. |
| 0:14.1 | The world's largest aircraft carrier, American, of course, is on its way to the region. |
| 0:19.4 | Small boats said to belong to Venezuelan drug smugglers |
| 0:22.5 | are being blown to kingdom come by the US military. Old US bases are being demothballed, and there's media |
| 0:30.2 | talk of a Trump-induced regime change in Caracas, with Venezuela's authoritarian leftist president, |
| 0:36.9 | Nicolas Maduro, in the crosshairs. |
| 0:39.8 | So what does all this clatter of sabres amount to? And what does it mean for the region? |
| 0:45.8 | Step into the briefing room and together we'll find out. |
| 0:57.1 | First, a bit of US-Venezuela background. |
| 1:02.2 | I'm joined by Will Grant, the BBC's Mexico, Central America and Cuba correspondent down the line from Mexico City. |
| 1:04.7 | Will Grant, when did this US military build-up in the Caribbean begin? |
| 1:09.9 | In August of this year, we started to see the US sending a lot of military hardware and |
| 1:18.4 | troops to the Caribbean. |
| 1:19.7 | The number of troops in the southern Caribbean and Puerto Rico has expanded to 10,000. |
| 1:25.3 | We've seen everything from F-35 fighter jets through to refueling tankers. |
| 1:32.3 | We've seen the US Eojima, one of the warships that's been sent to the region. It all adds up to sort of a growing sense of the clouds of war beginning to gather in the Caribbean. |
| 1:46.6 | What's been going on with these boats that are being blown up? |
| 1:50.1 | In early September, there was the first US airstriker on one of these speedboats that make |
| 1:57.0 | their way through the Caribbean, allegedly from Venezuelan waters, out through |
| 2:01.8 | international waters, potentially to Trinidad and Tobago, but essentially heading out. |
| 2:07.0 | Now, the argument from the US is that they were carrying drugs, bales of cocaine. |
... |
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