Most Americans are skeptical about potential military action against Venezuela, according to new polling.
A CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday night found that 70% of American adults oppose potential military action against the Venezuelan regime while just 30% of respondents approve. The survey comes as President Donald Trump has ramped up the military’s presence in the Caribbean to the largest level in decades and the administration has engaged in a wider pressure campaign against Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro.
More than three-quarters of respondents said the Trump administration has yet to clearly explain its objective regarding Venezuela. Among Republicans, 64% of respondents said Trump needs to explain his rationale about whether to take military action against Maduro’s regime.
The survey also found that 53% of American adults favor using military force to strike boats allegedly smuggling drugs into the United States. The poll’s results follow a recent Harvard CAPS/Harris survey released in September, which found that 71% of Americans support military strikes against Venezuelan boats allegedly carrying drugs.
The Pentagon deployed the Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest carrier strike group, to the Caribbean where it arrived in mid-November. The U.S. military has also dispatched more than a dozen warships to the region and 15,000 troops as part of the administration’s counternarcotics efforts known as “Operation Southern Spear.”
Though the Trump administration has said the military’s growing presence around Venezuela is tied to its efforts to combat the flow of illicit drugs, the president has declined to “rule out anything” — including ground troops — in his pressure campaign against Maduro.
The military has launched 21 known strikes against Venezuelan vessels allegedly carrying drugs thus far, resulting in the deaths of more than 80 people.
However, three-quarters of the CBS News/YouGov survey’s respondents said the Trump administration must provide evidence that the boats targeted by military strikes are drug vessels.
GOP lawmakers have been publicly supportive of Trump’s approach to Venezuela, including the military military strikes on alleged drug boats.
“The administration is taking decisive action to prevent these narcoterrorists from trafficking drugs into the United States,” Republican New York Rep. Mike Lawler told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Tuesday.
“I support what they are doing,” Lawler added.
The Trump administration has also designated Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization, which could help the president ratchet up pressure against Maduro.
The U.S. government claims that Maduro leads the group allegedly responsible for trafficking drugs into the United States. Maduro has denied his personal involvement and the existence of the group.
Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a leading critic of foreign intervention, criticized the designation during an interview with CBS’ Margaret Brennan on Sunday.
“I think by doing this, they are pretending as if we are at war,” Paul told Brennan.
However, several of Paul’s Republican colleagues told the DCNF that Trump has no plans of launching strikes inside Venezuelan territory or ousting Maduro through military action.
“This whole notion of going to war with Venezuela, that’s not a thing,” Republican Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno told the DCNF. “President Trump’s not a war president. What we’re going to do is make certain that we clean up drug trafficking in this hemisphere.”
“I’m a big skeptic of regime change unless it’s regime change performed by the people themselves,” Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley told the DCNF last week. Hawley argued that U.S. government-imposed regime change has a poor track record of success.
“That’s not where the administration is headed,” Hawley said before adding, “I’ve got to believe that it’s not.”
The CBS News/YouGov survey of 2,489 American adults was conducted between Nov. 19 to 21 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.
Andi Shae Napier contributed to this report.Â
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