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pete hegseth
'No More Endless Wars,' Maduro Says to American People, Calling for 'Peace' in Face of Trump Threats
"No more unjust wars. No more Libya. No more Afghanistan. Long live peace," said the president of Venezuela.
Nov 14, 2025
Just as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced new branding for the US military campaign in Latin America, now known as "Operation Souther Spear," the president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, on Thursday offered a message of peace directly to the people of the United States as he warned against further conflict.
In an exchange with a CNN correspondent during a rally for the nation's youth in Caracas, Maduro urged President Donald Trump not to prolong the region's military engagement. Asked if he had a message for the people of the United States, Maduro said in Spanish: “To unite for the peace of the continent. No more endless wars. No more unjust wars. No more Libya. No more Afghanistan.”
Asked if he had anything to say directly to Trump, Maduro replied in English: “Yes peace, yes peace.”
CNN: What is your message to the people of the United States?
Maduro: No more endless wars, no more unjust wars, no more Libya, no more Afghanistan.
CNN: Do you have a message for President Trump?
Maduro: My message is yes, peace. Yes, peace. pic.twitter.com/GpuRU2hqSG
— Acyn (@Acyn) November 14, 2025
Hegseth's rebranding of operations in Latin America, which has included a series of extrajudicial murders against alleged drug runners both in the Caribbean and in the Pacific, also arrived on Thursday.
He said that attacks on boats, which have now claimed the lives of at least 80 people, are part of President Donald Trump's targeting of "narco-terrorists." However, the administration has produced no evidence proving the allegations against these individuals nor shared with the American people the legal basis for the extrajudicial killings that deprive victims of due process.
With a significant military buildup that includes the world's largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R.Ford, fears have grown that Trump is considering a wider military attack on targets inside Venezuelan territory, despite having no congressional authorization for such use of force against a nation with which the US is not at war.
CBS News reports that Trump has been briefed on possible military "options" for an assault on Venezuela, while anti-war voices continue to warn against any such moves.
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Trump Briefed On Venezuela Military Strike Options That Could Occur in 'Coming Days': Report
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly showed the president options for military operations, including "strikes on land."
Nov 13, 2025
The fact that the White House has reportedly made no "final decision" regarding whether it will launch direct strikes against Venezuela offered cold comfort, suggested one policy advocate on Thursday as it was reported that top military officials had briefed President Donald Trump on "options" for attacking the South American country after weeks of US escalation.
"They're presenting options to Trump for war in Venezuela—options that Trump has already rightly expressed reservations about, and options that just days ago they told Republican allies in Congress that they do not have legal authority to do," said Erik Sperling, executive director of Just Foreign Policy and a former adviser to US Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). "But sure, no 'final' decision made."
As CBS News reported, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine were among the senior military officials who spoke to Trump Wednesday about potential operations that could be carried out in Venezuela "in the coming days," including "strikes on land."
The meeting came as the USS Gerald R. Ford arrived in the Latin America region, accompanied by warships. The arrival of the carrier strike force brings the number of US troops in the region to 15,000.
Since September, the White House has embarked on what it has called an "armed conflict" with drug cartels in Venezuela over the strong objections of Democrats and a small number of Republicans in Congress.
The conflict has been characterized by the administration's strikes on numerous boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, that the White House has claimed were carrying drugs and operated by cartels. The administration has not released evidence that the people on board the boats were involved in drug trafficking, and legal experts and lawmakers have condemned what they call the "extrajudicial killing" of at least 76 people.
The Associated Press reported on the identities of some of the victims last week and found that they included an out-of-work bus driver and a fisherman who was desperate to feed his family. The family of one victim from Trinidad and Tobago denied that he had been involved in drug trafficking. Two people survived the strikes and were repatriated to Ecuador and Colombia; in the case of the man from Ecuador, authorities released him after finding no evidence he had committed any crime.
Lawmakers in the US Senate have introduced two war powers resolutions to stop Trump from bombing purported drug trafficking boats and from striking Venezuela, but both have been voted down.
The measure focused on Venezuela was voted down after Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed "select members of Congress" and told them the administration is not planning to strike the country and did not have a legal rationale for doing so.
Trump recently told "60 Minutes" that he doubted the US would launch a military attack on the country.
Sperling said Rubio, who has long advocated regime change in Venezuela, appeared "deflated" when speaking to reporters on Thursday and declining to "discuss any possibility of striking Venezuela or arresting [President Nicolás] Maduro."
Despite the aircraft's carrier arrival to the Caribbean, Rubio seems deflated — as he declines to discuss any possibility of striking Venezuela or arresting Maduro.
Seems likely that Trump rightly rejected proposals for a Libya-style regime change or Black Hawk Down-style raid https://t.co/phPXUNIRx8 pic.twitter.com/CgP1w9OE13
— Erik Sperling 🌍 (@ErikSperling) November 13, 2025
"Seems likely that Trump rightly rejected proposals for a Libya-style regime change or Black Hawk Down-style raid," said Sperling.
But Maduro has not been convinced by claims that the US is not planning a strike, and his government announced Wednesday that it was readying its entire military arsenal and deploying 200,000 soldiers to prepare for potential acts of war from the US.
While Trump has appeared to reject proposals to attack Venezuela thus far, he said in 2023 that if he had won the 2020 election, he would have taken the country over and seized its vast oil reserves.
"If Trump rejected Rubio's plans for regime change war in Venezuela, he made the right call," said Just Foreign Policy on social media Thursday. "Former President Barack Obama reportedly wanted to stay out of Libya, but was pressured by advisers—a decision he regretted. Trump must not make the same mistake with Rubio's Venezuela war."
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Hegseth Says 6 More Men Killed in Latest Boat Bombings
At least 76 people have been killed in 19 US attacks on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean since early September.
Nov 10, 2025
Six people were killed Sunday in US military strikes on what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed were boats smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, bringing the total death toll from all such reported attacks to at least 76 since early September.
"Yesterday, at the direction of President [Donald] Trump, two lethal kinetic strikes were conducted on two vessels operated by designated terrorist organizations. These vessels were known by our intelligence to be associated with illicit narcotics smuggling, were carrying narcotics, and were transiting along a known narco-trafficking transit route in the eastern Pacific," Hegseth said Monday on social media without providing evidence to support his claim.
"Both strikes were conducted in international waters and three male narco-terrorists were aboard each vessel. All six were killed," he added. "No US forces were harmed. Under President Trump, we are protecting the homeland and killing these cartel terrorists who wish to harm our country and its people."
Sunday's attacks raised the death toll in the Trump administration's nine-week campaign to at least 76 people in 19 attacks in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea. The US strikes have come amid Trump's deployment of warships and thousands of troops off the coast of Venezuela and follow the president's approval of covert CIA action and threats to attack inside the oil-rich country.
Last week, Republicans in the US Senate rejected a bipartisan war powers resolution aimed at stopping the Trump administration from continuing its bombing of alleged drug boats or attacking Venezuela without lawmakers’ assent, as required by law.
Trump administration officials have admitted that they aren't attempting to identify people aboard boats before or after bombing them. Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) recently told CNN that Pentagon officials briefed her “that they do not need to positively identify individuals on the vessel to do the strikes."
Jacobs also said that the administration is not making any effort to imprison survivors of the strikes or prosecute them, “because they could not satisfy the evidentiary burden.”
In the past, drug trafficking in the Caribbean and Pacific has been treated by the US government as a law enforcement issue, with the Coast Guard and other agencies sometimes intercepting boats and arresting those on board if evidence was found, granting them a day in court.
Leaders in Venezuela, Colombia, and other nations; United Nations officials; human rights groups; and Democratic US lawmakers are among those who have condemned the boat bombings as extrajudicial assassination, murder, and war crimes.
While some residents of the Venezuelan villages from which the targeted boats departed have said that many of the men killed in the strikes were running drugs, regional officials and relatives of victims have asserted that numerous men slain in the attacks were not narco-traffickers.
According to an MSNBC investigation published last week, the identities of up to 50 strike victims remain publicly unknown. In a rare display of congressional bipartisanship, Reps. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), Mike Turner (R-Ohio), Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), and Jason Crow (D-Col.) last week sent a letter to Trump seeking clarification on the administration's legal reasoning for the strikes and asking, "What evidence confirms that those killed were cartel operatives, rather than coerced, deceived, or trafficked civilians?"
"We strongly support the effort to reduce the flow of narcotics into this country," the lawmakers wrote. "This effort, like every action the United States military takes, must be done within the legal, moral, and ethical framework that sets us apart from our adversaries."
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