Operation Rolling Thunder as a lesson for Operation Southern Spear

The "Drug War" Mirage and  Trump’s Escalation in Venezuela Mirrors the Failures of Rolling Thunder 

Trump appears to be moving toward a gradual escalation of war with Venezuela, and without even having to manufacture a “Gulf-of-Tonkin-like incident, although that may be coming. His sole justification is the alledged movement of drugs from that country to the United States, even though he destroys whatever evidence exists of that very justification.

Trump needs to read a little history of bombing campaigns if he thinks he can accomplish regime change with bombs.

3 million tons of bombs were dropped on just the Laos portion of the Ho Chi Minh trail. That was 1 million more tons than were dropped on Germany and Japan during all of WW II.  It failed to stop the flow of supplies. During Rolling Thunder, Johnson's bombing campaign of the North Vietnam, they built enough individual bomb shelters to shelter 18 million people, the entire population.

And we lost anyway.

What started in September 2025 as a series of maritime strikes on small vessels has rapidly morphed into a sustained campaign of aerial bombardment and, most recently, the first known land strikes on Venezuelan soil.

President Trump has framed this as an "armed conflict" against narco-terrorism, justifying the use of MQ-9 Reapers and B-52s to "knock out" dock facilities and alleged smuggling boats. Yet, as the death toll surpasses 115 and a total naval blockade takes hold, the strategy feels hauntingly familiar. In its reliance on "graduated pressure" and a flawed theory of "breaking the will" of a regime, the current campaign bears a striking, and concerning, resemblance to Lyndon B. Johnson’s Operation Rolling Thunder.

The administration’s primary justification—that these strikes are purely a counter-narcotics effort—is increasingly difficult to reconcile with the facts on the ground (or sea.).

Despite the destruction of over 35+ vessels, the U.S. has yet to provide public evidence of drug seizures. Many of these targets were small, open boats; in at least one survivors were reportedly struck while clinging to wreckage, a clear war crime.

By designating the "Cartel de los Soles" (allegedly led by Nicolás Maduro) as a foreign terrorist organization, the administration has created a legal loophole to bypass congressional war powers, treating a sovereign nation like a non-state insurgent group.

The recent "total blockade" of sanctioned oil tankers and strikes on port infrastructure suggest the real target isn't Fentanyl (even though that comes mostly over the Mexican border) —it's the financial lifeblood of the Maduro government. Regime change and thus control of Venezuelan oil is clearly Trump’s goal.

The Rolling Thunder Parallel: "Graduated Pressure"

From 1965 to 1968, LBJ’s Operation Rolling Thunder sought to force North Vietnam to the negotiating table through a slow, steady escalation of bombing. It failed for the same reasons Trump’s Caribbean campaign is likely to stall:

LBJ believed that hitting infrastructure would "break the will" of Hanoi. Instead, it hardened their resolve. Similarly, Maduro has used the strikes to rally his "Republic at Arms," framing himself as a David fighting a Yankee Goliath.

In Vietnam, the mission drifted from "deterrence" to "interdiction" to "regime stabilization." Today, we see a similar drift: what began as "stopping drug boats" has expanded to "closing Venezuelan airspace" and seizing international tankers.

Bombing a dock in La Guaira does little to stop a decentralized smuggling network, just as bombing the Ho Chi Minh Trail failed to stop the flow of supplies. You cannot solve a complex political and criminal problem by simply increasing the "displacement" of the fleet.

The administration's bet is that if the pain becomes great enough, the Venezuelan military will turn on Maduro. But history suggests the opposite. External attacks typically allow authoritarian regimes to purge dissenters and consolidate power under the guise of national defense.

Furthermore, by acting without a formal Declaration of War or a UN mandate, the U.S. is alienating regional partners. When "America First" looks like "Gunboat Diplomacy 2.0," it creates a power vacuum that rivals like China and Russia—who are already helping Venezuela evade the blockade—are happy to fill.

Like Rolling Thunder, Operation Southern Spear risks becoming a "forever war" of attrition where the only metrics for success are body counts and "major explosions" announced at press conferences. If the goal is a democratic Venezuela, history shows that bombs are the least effective tool for building one.