USS Gravely’s arrival comes as US military build-up in the region has increased tensions between Washington and Caracas.
Published On 26 Oct 2025
A United States warship has arrived in Trinidad and Tobago, an island nation close to Venezuela, as tensions between Washington and Caracas continue to mount.
The USS Gravely, a guided-missile destroyer, reached the Trinidadian capital Port of Spain on Sunday with members of the US Marines on board, ahead of planned joint military exercises.
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The warship has advanced weapons systems and can operate helicopters. Its recent activities include a deployment for counter-narcotics operations.
Its arrival near Venezuela comes as the administration of US President Donald Trump continues to increase the US’s military presence in the Caribbean, where it has in recent weeks conducted controversial, deadly strikes against boats that Washington claims are involved in drug trafficking.
The standoff between the two countries escalated further on Friday, when the Pentagon confirmed that it was deploying the USS Gerald R Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, to the region.
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, who was re-elected last year in what the US has dismissed as a fraudulent election, accused Washington of “fabricating” a war against him.
Without providing any evidence, the US president has accused Maduro of being the leader of the organised crime gang Tren de Aragua.
Reporting from Port of Spain on Sunday, Al Jazeera’s Julia Galiano said the Trinidadian government wanted to assure its people that they shouldn’t be worried by the warship’s arrival.
The country’s defence minister told Al Jazeera on Saturday that joint military operations were held regularly and that the US vessel’s presence was not a prelude to war.
However, Galiano said that locals had expressed “a lot more reservation” about the warship.
“People we spoke to today, for example, in the Sunday market, told us that they were frightened about what this could mean for their country,” she said.
Trinidadians who spoke to news agencies expressed similar concerns.
“If anything should happen with Venezuela and America, we as people who live on the outskirts of it … could end up getting a lash any time,” 64-year-old Daniel Holder told the AFP news agency.
“I am against my country being part of this,” he added.
Javed Ali, an associate professor at the University of Michigan who specialises in national security, told Al Jazeera on Sunday that the US’s actions in the region involved “the projection of a significant amount of military force” to put pressure on the Maduro regime.
“It is so difficult to know what the White House is thinking,” he noted, adding that the US military presence is not big enough to launch an invasion of Venezuela.
“Looking at how the US has conducted wars in the past, it would not be with a small footprint like this,” Ali said.
As part of its anti-drug operations, Washington deployed eight navy ships, 10 F-35 warplanes and a nuclear-powered submarine to the region in August, its largest military build-up in the area since its 1989 invasion of Panama.
On Saturday, Venezuela’s Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino said his country had begun coastal defence exercises to protect itself against “large-scale military threats”.
