In September, the US military started bombing boats in the waters off South America and they haven't stopped since - ramping up regional tensions and raising the spectre of Cold War era-style regime change in the US's backyard.
More than 60 people have been killed in 14 separate strikes on what the US administration claims are drug-running boats, in contravention, legal experts say, of international and US domestic law.
"These are premeditated killings outside of armed conflict, and the term for that is murder," said Brian Finucane, senior advisor with the US programme at the International Crisis Group.
The US administration is framing this as a war against "narco-terrorists," echoing language from the US's long running, but largely failed, global "war on terror".
US President Donald Trump has brushed aside growing disquiet from both Republicans and Democrats about the administration's bypass of Congressional authorisation of military action, something that is required under the US Constitution.
"I don't think we're going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war," Mr Trump told reporters.
"I think we're just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We're going to kill them. You know? They're going to be, like, dead," he said.
In recent weeks details of the human cost of the US's military campaign have emerged.
Chad Joseph, a 26-year-old man from Trinidad and Tobago, was working in Venezuela as a fisherman, according to relatives. He told his family he was going to get a boat home, but that was the last they heard from him.
Now they want answers.
"I'm feeling very hurt. You know why? Donald Trump took a father, a brother, an uncle, a nephew from families," his cousin, Afisha Clement told Reuters, adding, "Donald Trump don't care what he is doing".
"If you say a boat has narcotics on it, where is the narcotics?" she said.
"We want evidence, we want proof," she said.
But Mr Joseph's family is unlikely to get answers from their own government, which has firmly sided with the United States.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has said she would rather see drug traffickers "blown to pieces" than have them kill citizens of her own nation.
When her government invited a US warship into Trinidadian waters for joint exercises, Venezuela responded with fury calling it "warmongering" and immediately suspended long-standing energy supply agreements with its near neighbour.
Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago are just 11km apart.
In contrast to the government’s stance, local groups have grown alarmed at the US military build-up.
This week the US Navy redirected the world’s largest aircraft carrier - the USS Gerald R Ford - to the region with an estimated 5,000 personnel on board, adding to the 6,000 troops, eight warships, fighter jets and attack submarine already there.
In a rare intervention, the regional Catholic Bishops' affiliate known as the Antilles Episcopal Conference issued a statement warning of the socio-economic, political and humanitarian threat to the region and its people.
"The narcotics trade continues to devastate Caribbean societies - eroding lives, futures, and the very moral fabric of our communities," the statement said.
"Yet, the arbitrary and unwarranted taking of life cannot be justified as a means of resolution. Such acts violate the sacredness of human life," it added.
Last week, the geographical range of the US attacks suddenly widened beyond the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific.
The US struck four boats off the coast of Mexico, prompting condemnation from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
US Secretary of Defense, now known as Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, said the boats were being "operated by Designated Terrorist Organisations trafficking narcotics in the Eastern Pacific."
"The four vessels were known by our intelligence apparatus, transiting along known narco-trafficking routes, and carrying narcotics," he wrote on X.
To date, just three people have survived the strikes.
Two were repatriated to their countries of origin - Colombia and Ecuador. The third may have been picked up by Mexican search and rescue teams, but that remains unclear.
No attempt was made by US authorities, it seems, to press charges for drug-running, which Mr Finucane said was certainly curious.
"I think it was not in the political interest of the administration to prosecute those two individuals and that's because at such a trial, the facts are likely to be disclosed would undercut the administration's narratives about these strikes," he told RTÉ News.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly said each strike saves 25,000 American lives that would otherwise be lost to drug overdoses.
Experts call this a false narrative, because synthetic opioids like fentanyl - which indeed have killed some half a million Americans - are "cooked" in laboratories in Mexico and brought in by land. South American countries produce cocaine.
In addition, "the drugs that go through Venezuela are normally going to Europe - that is a much more geographically logical route that has been preferred by traffickers for many, many years," said Renata Segura, Latin American and Caribbean programme director at the International Crisis Group.
"It seems highly unlikely that that the fentanyl that concerns the US is being brought through the ocean - that's just not how it works," she said.
That indicates that the US military flex in the region has a broader purpose.
"There appear to be different objectives and motivations within the administration behind this campaign of extrajudicial executions," said John Ramming Chappell, legal advisor at the Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC).
They include ousting the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, cracking down on immigrants in the United States and strengthening US military dominance in the Western Hemisphere, he said.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is himself the son of Cuban exiles, is thought to be the architect of policy aimed at regime change of Cuban ally Venezuela - while Mr Hegseth for his part is keen to demonstrate US military hard power.
But all that appears to be at odds with Mr Trump’s "America First" agenda, championed by the MAGA wing of the party, which wants to extract the United States from overseas military entanglements.
That is, some experts believe, is where the drugs come in.
"If they frame it as…actually safeguarding Americans from these evil drugs that are coming, then it's something that becomes more palatable for them internally, to present to the American public," said Ms Segura.
The administration certainly makes no secret of its disdain for leftist governments in South America, particularly Mr Maduro, but also Colombian president Gustavo Petro, both of whom Mr Trump has accused of being drug kingpins - which they reject.
President Trump said he had authorised the CIA to undertake covert operations inside Venezuela and hinted that the US may also strike targets on land, not just at sea.
As the administration mulls what to do next, distaste for the Venezuelan regime has perhaps muted widespread opposition on Capitol Hill.
Human rights abuses there are well documented.
Earlier this year, a UN fact-finding mission to Venezuela found the Maduro regime had committed crimes against humanity, while human rights groups including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International haver reported multiple cases of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, torture and sexual violence including against women and children.
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, recognised by the Norwegian committee "as one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times" for "keeping the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness".
This week Ms Corina Machado threw her support behind the US strikes on boats.
"These deaths are the responsibility of Nicolás Maduro," she told Bloomberg.
"He, and the rest of the drug cartels in power in Venezuela, should stop these activities in order to prevent more deaths," she said.
But experts questioned whether enough thought had been given to "the day after" in the event of an escalation.
It's unlikely to result in neat and tidy regime change, which seems to be the fantasy of the US Secretary of State," said Mr Finucane.
"The history of US military interventions - including those aimed at regime change - shows that these actions can come with devastating consequences for civilians," said Ramming Chappell.
"All too often, they end in prolonged armed conflict, humanitarian crises, and extensive harm to civilians," he told RTÉ News.
In Venezuela’s case, there is a "multitude of criminal actors" including urban gangs, syndicates that run illegal mining in the south of the country, groups connected to Tren de Aragua transnational criminal organisation and the presence of some six million weapons in the hands of Venezuelans, according to Renata Segura of the Crisis Group.
So, the risk that decapitating the regime "triggers a civil war that not only destabilises Venezuela, but [also spreads] violence into Colombia, Guyana and Brazil is really, really high," she told RTÉ News.
Many Venezuelans are frustrated that years of negotiations and trying to get the regime to establish democratic norms had failed, she said, and they feel they are left with "no good options".
"But just because there are no good options doesn’t mean you need to go with the one idea on the table without really careful consideration of what the repercussions might be," she said.
