By Steve Holland
WASHINGTON, Dec 24 (Reuters) - The White House has ordered U.S. military forces to focus almost exclusively on enforcing a "quarantine" of Venezuelan oil for at least the next two months, a U.S. official told Reuters, indicating Washington is currently more interested in using economic rather than military means to pressure Caracas.
"While military options still exist, the focus is to first use economic pressure by enforcing sanctions to reach the outcome the White House is looking (for)," the official said on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
While President Donald Trump has been publicly coy about his precise aims regarding Venezuela, he has privately pressured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to flee the nation, Reuters has reported. Trump said on Monday it would be smart for Maduro to leave power.
"The efforts so far have put tremendous pressure on Maduro, and the belief is that by late January, Venezuela will be facing an economic calamity unless it agrees to make significant concessions to the U.S.," the official said.
U.S. SEEKING TO SEIZE THIRD VESSEL
Trump has accused the South American country of flooding the U.S. with drugs, and his administration has for months been bombing boats originating in South America that it alleges were carrying drugs. Many nations have condemned the attacks as extrajudicial killings.
Trump has also frequently threatened to start bombing drug infrastructure on land, and has authorized covert CIA activity directed at Caracas.
So far this month, the U.S. Coast Guard has intercepted two tankers in the Caribbean Sea, both fully loaded with Venezuelan crude. The comments by the White House official on Wednesday come after Reuters reported that the Coast Guard was waiting for additional forces to carry out a third seizure, first attempted on Sunday, against an empty sanctioned vessel known as the Bella-1.
Venezuela's U.N. Ambassador Samuel Moncada said on Tuesday: "The threat is not Venezuela. The threat is the U.S. government."
HUGE U.S. MILITARY PRESENCE IN CARIBBEAN
The White House official did not elaborate on precisely what it meant for the military to focus "almost exclusively" on interdicting Venezuelan oil. The U.S. military's footprint sprawls across the globe, and most missions and capabilities are unrelated to maritime interdiction.
The Pentagon has amassed a huge military presence in the Caribbean with more than 15,000 troops. That includes an aircraft carrier, 11 other warships and more than a dozen F-35 aircraft. While many assets can be used to help with enforcing sanctions, many others, like fighter jets, are not well-suited for that task.
On Tuesday, the United States told the United Nations it will impose and enforce sanctions "to the maximum extent" to deprive Maduro of resources.
Earlier this month Trump ordered a "blockade" of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela, but the White House official's use instead of the word "quarantine" appears to echo language used during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when the administration of U.S. President John F. Kennedy wanted to avoid an escalation. Robert McNamara, Kennedy's defense secretary at the time, said in 2002: "We called it a quarantine because blockade is a word of war."
(Reporting by Steve Holland; Writing by Gram Slattery; Editing by Michelle Nichols and Edmund Klamann)
