It doesn’t take America’s most lethal aircraft carrier, its F/A-18 jets and a flotilla of US Navy warships carrying dozens of Tomahawk missiles to blast a few speedboats out of the Caribbean.

So as the USS Gerald R. Ford steams from Europe to join an already formidable US naval and air force in the region, expectations are rising that the Trump administration may escalate what it claims is an assault on drug traffickers.

The first target of this new 21st-century gunboat diplomacy is Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, an election-denying dictator. The Ford will deliver a giant hint to Maduro to go, or for Venezuelan army officers to oust him. Or it could serve as the platform not just for attacks against alleged cartel targets but also to change the regime.

“You don’t move a battlegroup all the way from where it was to the Caribbean unless you’re planning on either to intimidate the country … or you’re going to start conducting combat operations in Venezuela,” Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

Top Trump aides have portrayed Venezuela as a major route for fentanyl and other drugs that kill Americans, even if evidence shows little drugs production in the country and far more significant transit routes elsewhere. They claim Maduro is at the head of a network of cartels. The administration has authorized the use of military force against such groups and declared gang members “unlawful combatants,” seeking to legally justify killings that that deny due process.

President Donald Trump heads to the 47th Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Sunday.