Trump’s Caribbean surge nears $3 billion price tag so far

When US forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, early in the new year, the Trump administration heralded the operation as concise and deliberate: with overhead air support, about 60 special forces troops descended from helicopters into Caracas, fought off security guards, grabbed their quarry and were airlifted back to a US warship 100 miles off the coast. Over and done in a matter of hours, at minimum cost to the American taxpayer.

But the US military posture in the Caribbean is costing billions. Bloomberg calculations show the operational price tag of the ships deployed there hit more than $20 million a day at its peak from mid-November until mid-January. And although most of the costs are covered by defense funding that has already been allocated, combat operations — from flight hours to weapons fired to extra pay — add up on top of that.

“There is no contingency fund in the DOD budget for unexpected operations,” said Mark Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a bipartisan think tank. “Conflicts cost extra.”

Dozens of US Navy ships, fighter jets, drones and logistics vessels began gathering around Latin America late last summer, part of a buildup dubbed Southern Spear. At its height, the deployment repr...