The United States’ military campaign in the Western Hemisphere has cost American taxpayers at least $4.7 billion over the past eight months, according to a new report from the Costs of War Project at Brown University.
In what they call a “conservative estimate” based on limited public information, authors Hanna Homestead and Jennifer Kavanagh offer a detailed breakdown of the costs of U.S. military operations since August of last year. This includes naval, aircraft, and special forces deployments, as well as the costs associated with the operation that removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power and the campaign of airstrikes on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.
The report comes as public attention remains focused on the war in Iran, even as U.S. military operations elsewhere have continued unabated. The U.S. military has carried out five deadly strikes on ships in Latin America and the Caribbean this month, killing at least 17 people. Since the attacks started in September 2025, at least 178 people have died in 51 separate strikes, according to the civilian harm watchdog group Airwars. Critics have called the attacks “unlawful extrajudicial killing,” and the operations have not been authorized by Congress. The Trump administration has framed the strikes as an aggressive extension of its counternarcotics strategy, classifying cartels as “narco-terrorists” and calling for the “total elimination” of their ability to threaten the “territory, safety, and security” of the United States.
Operation Absolute Resolve, the January raid that resulted in Maduro’s capture, also killed roughly 75 Cuban and Venezuelan personnel, and led to two known civilian deaths .
The authors warn that the true costs of this operation may have been higher. “Full data for several cost categories are not publicly available, and certain operations—such as the details of a CIA operation in Venezuela referenced by President Trump—remain classified or incompletely reported in the public domain,” Homestead and Kavanagh write. “We expect that if comprehensive information were available, our cost estimate would likely increase significantly.”
The bulk of the spending is tied to the sustained deployment of naval assets to the region, which require constant refueling and maintenance. The report says these ships cost approximately $9 million dollars per day to operate. In total, the naval deployment accounts for an estimated $3.8 billion of the total cost, followed by $616 million for aircraft deployment, $15.9 million for special operations, $207 million in ancillary costs for the mission in Venezuela, and between $12.6 and $50.4 million for munitions. Although many of the military assets from the region have been moved to the Middle East amid the ongoing war with Iran, the authors stress that the operations in the Western Hemisphere are continuing and have no clear end, and that, as a result, costs will likely grow. Alongside the continued attacks on ships, the Trump administration has made clear that an aggressive presence in Latin America is part of its national security strategy . The president has said that the U.S. is prepared to “ run ” Venezuela, and the administration has often indicated that an operation to change the government in Cuba may be next. “Operations do not have a clear end date and are actively expanding,” the authors conclude. “They carry significant human, financial, and strategic costs and risk. American taxpayers, who are increasingly unable to afford basic needs, have a right to know how their tax dollars are spent.”