President Donald Trump’s blockade of oil tankers off the coast of Venezuela brings into focus his current strategy toward Nicolas Maduro: Isolate the strongman through incremental pressure tactics rather than a major operation inside the country that Trump has, at times, asserted was about to begin.

Trump administration's new National Security Strategy elevates Western Hemisphere as security priority, targeting Venezuela crisis and instability.

As U.S.-Venezuela tensions rise, sociologist and historian Emmanuel Guerisoli wrote in Spanish in Venezuela’s El Nacional that a civil war is “very likely” if the United States tries to unilaterally oust President Nicolás Maduro. Newsweek has reached out to Guerisoli and the State Department for comment via email on Wednesday.

With the economy in ruins, and U.S. military forces off the coast, uncertainty and rumors mark life in Venezuela, dampening the yuletide mood.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed “solidarity with the Venezuelan people” amid growing tensions between Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, and the Trump administration.

The M/T Skipper seized by U.S. Coast Guard, was a sanctioned crude-oil tanker previously identified as part of an oil shipping network supporting Lebanese group Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force, both U.S.-designated terrorist organizations.

Now, President Donald Trump wants Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro out of power. Maduro’s “days are numbered,” Trump told Politico in an interview released on Dec. 9. His Administration considers Maduro the head of a government-sponsored cocaine smuggling syndicate.

Venezuela's Maduro vows to 'smash teeth' of U.S. empire as America seizes oil tanker off Venezuelan coast, escalating diplomatic crisis between nations.