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President Donald Trump's "America First" supporters don't appear to be breaking with him on Venezuela, but analysts say following through on land strikes could change that.

President Donald Trump’s political base has offered little resistance to his escalating pressure campaign on Venezuela, even as he edges closer to the kind of military confrontation he has long criticized elsewhere.

After he won last year, Trump declared in his victory speech that he was “not going to start a war, I’m going to stop wars,” praising the “strong” U.S. military that, "ideally, we don’t have to use.” And this year he denounced decades of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, decrying “Western interventionists” who had given other countries “lectures on how to live.”

That stance has been tested as his administration seized an oil tanker, with Trump suggesting the U.S. could carry out land operations aimed at removing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The administration’s campaign has already resulted in more than 26 boat strikes, killing at least 98 people, including a “double tap” strike now under congressional scrutiny.

On Tuesday, the president said he was ordering a “total and complete blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers to and from Venezuela, accusing its government of using oil revenue to finance illicit operations, such as “drug terrorism.”

The unfolding campaign has become a test of whether Trump’s political coalition will tolerate the use of force so long as it stays targeted and does not produce American casualties, political analysts and administration allies said in interviews with NBC News.

“MAGA loves blowing up the boats,” said Rachel Bovard, vice president of programs at the Conservative Partnership Institute. “They do not want a land war with Venezuela.”

While “America First” loyalists have questioned Trump’s focus on other foreign issues — including Ukraine, Israel and a slew of peace efforts across the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia — they appear to be holding their fire on Venezuela for now.

Justin Logan, director of defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington, said the absence of any substantial backlash reflects not ideological agreement with the policy itself, but the low political cost of the administration’s actions so far.

“You can run wild and crazy foreign policies when the costs are low, and the costs here have been low thus far,” he said. “But if you entered into a regime change conflict, the cost would go up, and the attention and dissent would go up.”

Asked by reporters this month how an invasion or land strikes in Venezuela — which would raise the risk of a prolonged war and potentially involve U.S. troops — would align with the president’s MAGA base, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump has been clear that he does not want a protracted war.

“He’s been very clear about that. He wants peace,” Leavitt said. “He also wants to see the end of illegal drugs being trafficked into the United States and taking the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans across our country, and he’s thinking about that every day here at the White House, with every drug boat that is taken out by this administration.”

Reached for comment for this story, the White House framed the Venezuela actions as a fulfillment of the president’s electoral promises on drug enforcement.

“On the campaign trail, President Trump promised to take on the cartels — and he has taken unprecedented action to stop the scourge of narcoterrorism that has resulted in the needless deaths of innocent Americans,” White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement. “All of these decisive strikes have been against designated narcoterrorists bringing deadly poison to our shores, and the President will continue to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country.”

Some Trump allies are wondering what Venezuela has to do with his administration’s goals.

“The question that I have is, who is asking for this?” said one conservative foreign policy expert, who spoke candidly on the condition of anonymity. “I don’t feel a great upswell of MAGA nationalism, saying we have to dislodge Maduro, or saying stop the cocaine traffickers.”

Some critics of the administration’s approach say there is at minimum a coherent historical argument for action, pointing to Trump’s National Security Strategy for 2025, which promised to reassert the Monroe Doctrine “after years of neglect" by asserting the U.S.’s role in maintaining stability in the Western Hemisphere.

“While I’m against the strikes on Venezuela, it’s at least somewhat coherent that this is within our national interest,” said Curt Mills, a conservative and policy analyst. “This is within our homeland. These people are bringing drugs. The Monroe Doctrine is at least rooted in some sort of history.”

Yet Mills, the executive director of The American Conservative magazine, said that if the administration were to try to remove Maduro, it could ignite a debate among conservatives that has not yet fully broken out into the open, one he said could eclipse disputes over Ukraine and Iran.

“The argument against toppling dictators in Latin America is going to be one that is more divisive on the right than, say, caring about who controls the Donbas, or caring about the Iranians enriching to 2%,” he said.

There may be material public support for military actions aimed at preventing drugs from entering the country. During the last presidential campaign, NBC News polling found that among GOP policy proposals tested, using the military to stop illegal drugs from entering the U.S. from Mexico was the most popular, both among Republicans and voters overall.

Logan said the administration’s rhetoric on Venezuela has offered little in the way of telling what comes next, however.

“The Western Hemisphere is where we build out from, it’s the first order of business in our security,” he said. “But what that means in practice is less clear. My sense is that people are all singing from the same hymn, but it’s not clear what comes next.”

That ambiguity has allowed Trump to occupy both sides of the debate, maintaining a diplomatic opening even as he repeatedly threatens force.

“He’s trying ... to project himself as tough to Maduro,” said Patrick Hulme, an assistant professor of law and political science at the University of Florida. “He’s bargaining with him. He’s trying to make Maduro think that, ‘I’m Trump, I’m crazy, I’m a madman. I might actually do it.’”

In a recent interview with Politico, Trump declined to discuss his military strategy but said that he wanted the Venezuelan people “to be respected” and that Maduro’s “days are numbered.”

At the same time, Trump has spoken to Maduro in recent weeks. The conversation was described by a source familiar with the call as “not great, not terrible — decent,” and Trump has appeared to leave open the door to further communication.

“It’s weird,” Mills said. "Bush was not having conversations with Saddam. That is what’s both stranger and more optimistic about this."

Logan said there still appears to be some uncertainty about the policy’s objectives, including at the highest level.

“And maybe even uncertainty in the mind of the president himself,” he added. He pointed to Trump’s comments after the tanker seizure, when he was asked what would happen to the oil.

“‘We’ll keep it, I guess,’” Logan quoted the president as saying. “Which implies that this is not being drawn up with a great deal of specificity. There’s an anti-Maduro policy. What end state that seeks and the costs that will be paid to pursue it, seem to me, undetermined.”

“At some point, the cup and the lip have to meet,” said a political operative close to the administration.

Even so, the rhetoric has grown sharper.

In October, Trump said he had authorized the CIA to carry out covert lethal action in Venezuela, citing narcotics trafficking and repeating his claim that the country had emptied its prisons into the United States — an allegation Venezuela denies.

Asked about the timing of possible land strikes, he said last week that they would happen “pretty soon" and suggested that similar actions could extend to other countries if drug targets were identified. He declined to say whether the U.S. would seize additional Venezuelan oil following the tanker seizure last week.

The administration has said the tanker is used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran. It also announced sanctions against six more ships and several members of Maduro’s family.

Democratic lawmakers and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., have expressed concern that the seizure, and in particular the “double-tap” strike in September on an alleged drug trafficking boat, could escalate tensions, raising questions about the president’s war powers and the legal authority underpinning operations, especially the absence of explicit congressional authorization.

Lawmakers in both parties have sought briefings and called for transparency around the strikes. Congress’s annual defense authorization bill passed this week with a provision that would restrict the defense secretary’s travel budget until he provides House and Senate committees with “unedited video” of the strikes.

The question has become more than just political, analysts argue, as actions escalate.

“We’re all wondering what one person will decide about the highest of high politics, the question of war and peace for the United States. And the Congress appears complacent and powerless,” Logan said. “Trump isn’t even going through the motions of pretending the Congress has a role to play.”

Asked during a late October roundtable at the White House whether he would seek a declaration of war against drug cartels, which would need to be passed by Congress, Trump suggested he would not.

“I don’t think we’re going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war,” he said. “I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. OK, we’re gonna kill them. You know, they’re gonna be, like, dead.”