While all eyes are on the four-month-long US military campaign against Venezuela, the White House has been quietly striking security agreements with other countries to deploy US troops across Latin America and the Caribbean.

As Donald Trump announced a blockade on oil tankers under sanctions and ordered the seizure of vessels amid airstrikes that have killed more than 100 people in the Caribbean and the Pacific, the US secured military deals with Paraguay, Ecuador, Peru and Trinidad and Tobago in the past week alone.

The agreements – ranging from airport access, as in Trinidad and Tobago, to the temporary deployment of US troops for joint operations against “narco-terrorists” in Paraguay – are being signed under the banner of a so-called “war on drugs”, the same rationale Washington has used to justify its offensive against Venezuela, although White House officials and Trump himself has said that the goals also include seizing the country’s vast energy reserves and bringing down the dictator Nicolás Maduro.

Although Washington has long maintained similar agreements in the region, the scale and timing of the new deals are seen by analysts as a further escalation amid what would be an unprecedented US invasion of a South American country.