Chavismo holds its breath. While Washington oscillates between ambiguity and threat, those in power in Venezuela live in suspense over the possibility of a US attack. The new statements by Donald Trump, who on Friday said he had already made a decision on the next steps of his military campaign in the Caribbean, without revealing which ones, have triggered new alarms within the regime. Nicolás Maduro, convinced that the United States wants to destroy him, is trying to decipher what the unpredictable occupant of the White House will do next and warned on Friday that Venezuela will not become “the Gaza of South America”. The regime denounces an “escalation of war” and warns that Washington is trying to force a conflict in the region.
“I’ve already decided … I can’t tell you what it is, but we’ve made a lot of progress with Venezuela in terms of stopping the flow of drugs,” Trump told reporters aboard the ship on Friday. Air Force One. The phrase, calculatedly imprecise and coinciding with opposition predictions about the coming changes, fueled speculation. This same week, opposition leader María Corina Machado, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, secretly announced that “decisive hours” are approaching in the country. The transition, he ventured, “will be peaceful”. His prognosis seems optimistic given the rhetoric and confrontational strategies of both countries.
Analysts expert in conflicts such as the Venezuelan one interpret Trump’s announcement as a further step in his pressure strategy, but are skeptical about the possibility of an imminent attack. The way out of this escalation, in any case, is diabolical: Trump is putting pressure on Maduro with more than 10,000 soldiers just a few kilometers from his coasts, but an attack could mean a bloodbath of incalculable dimensions and drag the region into a security and immigration crisis.
Since the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, announced on Thursday the start of Lanza del Sur as a major operation against narco-terrorism, Chavismo has multiplied messages that speak of “psychological warfare”, “war escalation” and a plan to transform Venezuela into the gateway to a “colonial” strategy of the United States. A statement from the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) this Saturday underlined the position of the Chavista leadership: Washington, it says, seeks to “force a war” in a “zone of peace” to extend it “against any country that contradicts its interests.” And meanwhile Maduro, who proclaimed himself president after the July 2024 elections without having shown the documents that accredited him, is preparing for that war. A war with its large doses of intoxication.
The Venezuelan president has mobilized the Armed Forces, the Bolivarian militia and civil forces on 284 battle fronts throughout the territory, from the coasts to the Andean and Colombian borders. Considering the disproportionate forces presented by the Americans, the bet involves the deployment of an urban guerrilla ready to sabotage and sow chaos to make foreign domination difficult in the event of an attack. Maduro also signed a decree giving him exceptional security powers: if he intervened, he could mobilize the army across the country, take control of key public services and oversee strategic sectors such as the oil industry.
One of the objectives of the US pressure strategy was to break the loyalty of the military, but, after weeks of American troop build-up, there appear to be no signs of a break with the Chavista regime.
Politics and its tensions are in the offices. In the streets of Caracas the atmosphere is completely normal: open-air markets, yoga sessions, school trips, Saturdays, morning marathons, restaurants waiting for diners, police directing traffic and towing badly parked cars.
“Invasion” as a topic of conversation is present in hushed tones, and sometimes with intrigue, but no one believes it is a definite possibility. There are people who joke about the possibility. No one is able to imagine such an absolutely extraordinary military event in the politics and history of the country. No one is capable of taking precautions against something they cannot conceive of.
Drug trafficking
Trump, who finds Venezuela a way to divert attention from his internal difficulties, has proclaimed himself the greatest enemy of drug trafficking, a business that kills thousands of Americans every year. Washington accuses Maduro of belonging to the Cartel of the Suns. He has presented no evidence and the existence of the organization is in doubt, but it is the framework that served him to get involved in a “non-international armed conflict” against drug trafficking cartels. The provision allows military attacks to be justified against ships coming from Venezuela – in the Caribbean – but also from Colombia – in the Pacific.
Since last September 2, the US army has bombed 20 ships accused of transporting drugs in which 80 people have died. International law experts have questioned the legality of the attacks, which were carried out in international waters. Even if they were drug traffickers, they argue, they would be “extrajudicial executions”, as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, defined them.
This is also how Gustavo Petro, president of Colombia, described them, whose relations with the United States have reached unprecedented levels of tension due to this military escalation. Indeed, on the plane, after referring to Venezuela’s progress in terms of stemming the flow of drugs, Trump expanded his warning: “We have a problem with Mexico. We have a problem with Colombia.” The president called Petro a “thug” and a “drug trafficking leader.” Petro reacts to the attacks every day at X and argued that the people killed in the attacks, even if they are criminals, are the weakest link in the criminal organizations.
