The likelihood of a US attack on Venezuela seems to be getting more and more likely as the US naval deployments in the Caribbean get worse and rhetoric gets worse.
Since early September, the US has carried out military strikes on at least 21 Venezuelan boats it claims are trafficking drugs in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 87 people. The Trump administration cites a threat to national security as justification for the attacks, according to the Trump administration. However, it has not provided any proof of drug trafficking, and experts claim that Venezuela is not the main hub for the flow of drugs, such as cocaine, into the US.
US President Donald Trump has given conflicting messages about whether he plans a ground operation inside Venezuela. He has denied that he was considering strikes inside the country while also denying that he has ruled and not yet. However, he has authorized CIA operations there.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro claims Trump’s real objective is to force a regime change by removing him from power, and warned that the country would resist any such attempt.
What we know is as follows:
How was Venezuela susceptible to US attacks?
Analysts say the US has several military options for striking Venezuela, most of which employ air and maritime power rather than ground troops.
The US has recently deployed a sizable air and naval force to the Caribbean, including the USS Gerald Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, to the area close to Venezuela’s coast.
Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, stated to Al Jazeera that “the pieces are in place for an air and missile attack.”
“The first strike will likely be long-range missiles launched from air and sea because Venezuela has relatively strong air defences”, he said.
Analysts believe that targeting alleged cartel-linked infrastructure would be easier to justify internationally and to arrive at a conclusion quickly given the Trump administration’s rhetoric’s growing focus on the Maduro government, which it claims has links to drug gangs in Venezuela.
A ground invasion has been ruled out by almost all experts.
“I don’t really see that an attack is likely at all at this stage”, Elias Ferrer, founder of Orinoco Research and the lead editor of the Venezuelan media organisation Guacamaya, said.
Because the region’s ground forces are insufficiently strong for an invasion, Cancian said, “There will be no boots on the ground.”
Additionally, a large-scale land operation would likely face significant challenges domestically and be deeply unpopular.
“Any move toward overt ground operations would encounter significant legal barriers, congressional pushback, and the shadow of Iraq and Afghanistan – all of which make a full occupation extremely unlikely”, Salvador Santino Regilme, a political scientist who leads the international relations programme at Leiden University in the Netherlands, told Al Jazeera.
Not a binary choice between “no attack” and an invasion a la the way of Iraq, he said, “an analysis should be made in terms of a spectrum of limited but potentially escalating uses of force.”
An “Iraq-style invasion” refers to a massive ground invasion that is followed by a US-led occupation, the dismantling of state institutions, and a never-ending nation-building effort. This type of intervention would require the deployment of hundreds of thousands of troops, years of counterinsurgency operations, and significant political and financial investment.
What might Venezuela’s US attack entail?
Analysts warn that a military strike is far more likely to cause instability for the country than it does for policymakers in Washington.
Ferrer described the idea of an attack as opening a “Pandora’s box”.
Armed actors have the power to take control of some areas of the country, whether they’re politically motivated or just organized crime, because both the military and paramilitary actors have that power in a conflict. Not just the outcome, either. But you open up all of those possibilities”.
Ferrer warned that the political opposition would be one of the least likely to suffer in such a setting.
The Venezuelan opposition is one of the most likely losers from this scenario, he said, only because they don’t have strong ties to the armed and security forces or have strong ties to them.
Indeed, some analysts argue that even a limited US strike would likely strengthen the Maduro government in the short term.
According to Santino Regilme, “external aggression frequently results in a rally-around-the-flag effect and gives incumbents a potent pretext to criminalize dissent as treason.”
The opposition, which is already dispersed and socially uneven, would likely split more between those who support US pressure and those who fear being permanently discredited as foreign proxies, he added.
“Comparative experiences in Iraq, Libya, and other cases of externally driven regime change suggest that coercive intervention rarely produces stable democracy”, Santino Regilme explained.
Senior Venezuelan officials have taken a standoffish position in the face of mounting tensions. They publicly call for peace, but they also refer to any potential US action as a violation of international law.
“They]the US] think that with a bombing they’ll end everything. “Here, in this nation” On state television in early November, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello made fun of himself.
Maduro struck a similar tone earlier this month.
He declared, “We want peace, but peace with sovereignty, equality, and freedom.” We oppose peace in colonies and between slaves.
What is the US’s primary strategy?
The retired Marine Corps colonel from CSIS, Cancian, claimed that the US is working with the CIA to undermine Venezuela’s military’s loyalty to the Maduro government.
“The United States may tell these forces that they will be left alone if they remain in garrison during any fighting”, Cancian explained.
He claimed that during Desert Storm, the US carried out similar actions. A US-led coalition expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait in the Gulf War of 1991.
In that conflict, US officials quietly signalled to certain Iraqi units that if they stayed in their barracks and did not resist, they would not be targeted – an approach that helped limit resistance during the ground offensive.
Cancian claims that the Venezuelan government has removed any military-related opposition.
There is therefore a high likelihood that the military and security forces will engage in combat, he added.
So how could Venezuela’s military respond to an attack?
Ferrer argued that everything depends on what the US sends them before an attack. What’s actually more intriguing is the kind of deal being tried by the US,” she said. How is it trying to involve or marginalise the armed forces and the security forces”?
Is it telling them, “Hey guys, you can stay in control of these businesses, these ministries – the generals can keep their posts,” he asked? Or will it engage in “de-Baathification” in Iraq, where all officers are fired and all soldiers are fired to purge the armed forces of pro-Maduro elements?
Marginalising the armed forces could trigger more, not less, violence, Ferrer warned.
You might have pockets of conflict that are occurring throughout the nation, not necessarily a coup or civil war that involve the entire nation. If the armed forces are marginalized, he continued, “that’s definitely a possibility.”
What might Venezuelans do as a general?
The picture is complicated, according to analysts. “Ordinary Venezuelans have already endured a prolonged socioeconomic collapse, hyperinflation, widespread shortages, international sanctions and one of the largest displacement crises in the world”, Santino Regilme said.
In 2025, a recent study found that about 28 to 30 percent of Venezuelans needed humanitarian aid.
A US attack, in contrast, “would likely be seen less as a moment of “liberation” and more as yet another layer of insecurity, one that threatens what is left of basic services like food and medicine.”
“Public opinion research shows deep distrust both toward the government and toward foreign military intervention, suggesting that popular reactions would be heterogeneous, ambivalent, and heavily shaped by class, geography, and political identity”, Santino Regilme added.
What would the international partners of Venezuela say?
Regional and international actors’ responses are likely to reflect their current strategic alliances with Caracas.
According to analysts, China, now one of Venezuela’s largest creditors and economic partners, is expected to maintain firm diplomatic support for Maduro, but its ability to shape events on the ground would be limited if open conflict erupted.
We are aware that China’s influence would be diminished in the event of an armed conflict between Venezuela and the US, according to Carlos Pina, a political analyst from Venezuela.
Russia, on the other hand, has a closer military stance toward Venezuela. Moscow has supplied advanced weapons systems, trained Venezuelan personnel, and maintained intelligence cooperation for years.
The use of military equipment that this Eurasian nation has sold to Caracas would be linked to Moscow’s [role],” said Pina.
In any case, both nations would continue to support Maduro politically. As the expert noted, “the diplomatic support of these countries for Nicolas Maduro would be undisputed”.
Could the US take aim at other nations?
Analysts warn that Venezuela’s US aggression might have regional effects.
During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday this week, Trump warned that any country producing narcotics would be a potential target, and singled out Colombia for producing cocaine, which ends up in the US.
Therefore, according to experts, what is happening right now with Venezuela could serve as a general framework for defining regional domestic political crises as “narco-terrorist” threats, a term that could serve as a justification for military action under the auspices of counterterrorism or law enforcement.
According to Santino Regilme, “what is being tested around Venezuela is less a single country policy than a broader template, where complex domestic crises are reframed as “narco-terrorist” threats that justify extraterritorial use of force under the banners of law enforcement and counterterrorism.”
If applied to other countries in the region, he warned, this model could “further erode the already fragile constraints on the use of force in international law and weaken regional mechanisms that seek negotiated political settlements”.
Source: Aljazeera
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