Did the U.S. Attack Venezuela?

Here's a scenario I hadn't thought about. Donald Trump announced that he launched an attack on Venezuela, which "knocked out" a "big plant or big facility" which is "where the ships come from." The twist is that no one--in either the Venezuelan or U.S. governments--confirms this. An attack on Venezuelan soil would be a big deal and would mark serious escalation. Pretending to do so without actually doing it is a liminal area that won't provide much benefit.

If there was a major attack, we would expect someone seeing it or at least hearing about it, at which point it would make its way to social media one way or the other. That said, the Venezuelan government has been brutally repressing dissent in the face of possible invasion so it's not inconceivable that it put a lid on it. I am not sure why it would want to, however, since it would be a PR boost to show victimhood. Get a nationalist boost, etc.

This has been a strange non-invasion and it's not getting less strange.

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Can An Oil Quarantine Work Against Venezuela?

There is a tanker that the U.S. Coast Guard has been following and wants to board. The problem is that if a ship refuses then the U.S. actually does not have a lot of team trained to do it. So for now they're just following it and waiting for the team.

That immediately raises the question of how effective a quarantine can be if the ships know they can keep going. If there are enough out there then they can't board them all. On the other hand, will ship captains want to keep taking the risk? Perhaps that's just a matter of money.

It also raises the questions of what happens when either mistakes and unplanned escalation bring in another country, even China. I don't think this necessarily leads to war but it can certainly weaken the U.S. position and require concessions.

Lastly, every ship that's boarded carries the risk of a U.S. soldier dying. U.S. policy toward Venezuela is already not terribly popular. Right now, I think most Americans don't perceive a problem with activities that don't involve U.S. soldiers in direct combat. Once they are involved and become casualties then everything will change.

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Peaceful Transition in Venezuela?

I love intelligent arguments that go against conventional wisdom. So I recommend Mark Feierstein's take that the transition in Venezuela could be peaceful. Feierstein is an extremely experienced Latin American expert who worked in the Obama administration. He doesn't claim it's certain or easy, but that it's more possible than people might think.

Conventional wisdom holds that Venezuela is deeply polarized, the military complicit and entrenched, and organized crime rampant such that a power vacuum will foster violence. To that point, here is what I think is the trickiest part:

A stable transition depends, therefore, on the military’s willingness to accept civilian, democratic rule and confront irregular forces, including those with which it has previously collaborated.

 

Feierstein notes that military leaders have been approached about some kind of amnesty. It would have to be extensive. He does not mention Cuba's role in intelligence and the military, and to what degree their influence would be a problem. Many in the military will lose a lot and be unhappy about it.

Militaries are also deeply nationalist. No one in the military can be happy with the Trump administration saying that Venezuela "stole" oil and land from the United States. Ceding power now also has a whiff of accepting the very imperialism that Hugo Chávez fought against.

If Trump's threats (though how many times can you say "I am not ruling out war" before you're ignored?) and intercepting oil tankers lead the military to accept transition and Marina Corina Machado takes power without violence, the president really will merit that FIFA peace prize.

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Latin American Response to Potential U.S. Invasion of Venezuela

It's notable that the presidential responses in Latin America to the potential of U.S. invasion are often either supportive or muted. Part of that is the shift rightward the region has been experiencing, but part of it is that the Venezuelan regime has few allies.

So we see open support (Chile) or discussion of "after Maduro" (Bolivia) from new conservative presidents (or president-elect as the case may be). I haven't seen Javier Milei saying anything about it but we can be quite sure of his position.

Lula says he is willing to mediate and questions the use of force but has chosen not to antagonize Donald Trump, with whom he seems to have a fragile truce. Claudia Sheinbaum wants the United Nations involved and as per traditional Mexican foreign policy, opposes foreign intervention. But she is also avoiding inflammatory language. CELAC issued a statement last month, which Venezuela and Nicaragua actually withdrew from. We could speculate that it wasn't strong enough for their taste.

The Nicaraguan government did issue a condemnation and you can always count on Cuba of course, which even before AI probably had an automated anti-imperialist condemnation generator for the U.S. Gustavo Petro in Colombia has been very vocal over time and Trump has targeted him specifically.

Maduro doesn't have any friends and even the Latin American left gradually pushed back on his authoritarian excesses. The outcry now is over non-intervention generally, not any support for Maduro. If he is ousted, few will care much about him.

This makes me wonder about the response if the U.S. turned its attention to Cuba. Its history runs deep so people are more willing to overlook how repressive it is. But Miguel Díaz-Canel was actually born after Fidel Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista. He's a technocrat with no personal following. I don't know how much support the Cuban revolution as an idea still has.

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The U.S. Armada in Venezuela

President Trump announced a "complete and total" blockade of sanctioned oil tankers going to and from Venezuela along with a demand to return all the "oil, land, and assets" to the U.S. that were "stolen." The kicker is that he noted the "Armada" that surrounded Venezuela. "Armada" is a rather unfortunate choice given the famous losing history of the term.

At first glance this feels like a return to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when U.S. presidents freely invaded and otherwise sought to control Latin American countries with pretty open speech. They didn't hide and Americans by and large were OK with it.

But an enormous difference now is domestic public opinion. Americans were generally fine with foreign intervention in Latin America, but now Trump's base is not. This is yet another indirect way of forcing Nicolás Maduro to abdicate because using U.S. troops in an invasion is a huge political risk. Some big questions include whether the blockade will effectively stop the movement of oil and how much Russia and/or China will help out financially. Another is how long Trump can allow this to stretch out given the warning signs he's getting from his own party about the economy.

I won't hazard a guess as to the outcome. We do know from Cuba's Special Period that dictatorships can persist if they do not mind the immiseration of their own citizens. There is no sign that Maduro or the military care about Venezuelans suffering--they've been fine with it up to now, just as Fidel Castro was with Cubans. It's really hard to dislodge dictators who retain the military's support. But every day Trump issues threats and nothing happens is a problem for him.

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José Antonio Kast and Autonomy

It is unfortunate but not surprising to see José Antonio Kast's victory in Chile as ideologically pure in U.S. terms. In other words, he is conservative, focused his campaign on drugs and immigration, and therefore will be in line with Donald Trump. That could be true for plenty of things, but not for foreign relations autonomy, which as I wrote in my last book is here to stay. As an article in the Financial Times accurately points out, quoting Patricio Navia: “But he also understands that China is our main trading partner. So we’ll be with the US on everything, but without making an enemy out of China.”

Keep that in mind for most other Latin American countries. The U.S. press in particular likes neat categories--there is a left and a right, and we can point to specific people who embody it. Presidential elections will be framed as wholesale change when in fact plenty of core policies will remain or at least will be tweaked without overturning them. China (and Europe) now have deep ties and those are not likely to change drastically. Add U.S. tariffs to the mix and the incentive to maintain friendly relations with China is even more evident.

That said, one could easily imagine Kast being more concerned about whether Chinese technology poses a threat to Chile, and adjusting policy accordingly without touching the broader trade relationship. That would be in line with his own view and would potentially assuage U.S. concerns. And Claudia Sheinbaum announced new tariffs on countries with which Mexico does not have a free trade agreement, which includes China. This is quite a twist--it is rather Trumpian (and surely aims to assuage him to some degree) but with careful language to avoid the impression that it's ideological or punitive. It is not a break with China. It's just the Mexican president forging her own policy.

I don't think that any of this is especially new or insightful, but I do think we need to keep repeating it when we will read so much that Latin America is realigning or marching in lockstep with Trump. That's just unlikely. They are not "America first." They are "[INSERT COUNTRY NAME] first."

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Why is Trump Focused on Venezuela?

It's interesting to see how many different reasons people are giving for why Donald Trump is so intently focused on Venezuela. Oil is the obvious first response. But it could be expansion of executive power, or immigration, or fighting drug trafficking, or even minerals. It could be Marco Rubio and Venezuelan expats.

I very much lean toward Jonathan Chait's answer of "who knows." The president gets fixated on particular things for idiosyncratic reasons. It could be partially based on a particularly compelling story he recently heard, read, or saw on TV.

In any case, I don't think it's reasonable to argue that there is one single factor. Some--for all I know, all--of these are combined. Most importantly from an analytical point of view, we have no way at all of using them to understand what is likely to happen. So in a sense it doesn't even matter. I have no idea whether Trump will send U.S. troops into Venezuela. I lean toward no, but that doesn't have anything to do with why Trump is so interested. Rather, it's based on the likely strong political blowback he will inevitably receive from his own base, especially as an occupation becomes drawn out.

This actually ties into the self-proclaimed "Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine" that the administration announced. It's entirely meaningless because it gives us no grip at all on how the administration will act in any given situation, which again is "who knows." The "doctrine" provides no insight into the endgame of Venezuela policy.

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Repression in Venezuela

An important point in the debate over U.S. policy toward Venezuela is that although invasion is seriously problematic in both practical and legal terms, opposing it is not the same as supporting the government. In that sense there are echoes of Iraq. For example, the UN's Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela released a new report detailing the horrific human abuses being committed by the Maduro regime.*

It viciously attacks protests and the abuses have worsened since July 2024, when the government blatantly stole the presidential election, and certainly is worse still in the context of possible invasion. It engages in unlawful detention, torture, killing, you name it. The regime goes after the opposition or anyone "perceived as such" (p. 44). Participating in a protest makes you perceived as one even if you are protesting in favor of democracy and against deprivation.

One nice thing about this blog is that a good chunk of my intellectual history is retained here. I see that 11 years ago, just after Maduro took power, I wrote more and more about human rights abuses in Venezuela. What's happening now is simply a deepening of a decade-long process. Lacking Chavez's charisma and therefore any personal attachment to the Venezuelan people, Maduro has been forced to increase brute force over time. It's a terrible situation with no good solution.

* "Regime" is the word that comes immediately to mind as opposed to "government" because Nicolas Maduro so clearly stole the last presidential election and at this point would have no chance at all in a free election. The Venezuelan people do not get to choose who governs them.

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Trump's Options in Venezuela

Over five years later, I am back, at least periodically. We are witnessing some of the most fascinating events in the recent history of U.S.-Latin American relations and I can’t help but want to write about it.

President Donald Trump’s policy toward Venezuela is a gamble that has put him in a political bind.

If his goal is to reduce the flow of fentanyl and/or cocaine into the United States, then he cannot achieve it since neither comes in any quantity to the United States from Venezuela. Fentanyl comes primarily from Mexico and Asia, while Venezuelans mostly traffic cocaine to Europe and the Caribbean. Blowing up more boats may be dramatic, but it serves no obvious strategic purpose.

If his goal is to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro, he is raising the stakes while holding a weak hand. The core dilemma is that the United States has almost no leverage over Venezuela anymore. Since the U.S. has already imposed harsh economic sanctions, a wide range of individual sanctions against government officials, and has engaged in failed covert action, there are no more punitive actions available except armed force.

The president has four main options.

Force Maduro Out of Power Through Threats. It appears that President Trump hoped that threats of invasion, allegedly combined with a promise for Maduro’s safe exile in another country, would dislodge the dictator. This is not necessarily impossible, but there is no sign of it occurring. This tactic can continue for some length of time but eventually will require rethinking if it doesn’t achieve its goal because the credibility of the threats will disappear.

Back Down and Declare Victory. If President Trump chooses not to invade and to allow Maduro to remain in power, he runs the risk of appearing weak and indecisive both domestically and abroad, particularly given how heated his rhetoric has been. Nonetheless, he can declare that attacks on boats have achieved his goal of reducing drug trafficking. He can also declare victory on the “Cartel de los Soles,” which he claims Maduro operates, since it actually does not exist.

It is politically unappealing but has the benefit of being easy, and the president could simply pivot to another issue. He can wait for a short national political attention span to move on with him. After all, Venezuela is only in the news so much because of Trump’s threats. It is likely the least risky approach in the long run. 

Airstrikes Without Invasion. The president could launch missiles into Venezuela, thus using direct armed force (and the threat of more) without committing U.S. troops to invasion. This could be combined with some type of additional covert action, which ironically President Trump has discussed publicly. Again, it is not impossible that Maduro would flee the country, but it is not likely. Instead, more Venezuelans would certainly leave (almost eight million have done so already), thus creating new humanitarian challenges.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration would face serious backlash in the U.S., where even Republican lawmakers are already investigating whether the attacks on Venezuelan boats might constitute a crime. It would also undermine relations with allies, including in Latin America.

Invasion, aka Boots on the Ground. If the president chooses invasion, U.S. troops will find themselves in a difficult situation even though there likely will be minimal military resistance. Over time, criminal groups have become deeply entrenched in Venezuela and will fight for their survival and profit. Countless security officials are complicit in regime abuses, making surrender less appealing. Plus, the regime enjoys substantial intelligence support from Cuba and Russia, making invasion and occupation that much trickier.

Such an invasion could generate immediate “mission accomplished” headlines, but would require months of troop presence, combined with substantial financial assistance for a new government. Some U.S. soldiers will lose their lives. During the 1989 invasion of Panama, a much smaller country, 23 soldiers died. That conflicts directly with President Trump’s own promises and the desires of his base, which is to limit sending U.S. dollars abroad and engaging in extended wars.

President Trump’s policy toward Venezuela is a gamble with long odds of winning. To paraphrase Kenny Rogers, we do not know whether the president will hold them or fold them. But even a “win” of forcing out Maduro will leave a host of new problems for the president to deal with.

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