No, Venezuela Is Not a ‘Small Latin American Country’ • And talk of a quick invasion and easy ‘regime change’ is dangerously misleading.

Over the past few months, the United States has embarked on a controversial maritime campaign in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific targeting small Venezuelan and Colombian vessels alleged to be engaged in drug smuggling. Under an asserted “narcoterrorist” deterrence operation, the United States has thus far carried out nineteen lethal strikes on small boats in international waters, killing at least seventy-six people, all undertaken without the transparency, oversight, or legal foundation that normally governs the use of American force.

Some Americans might be prone to normalize this drift—casually framing Venezuela as a “small Latin American country” the United States can coerce or remake at will. But before doing that, it might be worthwhile to review the kinds of things most military analysts will assess before planning this type of operation, especially since the U.S. military has undertaken a few “regime change” missions in the last few years.

To begin with, Venezuela is not small, not simple, and not susceptible to quick, low-cost military outcomes. In geographic and demographic terms alone, Venezuela is enormous. It covers roughly 882,000 square kilometers, making it substantially larger than Ukraine (579,000 sq km) or Texas (696,000 sq km). Its population—estimated to be above 31 million people—is roughly equivalent to current wartime Ukraine and modern Texas. It is a country of sprawling mountains, dense cities, jungles, and industrial corridors where military infrastructure sits interlaced with civilian life. Caracas, Maracaibo, Valencia, and other urban centers are not “surgical strike zones”—they are vast megacities where any attempt to dismantle regime capabilities from the air risks substantial civilian casualties and cascading regional effects.

A few commentators on cable news shows—eager to portray potential U.S. military action as simple and manageable—have taken to comparing a possible operation in Venezuela to Operation Just Cause, the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama to seize Gen. Manuel Noriega. The analogy is dangerously misleading. That’s because Panama, in 1989, had a population of about 2.5 million spread over an area (75,000 sq km) smaller than the state of South Carolina. The entire country of Panama could be enveloped and dominated by a single U.S. corps-level operation, which is what occurred. And drug kingpin Noriega commanded a small, brittle, and corrupt force that collapsed almost immediately. The Panama Canal Zone gave the United States prepositioned forces, infrastructure, bases, and a finely tuned understanding of the terrain. The objectives—seize Noriega, protect the canal, and dismantle the Panamanian Defense Forces—were narrowly defined and achievable.

Venezuela shares none of those characteristics. It is nearly thirty times larger than Panama, with ten times the population, far more complex geography, urban density orders of greater magnitude, and a regime that has spent years preparing for exactly the kind of irregular resistance the United States now risks provoking. There is no doubt that Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro’s government is corrupt, but it also has dispersed command nodes into hardened or concealed locations, embedded military assets within civilian infrastructure, and empowered paramilitary groups capable of shifting into guerrilla warfare. No serious planner could look at a map of Venezuela and believe it resembles Panama in scale, complexity, or political risk.

Once any logical planner assesses Venezuela’s true scale, the more apt comparison becomes obvious: A U.S. invasion into Venezuela would mirror the Russian miscalculation in Ukraine.