As US warships carrying cruise missiles and marines powered towards Venezuela’s coastline this week, supporters of the South American country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, warned a dastardly imperialist plot for an Iraq-style invasion was afoot.
“No one will lay their hands on this land!” Maduro thundered, calling on patriots to help repel the supposed regime change operation by joining his “Bolivarian militia”.
Donald Trump’s allies posted incendiary social media messages, warning the Venezuelan autocrat the end was nigh. “Your days are seriously numbered,” Trump’s former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, proclaimed, urging Maduro to buy “a one-way ticket to Moscow”.
Another Trump supporter, Congressman Carlos Gimenez, celebrated “the largest military presence we have ever had off the coast of Venezuela” and told Maduro to accept “his time is up!”
The naval buildup and bellicose rhetoric might suggest Latin America is on the brink of an extraordinary foreign intervention, the likes of which the region hasn’t seen since US troops invaded Panama to overthrow its dictator, Manuel Noriega, in 1989. On Thursday, Cuba’s foreign ministry accused the US of seeking to turn “the waters of the Caribbean Sea into a war zone”.
But Venezuela experts and former US diplomats are skeptical Caracas is about to suffer a Baghdad-style “shock and awe” assault.
“This is all performance on both sides,” said Christopher Sabatini, a senior research fellow for Latin America at Chatham House.
“No one in their right mind thinks that with 4,500 people you can invade a country that’s got mountains, jungle and multiple urban centres,” Sabatini added, referring to the number of US military personnel being deployed to the Caribbean Sea as part of an “amphibious ready group” theoretically capable of launching an attack from the sea.
James Story, the US’s top diplomat for Venezuela from 2018 to 2023, was similarly doubtful, suspecting the mobilization was “more about a show of force” than a “utilization of force”.
A cleaner sweeps in front of mural of depicting Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas on Wednesday. Photograph: Juan Barreto/AFP/Getty Images
Story believed many Venezuelans were so furious with Maduro’s destruction of the country’s economy and theft of last year’s presidential election that they wouldn’t necessarily oppose him being deposed by a foreign force. “But the belief that somehow this particular group of ships and the US government portends a military engagement, I don’t believe that to be true,” added Story, who thought insufficient assets were being deployed for a military attack.
“Would it be capable of firing missiles, for instance, and doing a surgical strike against Fuerte Tiuna [the military base where Maduro is believed to live]? Yes, it could do that. But you could do that without such an ostentatious display of force as well. So the idea of there being an invasion, I don’t believe to be true,” said Story, who also believed Trump was generally against “meddling militarily in the affairs of other countries”.
Evan Ellis, a Latin America specialist from the US Army War College, told the Financial Times the naval deployment would allow the US to put “a lot of forces on the ground pretty quickly”. Their “logical mission” would be “a snatch-and-grab operation to bring Maduro to justice”. But the academic, who served under secretary of state Mike Pompeo during Trump’s first administration, was not convinced Trump was “committed to pulling the trigger” on such a mission yet.
Officially, Trump’s Caribbean deployment is part of US efforts to combat Latin American narco-traffickers, including a Venezuelan group called the Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns). Trump officials have accused Maduro of leading that cartel – charges the Venezuelan rejects – and recently slapped a $50m bounty on his head – twice the value once offered for Osama bin Laden’s capture. In July, Trump signed a secret directive authorizing the use of military force against Latin American cartels considered terrorist organizations, including the Venezuelan group.
But Sabatini suspected Trump’s mobilization was largely about rattling the inner circle around Maduro and provoking “a massive defection” that would end his 12-year rule. “It’s amateur psyops,” Sabatini said, predicting such efforts would founder, just as they did in 2019, when Trump backed a botched attempt to topple Maduro by using threats and sanctions to encourage a military uprising that flopped.
A Venezuelan army truck transports a tank on a highway in Valencia on Wednesday after the US dispatched warships to the region. Photograph: Juan Carlos Hernández/AFP/Getty Images
Back then, Trump’s national security advisor, John Bolton, claimed Maduro was “surrounded by scorpions in a bottle” and his downfall was “only a matter of time”.
Six years on Maduro remains president and seems stronger than ever having claimed a third six-year term after allegedly stealing last July’s election.
Thomas Shannon, a veteran US diplomat who has worked on Venezuela since the 90s, believed Trump was well aware the 2019 “regime-change effort” had failed “miserably”. That explained why the US president had started his second term trying a different approach: engaging with Maduro and sending his special envoy, Richard Grenell, to Caracas to negotiate.
Licences allowing US energy firms such as Chevron to operate in Venezuela – which boasts the world’s largest known oil reserves – were initially left in place. “He even lets people know that there’s some degree of admiration for Maduro as a strong leader,” Shannon recalled.
By May, however, Trump needed the support of Republican hardliners for his “big beautiful bill” for taxation. That required him to toughen his stance on Venezuela – at least superficially: hence the increasingly aggressive rhetoric and, now, the naval deployment.
Asked on Thursday if Trump was considering strikes on military facilities in Venezuela, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, called Maduro the “fugitive head” of a “narco-terror cartel” and said: “The president is prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible for justice”.
Venezuela’s defense minister, Vladimir Padrino López, holds a sign reading ‘Venezuela is not a threat, we are hope’ during a press conference in Caracas. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
“I think it’s intimidation,” Shannon said of the naval buildup, although that did not mean it was risk-free. “The danger … is that when you have that kind of military presence, the potential for something going wrong is always significant. And so the question is, what’s next?”
Story and many Venezuelans suspect the answer is more of the same. “The safe money is that Maduro’s not going anywhere – that’s the easy call,” said the ex-diplomat, who saw no evidence of a serious plan for what might happen if Maduro was overthrown or how to handle the political and social chaos that would ensue. “I don’t think anybody has a good idea of what comes next, which to me implies that no one’s ready to take Maduro out,” Story said.
On the calm streets of Caracas there is little sign of imminent conflict or change.
As he took a break from playing football near Fuerte Tiuna, a 31-year-old accountant who gave his name as Hidalgo said he doubted the sabre-rattling would come to anything. Hidalgo hoped a democratic solution could be found for Venezuela’s political deadlock and that bloodshed could be avoided.
“History teaches us that after this kind of conflict, what follows is chaos,” he said. “When there’s this kind of conflict it’s the innocent who always pay the price.”