Will the US really start a war against Venezuela? The whole prelude looks like the disastrous 2023 Iraq invasion. The US threatens to invade a country that presents no threat to the US, but which has enormous natural resources (oil, gas, gold and so on), and which economically is on its knees due to harsh US sanctions. Trump may invade, or he may not. It is so crazy an idea that it is difficult to believe, but who knows what is going on inside Donald Trump’s head?
He is of course bolstered by the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Opposition leader Corina Machado, who is begging Trump to go on and invade (thanks Norway, always ready to defend peace!). It will certainly not be the EU that will try to stop him. They love regime change, and if that requires an invasion, so be it. Neither the right wing governments in Argentina, Peru and Ecuador. Only protesting voices in the region, apart from Cuba and Nicaragua, come from Mexico, Colombia and Brazil. The rest is silence. Russia, China and Iran are protesting, but they cannot do anything meaningfully to stop Trump.
An advantage with Trump is that he cares very little about disguising what he is doing. No need for a Bush-style “coalition of the willing”, no need to claim that this is for human rights and democracy (Biden style) and so on. Instead, he is justifying his actions with a spurious claim that Venezuela is exporting cocaine to the US, and that President Maduro leads a fictitious drug cartel, nobody except himself believes in: “El cartel de los soles” (The Sun Cartel). Gustavo Petro, president of Colombian, has been clear: it doesn’t exist. But now this is presented as a certainty (like the invented implication of Saddam Hussein in the attack on the twin towers in New York in 2001). And don’t expect the US media to correct him. Perhaps afterwards, when nobody cares any longer. But not now. As the newspaper Financial Times points out, his real motive is to get his hands on Venezuela’s enormous natural resources.
From the latest annual report by UN Drug and Crime Agency (UNODC)
If the aim really were to limit the cocaine trade to the US, the choice of Venezuela is extraordinarily awkward. Venezuela has no cocaine production worth mentioning (the absolutely biggest producer is Colombia, a close US ally where the US has access to seven military bases and a large presence of its Drug Enforcement Agency, DEA). According to the UN Drug and Crime Agency, there is some cocaine trade through Venezuela, but the most important routes to the US are directly from Colombia or through Ecuador (see the map above). So perhaps he should move his navy ships to other shores!
The present deployment of US forces to the Caribbean (and bases in Puerto Rico), close to the Venezuelan shores is large: eight Navy warships, F-35 fighter jets, MQ-9 Reaper drones and around 10,000 troops. Two US B-52 bombers were flying in international airspace close to the shore on October 17 in a show of force. Trumps has also stated that he has authorized covert CIA operations in Venezuela.
Approximate locations of US military deployments as of 3 October 2025. Wikipedia.
Apart from noting the total illegality of what the US is doing (for the moment “only” killing people on small boats that he claims are drug traffickers, without presenting any proof), some observations:
The first is that even if 10,000 troops is a lot, it is not enough for a full-scale invasion. The 1989 invasion of Panama, a much smaller country and where the US already had military bases, was carried out by more than 26,000 troops. Some estimate that 45,000-50,000 troops would be necessary to invade and occupy Venezuela. Others think 100,000.
The second is that Trump cannot keep the US naval force deployed indefinitely. A decision on what to do with it has therefore to be made soon.
What may he do? There are several options I can think of:
The first is a limited invasion to kidnap or kill President Nicholas Maduro (on whom they have placed a USD 50 million bounty) and other political leaders (As Israel and the US successfully did recently in Iran and Lebanon) and then hope that the military disintegrates and the US-supported Venezuelan opposition can use the opportunity to grab power.
The second is to fire missiles and bombs at military installations to degrade the capacity of the military (as NATO did in Libya and Yugoslavia), and then hope for an internal uprising.
The third is to destroy key infrastructure, including oil wells and refineries, to bring the country and the population to their knees (as in Yugoslavia).
The fourth is to establish a naval blockade making it impossible for Venezuela to export its oil.
All of this is of course completely illegal according to international law, but that has never bothered the US (and much less Trump). He may easily choose a mixture of all this.
Trump wants to make it impossible for the Venezuelan oil sector to function, in particular the state-owned PDVSA. On the photo PDVSA’s Petromonagas Operation Center, Carabobo Division.
The big question is whether it will work for him. It depends on various factors:
First of all, it depends on the Venezuelan military: its capacity to resist a US onslaught, its backing of the Government and its internal unity. Few doubt that the US can overwhelm Venezuela militarily, but it may incur bigger losses than it is accustomed to when invading Latin American countries (as it has done regularly).
Secondly, it depends on the popular backing for the Venezuelan Government. The Venezuelan opposition assures the US that the Venezuelan government will fall apart as a house of cards, and that the population enthusiastically will support a US invasion (just as the Iraqi opposition claimed before the 2003 invasion of Iraq). However, even if debilitated after many years of economic crisis, the government still has a strong “chavista” basis, and it has an armed “Bolivarian Militia”, claimed to have 4.5 million members. Even if this is not a regular military force, it is enough to create a lot of problems for the US occupation forces (and the opposition it intends to install in power). Even staunchly pro-US BBC doubts that a US invasion will be an easy endeavour.
I don’t have knowledge enough to even try to predict how this will turn out.
But it is worth taking into account that after years of a horrible economic crisis due to unprecedented sanctions and economic mismanagement, Venezuela is actually much better off now than it was 3-4 years ago. The Venezuelan economy has been growing strongly since mid 2021 and in the first three quarters of 2025 growth is estimated at 8-9% on an annual basis. According to the FAO country representative, Venezuela is now more than 90% self-sufficient in food production. According to the supermarket association, ANSA, 85% of their products are now produced in Venezuela, while the remaining 15% are imported (the government claims it is 97%). The homicide rate has fallen from a record 90 per 100,000 in 2016 to 26 per 100,000 in 2024 (close to the level of Costa Rica). Despite crippling sanctions, oil production is increasing and is now consistently above 1 million barrels per day (1.1 million in September). It has a current account surplus of 4.2% of GDP and has foreign currency (and gold) reserves of more than USD 13 billion. According to some reports, normality prevails in the country, and Trump’s treats are not keeping people awake. The flip side is that inflation is still way too high and not under control and even if the poverty rate has fallen, it is still alarmingly high (reliable numbers are very difficult to get at).
View of Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. Imagine what it will look like if the US carries out a Gaza style bombing campaign.
It is easy to brush off the improvements in the situaiton in Venezuela as too little, but it has to be kept in mind that US sanctions imply that any international oil- or mining company doing business in Venezuela or ships loading Venezuelan oil are automatically hit with secondary US sanctions, and that Venezuela since 2019 has been cut off from the Western international payment system (SWIFT). European companies wanting to do business in Venezuela have to ask for a US license (Spanish oil company REPSOL had a license, but it was revoked by Trump)! Does the EU complain about extraterritorial sanctions? As surprising as it may sound, they don't.
The sanctions regime against Venezuela has done incredible harm to the country and its population. A 2019 study estimated that it has caused tens of thousand of deaths. However, the country has been able to survive and is slowly getting back on its feet again.
Seems that is what Donald Trump and his foreign minister Marco Rubio want to impede.
