Although the world has been getting used to the volatility of Donald Trump for some time, the attitude of the President of the United States in recent weeks towards the idea of an attack on Venezuela has left observers of the relationship between the two countries baffled, recently lost in a voluble mind and on alert. The messages arriving from Casa Blanca are certainly contradictory. One day, Trump threatened to soon launch a ground offensive and “put an end to these old men”, in reference to the South American country’s drug traffickers. Then, it reopens return flights to irregular immigrants and leaves open the possibility of a negotiated end to the crisis. The result? Let him not dare, whether in Washington or Caracas, to bet on the question of whether the feared military intervention will finally take place, in what form it will take, when the time comes.
And at these heights, it is possible that, aware of the unpopularity of those who are at the origin of this idea, Trump himself would never dare, whose indecision makes tensions in Venezuela rise a little more every day.
After months of rhetorical escalation that seemed to lead directly to the outcome of the war, three weeks ago the president began talking about “maintaining contacts with (Venezuela President Nicolás) Maduro,” according to Phil Gunson, a Crisis Group expert who has lived in Venezuela for 26 years. “Obviously, with the idea of forcing him to walk. When it became clear that that was the last thing Maduro thought he would do, then Trump realized he didn’t like the other options. You know, because if you say it in the polls, it might be popular to dismantle Maduro if it was quick and painless, but going on a war adventure, no.”
“70% of Americans are opposed to intervention in Venezuela,” says David Smilde, professor at Tulane University in New Orleans and author of an influential newsletter on the Substack platform on relations between the two countries.
And it was like Trump – whose negotiating strategy is, according to Smilde, “abusive” and “maximalist”; “He lacks a master plan, he’s constantly changing his ideas and straining his brain to then lower the tension” – he’s abandoned the school of thought of Secretary of State, the halcón Marco Rubio, who “is clearly obsessed with regime change, and everything else will fail,” Gunson says. “Trump could always sing some kind of false victory, but Rubio, no,” warns the expert, who recalls that the idea of launching an offensive was born when he freed the president six weeks ago, and that this threat continues without being realized in the role of a phenomenal and unprecedented naval deployment in the Caribbean. This includes at least a dozen warships, including the world’s largest aircraft carrier, it Gerald Fordand a nuclear submarine included, in addition to the deployment of some 15,000 soldiers.
Trump feels pressure on the ground in the polls; Also within their own party, some of their members are pleading with Congress for greater control of the extrajudicial attacks that Washington has been carrying out since early September in the international waters of the Caribbean and, to a lesser extent, in the Pacific: at least 22 suspected narcoboats were bombed and at least 87 murdered crew members were killed by the army on September 2 following a first attack, in what could have been a war crime, by international standards. fight. The incident set back Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s defenses and led the White House to blame Frank Bradley, the admiral in charge, in a bid to reduce the damage.
“This scandal has given rise to information published in the press in recent weeks that some of these crew members were fishermen involved in drug trafficking to obtain extra money, and it has raised doubts about Maduro’s direct relationship with (the group) Tren de Aragua or about the very existence of the Cartel de los Soles,” warns Smilde, in reference to it. This alleged transnational criminal network linked to Chavista leaders the State Department recently listed as a “designated terrorist organization,” which was interpreted as preparing the ground for the offensive. “Trump is also in a strong position after last November’s election defeats, which is why I think he was supported by negotiating positions,” the analyst said.
Chavismo relies on this accumulation of arrests, in which prominent leaders of the MAGA movement (Make America Great Again), like Steve Bannon or MP Marjorie Taylor Greene, incompatible with an intervention with the promise of giving priority to the United States (America first), hinders the possibility of military intervention, despite the diplomatic earthquake that the upcoming publication of the new American national security strategy entails. This document traditionally establishes at the start of a presidency its priorities in foreign matters and this time puts in black and white what was already evident in the streets: Washington is ready to develop the old Monroe Doctrine, illuminated in the 19th century to justify the idea of an “America (the continent) for the Americans (the Americans)”. In practice, and with the rise of the “Trump corollary”, this supposes the resurrection of the conception of Latin America as Washington’s backyard.
Although the document also mentions among its principles the “predisposition to interventionism” and the commitment to “soft power”, the latter is in blatant contradiction with the measures of the Trump administration as well as the annihilation of the USAID development cooperation program or the reduction of the Fulbright scholarship program or the Voice of America foreign information service.
In the circles of power in Caracas, we are also clinging to the signal sent this week by the resumption, the Casa Blanca petition, of expulsion flights of irregular Venezuelan immigrants, even if it remains Actually The airspace was completely closed, reinforced last weekend by a Trump announcement that made me think of some sort of impending invasion.
The call between the Republican and Maduro took place before – everything indicates that it was last November 21 – but there are conflicting versions of its content. While the American press described it in tense and threatening terms (Maduro and his supporters abandon the country or tend to suffer the consequences), a source with information from both parties says the call was “respectful, even gentle and without any type of ultimatum.” The interlocutors, moreover, “were open to new conversations”, even if they did not need to know the terms, affirms this source.
The path to dialogue was reinforced by a second call a few days ago, a possibility that was speculated this week. If it is achieved, a “pact of silence” will have been applied and the results will be visible. Something similar to what Maduro said this week when referring to the first call: “When there are important themes, they must be in silence. Finally, to a direct question, Trump responded to a direct question about whether he had this second contact. ‘No, no, I’m not used to it,’ he said.
So much back and forth has also favored in Washington the analysis of the newspapers and the influence of two people whom Trump seems to take more into account in this affair: Rubio and the special envoy to Venezuela, Ric Grenell, who took the lead in relations with Caracas during the first months of the new administration and is the more supporter of dialogue than the Secretary of State. This resembles the classic distribution of newspapers: one is the “good police” and the other is the “bad”. Or, to continue the comparisons, one has the diablo and the other, the time of the angels, and both whisper from one shoulder to the other in Trump’s ears.
Grenell, listening in Washington, warned a source close to the crisis and with contacts within Chavismo: “His opinions continue to reach the president and his role could grow in importance,” after being separated a few months ago from the American leader in the negotiations. “It is, once again, a typical destabilizing tactic of Trump: when someone (Rubio) believes in the command and counts on the favor of the president, he leaves him aside and humiliates him and then rehabilitates him, and thus keeps everyone on alert. It is a classic power strategy”, explains Smilde.
“I think Grenell is waiting for Rubio to fail so he can keep his job,” says Gunson, who believes that the secretary of state is currently under “a lot of pressure.” “He sold to Trump that he did not need to send troops, that Maduro would go away if he tried hard enough. Now the president knows that it was not as easy as he said,” says the analyst, who says he is “more optimistic”, in view of the evolution of events, about the possibility of avoiding a military intervention, even if “something good could come out of an agreement between Maduro and Trump”. “I don’t think anyone else matters for democracy in Venezuela. Maduro, obviously, no. Trump? Only Trump matters,” Gunson concludes.
“There is no real good way out of this situation, there are only relatively bad alternatives. A major military intervention would be worse,” says Smilde, who instead sees an operation that would include “the bombing of airstrips or those launching facilities for drug trafficking.” “If Trump cancels the military deployment and leaves things as is, that would also be a good idea; it would imply a big victory for Maduro against the empire, and certainly the repression of any dissenting voices in Venezuelan civil society.”
Meanwhile, things seem the least safe. The first is that Maduro, who has strengthened his personal security, according to sources close to the Venezuelan government, does not intend to relinquish power. The second: Washington and Caracas will continue to disappear in a voluble spirit, while awaiting Trump’s contradictions.
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