Off the coast of Venezuela, in the Caribbean Sea, the US Navy has been relentlessly tracking drug trafficking boats for several days. Nicolás Maduro, khaki uniform, surrounded by paunchy officers who swear to “sacrifice” themselves for the Bolivarian revolution, plays the besieged boss. Always quick to assume the role of victim, in the purest style of his predecessor Hugo Chávez, last Wednesday he ordered three days of military exercises, the deployment of Bolivarian navy ships and the sending of 25,000 soldiers along the entire coast, arguing for a “risk of invasion and regional war”. This is how in Fuerte Tiuna, the main military enclave of Caracas, buses loaded with paramilitary militiamen have flocked in recent days from the four corners of the country to protect Venezuela from “the Yankee invader”.
Fueling paranoia
But these gesticulations are not likely to impress Donald Trump. The latter wants to put an end to what he considers to be a narco-state. The United States even accuses Nicolás Maduro himself of being at the head of a gigantic mafia network. The bounty for his capture was raised to $50 million. The American administration is convinced that the Venezuelan regime is the junction point between the cocaine-producing countries, Colombia in the lead, and the cartels, mainly Mexican, which transport the drug to the United States. Seven warships, a nuclear-powered submarine and 4,500 marines were sent to the area.
Enough to fuel the paranoia of Nicolás Maduro, for whom this operation off his territorial waters would be “the prerequisite for a large-scale armed attack”. “The Venezuelan regime is opera buffahas fun with the Tangwall Campagin Tomas Paez, president of the Venezuelan Diaspora Observatory. Maduro plays the big arm but he is totally isolated. He cheated to get re-elected in July 2024. The country is on the brink of economic collapse. Eight million Venezuelans have already fled. In reality, no one will defend him. »
Even his main regional ally, Lula, abandoned him
However, since last February and the return of Donald Trump to business, dialogue seemed to be renewed between Caracas and Washington. The American president is a pragmatist: Venezuela is full of gold, gas and oil resources… After the efforts of American emissary Richard Grenell, six American prisoners accused of espionage were released and the American oil group Chevron had its license renewed to relaunch crude extraction on Venezuelan territory.
But the placing of Secretary of State Marco Rubio in orbit at the forefront of American diplomacy has changed the situation. This son of Cuban exiles, very anti-radical left, would like to see all the hostile Latin American regimes, which live off drug trafficking and fuel illegal immigration to the United States, quickly fall. This week, Nicolás Maduro even called him “lord of death and war”. But this change of tone towards Caracas appeared at the end of August after the tête-à-tête between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, until then the main military support for the Maduro regime. Some observers do not rule out the possibility that they agreed on their zone of influence.
Rumors speak of a secret directive from the Kremlin inviting Russians to leave Venezuelan territory, and plans for Nicolás Maduro to exile to Nicaragua. Even his main regional ally, Brazilian President Lula, has abandoned him. More than ever, panic seems to grip the Miraflores Palace in Caracas. It recalls that of Havana during the Bay of Pigs episode in 1961, when Cuban exiles armed by the United States landed on Cuban beaches to overthrow the Castro regime.
