In recent weeks, the escalation of tensions in the Caribbean has once again placed Venezuela at the center of regional geopolitics. Washington has increased its naval presence and carried out attacks against ships it accuses of being linked to drug trafficking, while in Caracas, the Nicolás Maduro regime is rehearsing speeches and maneuvers that seek to project preparedness for a possible foreign intervention, according to planning documents and military sources consulted by Reuters.
This preparation, however, coexists with an operational reality marked by precariousness: poorly paid forces, aging equipment, and a lack of training. This dual image—public display of arsenals and structural weakness—permeates the strategy that the regime has been developing in recent years.
According to documents and military sources, the Venezuelan regime has designed two lines of response in the event of an attack. The first is a “prolonged resistance” that would involve the dispersal of small units to more than 280 locations throughout the country to carry out sabotage and attrition operations. The second, called “anarchization,” would rely on armed supporters of the ruling party and collectives to provoke urban disorder and hinder territorial control by external forces. Both approaches appear in plans dated between 2012 and 2022.
Several passages in these instructional documents are explicit regarding tactics and logistics: the positioning of machine guns and grenade launchers, the use of the AK-103 rifle, and technology-free targeting techniques. One military order states that “upon receiving the first attack from the Americans, all units must disperse or withdraw with their weapons to various points.”
Official rhetoric is rife with pronouncements. Maduro has said that portable missiles and their “thousands” of operators are deployed “even on the highest mountain, even in the lowest city.” Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello declared on television: “They think that with one bombing everything will end… Just one bomb? No, it’s not like that.” And Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino asserted that there is “a strong state to provide an effective response against any imperialist aggression.”
But internal sources consulted by Reuters emphasize the opposite: “We are neither prepared nor professionalized for a conflict. They (the government) try to pretend otherwise, but no, we are not prepared against one of the world’s greatest powers and one of the best-trained armies.” Another source added bluntly regarding capabilities in a conventional confrontation: “In a conventional war, we wouldn’t last two hours, that’s why the militia was integrated… this is an unconventional war.” These internal admissions are among the pieces that explain why the official strategy is geared toward irregular forms of resistance.
The material condition of the forces is a key factor. Reuters reports that rank-and-file soldiers receive around $100 per month, compared to a basic food basket estimated at around $500, and that some commanders have had to negotiate with local producers to supply their troops. The regime reportedly has some 60,000 personnel between the Army and National Guard and estimates it can mobilize between 5,000 and 7,000 armed civilians and militia members in situations of unrest; however, sources consulted question the effectiveness and the actual scale of this mobilization.
The weapons stockpile, mostly acquired from Russia in the 2000s, also has operational limitations. Venezuela has approximately twenty Sukhoi fighter jets, helicopters, tanks, and some 5,000 Igla-S man-portable air-defense systems, but analysts and military personnel point to obsolescence and a lack of maintenance. In Moscow, the Foreign Ministry declared its willingness to assist with repairs, radar modernization, and the supply of missile systems, reinforcing the military relationship between the two governments, while denying that Venezuelan authorities had requested military aid amidst escalating tensions with the United States.
To understand the regime's logic, it's helpful to distinguish between two intended effects: one, actual combat capability; the other, political deterrence. Analysts consulted by Reuters, such as Andrei Serbin Pont, maintain that the display of arsenals and exercises has a deterrent purpose: to warn of the political and social cost of intervention, that is, to project the possibility that weaponry and affiliated groups could contribute to a spiral of violence and chaos. “The message is not about actual military capability, but deterrence through chaos,” said Serbin Pont.
In sum, the Maduro regime's strategy aims to avoid a swift defeat through unconventional tactics and the mobilization of armed civilian actors; at the same time, part of its own planning acknowledges its inferiority to the US military power. This contradiction—between the theatricality of arsenals and real operational fragility—defines the plan: not to win a conventional war, but to increase the political and logistical costs of any prolonged intervention.
