Caracas Chronicles

Originally published in Spanish on Marisela Betancourt’s Substack.

Geopolitics rarely grants a reprieve, and Venezuela is once again learning this firsthand. The recent U.S. military deployment in the Caribbean, under the banner of anti-narcotics operations, is more than a tactical maneuver: it is the first materialization of Trumpist volatility on the Venezuelan stage.

In previous columns, I argued that chavismo—as a way to shield its political project— brought Venezuela into the geopolitical radar of the great powers as an active factor. This reckless decision to internationalize an internal conflict was then echoed by the opposition, which, facing repeated failures to seize power, made a habit of betting on foreign solutions. I also noted that since July 2024, the government has had an opportunity to reposition its foreign policy in a global environment where authoritarian regimes are gaining ground, and that Trumpism’s unpredictability could become either a lifeline for chavismo’s survival or a window of opportunity for the opposition.

Today, that hypothesis meets its first testing ground: the U.S. anti-narcotics deployment in the Caribbean not only reactivates the military dimension of the regional chessboard but also triggers an unprecedented crisis within chavismo, showing that Washington’s volatility is no longer a latent risk but a concrete threat.

Ambiguous reactions in the chavista elite

The Bolivarian Revolution built much of its ideological foundation on anti-imperialism. In another political moment for the country, Hugo Chávez and his military theatrics would have seen a direct war scenario with the United States as the dream opportunity to rally national cohesion around his leadership. Yet what once could serve as a catalyst for unity now reveals internal weakness. Washington is posing a military threat that has left 14 Venezuelans dead at sea, and Venezuela’s government appears erratic and nervous, unable to mount a coherent response that matches its own founding discourse.

The first official reactions to the bombing of a Venezuelan boat carrying 11 crew members—struck on September 2, 2025, in the Caribbean, in what Washington described as an anti-drug operation—were delayed and contradictory.

Faced with an actual military development, the Maduro regime looks disoriented, hesitant, and incapable of articulating a unifying response.

The first public comment came from Vice President of Communication Freddy Ñáñez, who claimed that the images of the attack circulating online were fake, created with artificial intelligence. Yet days later, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello presented a different version: he admitted the vessel had indeed been attacked, though he denied its crew were drug traffickers or members of the Tren de Aragua, calling the U.S. allegations that the boat was carrying drugs “a tremendous falsehood, a tremendous lie.” Maduro later accused the United States of wanting “free Venezuelan oil” and described the attack as an “onslaught” against Venezuela.

What stands out is the ambivalence of the official response. While the government’s first voices wavered between silence and denial, the families and friends of the murdered crew members flooded social media with messages of mourning and condolences. This spontaneous and uncontrollable wave of personal testimonies confirmed the scale of the event before any state declaration, exposing the contradictions of the official narrative.

Executive Order 2015 vs. U.S. warships 2025

When Barack Obama signed the March 9, 2015 executive order declaring Venezuela a “threat to U.S. national security” and sanctioning seven top officials, chavismo managed to mobilize the country, from towns to cities, in defense of the anti-imperialist narrative. It wasn’t necessarily a genuine mobilization, but one orchestrated by the bureaucratic machinery: organized, with clear participation guidelines and precise instructions from public agencies and party structures. No bomb had been dropped, no missile launched. A presidential decree alone was enough to ignite a political campaign that filled the streets, institutions, and official propaganda.

The picture is radically different ten years later. Faced with the bombing of Venezuelan vessels, an actual military development, the Maduro government looks disoriented, hesitant, and incapable of articulating a unifying response.

The contrast between the 2015 mobilization and the paralysis of 2025 confirms that Venezuela now lives under a demobilized authoritarianism. Following Juan J. Linz’s typology, which distinguishes between mobilized authoritarian regimes (which require the active, organized participation of the population) and demobilized ones (those sustained by apathy and bureaucratic control) Venezuela today clearly belongs to the latter.

After failing to end high-profile conflicts like Ukraine and Palestine, Venezuela emerges as a stage where Trump can try to improve his international profile.

The regime no longer depends on constant mass mobilization, but rather on depoliticization and social inertia as mechanisms of stability. What once could rally society against a U.S. presidential decree now translates into hesitant official statements and a public kept on the sidelines. The anti-imperialist narrative, once capable of gathering crowds, has lost its power and now functions as an empty resource in the midst of an authoritarianism held together by demobilization.

Seen this way, the absence of street mobilizations in response to U.S. military actions reveals not a grand plan coordinated between the opposition and Washington, but rather the lack of one. More than a concerted strategy, it is the expression of Donald Trump’s personalist volatility, which produces unexpected scenarios. The opposition, lacking a roadmap of its own, clings to this external unpredictability as a substitute for strategy, laying bare its dependence on exogenous factors instead of articulating a coherent national policy.

From Moscow to Caracas

Donald Trump’s aspiration for a Nobel Peace Prize fits into a personalist logic that casts him as a leader seeking symbolic achievements to cement his place in history. After failing in his attempts to mediate in high-profile conflicts such as Ukraine and Palestine, Venezuela now emerges as a potential stage for projecting a diplomatic initiative that could help rebuild his international profile. The prolonged Venezuelan crisis, marked by an extended internal conflict, gives Trump the chance to present himself as a figure capable of channeling confrontation or negotiation.

Not out of sustained commitment to regional stability, much less to democracy, but as part of a strategy to accumulate credentials on the path to the Nobel.

Thus, it should not be surprising if a military escalation suddenly morphs into a negotiation process: in the end, this reflects personalist volatility rather than a consistent foreign policy strategy.

This is why, in the face of the extrajudicial killing of 14 Venezuelan civilians who were not in a recognized theater of war—an act that constitutes a direct violation of fundamental human rights and international humanitarian law, which demands proportionality, distinction, and necessity in the use of force—Venezuela’s president has chosen silence. At a press conference, when directly asked about the killings and the veracity of the attacks, he limited himself to saying he would not get involved in “those controversies” about whether the videos were AI-generated, and noted that the Public Prosecutor’s Office had opened an investigation.

In other words, twenty days after the first attack, the country’s chief prosecutor has no information about the murdered Venezuelans.Instead of taking a firm stance against the attacks and defending the victims’ families, Maduro opted to send a letter to the White House requesting the mediation of Richard Grenell, a diplomat close to the U.S. president. The contrast between the gravity of the events and the timidity of the presidential response only reinforces the image of a cornered and weakened leadership. Far from confronting and assuming its duty in the face of a foreign military attack, Venezuela’s government delegates the resolution of the crisis to the unpredictable diplomacy of Donald Trump.