Why Invading Venezuela Won't Be a Walk in the Park

Neoconservative strategists aren't talking about the day after...

As American warships patrol Caribbean waters and F-35 fighters prowl Venezuelan airspace, hawkish voices in Washington paint an enticing picture: A swift military operation to topple Nicolás Maduro, similar to the easy interventions in Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989). It’s a dangerous fantasy that ignores three decades of failed Venezuelan policy and fundamentally misunderstands the catastrophic difference between those brief police actions and what a Venezuelan invasion would entail.

The comparison is essentially that of a neighborhood skirmish to a regional war. Venezuela is roughly 2,650 times larger than Grenada and 12 times larger than Panama, with 243 times more people than Grenada and 12 times more than Panama. The appropriate historical parallels aren’t Grenada or Panama—they’re Iraq and Afghanistan, multi-trillion-dollar quagmires that killed thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of civilians while advancing no genuine U.S. interests.

What regime change boosters consistently ignore is what happens the day after Maduro falls. They focus obsessively on knocking out Venezuela’s conventional military—no walk in the park, but an attainable feat—while studiously avoiding the nightmare that follows: A multi-factional civil war among heavily armed irregular forces, refugee flows dwarfing the current crisis, and a protracted insurgency that could justify further U.S. intervention and spiral into a broader conflict that could attract irregular leftist forces from across the region.

As far as historical analogues are concerned, Grenada was a tiny 344-square-kilometer volcanic island—smaller than many American cities. Despite hilly terrain, the entire country could be secured quickly because of its minuscule size. Panama at 75,420 square kilometers was larger but still a narrow isthmus focused around the Canal Zone, where U.S. forces already had extensive military presence and insider knowledge based on decades of American influence in Panama.

Venezuela covers 912,050 square kilometers—featuring the Andes mountains in the west, vast central plains (llanos), dense Amazon jungle in the south, and 2,800 kilometers of Caribbean coastline. This geographic complexity creates countless opportunities for asymmetric warfare, with mountainous terrain favoring defensive operations, urban centers ideal for guerrilla resistance, and jungle regions providing sanctuary for irregular forces.

Unlike Panama where U.S. forces had extensive familiarity from decades of base presence, or Grenada, where the entire operational theater was one small island, Venezuela’s diverse terrain would require controlling vast territories to prevent insurgent sanctuaries. U.S. military planners have no established presence, no intimate geographic knowledge, and would face the same challenges that gave American forces fits in Afghanistan’s mountains, Iraq’s urban centers, and Vietnam’s jungles.

Venezuela hosts one of the most complex networks of armed non-state actors in the Western Hemisphere. Start with the colectivos—far-left paramilitary groups numbering 8,000 individuals operating in 16 states and controlling approximately 10 percent of Venezuelan cities. These aren’t poorly armed street gangs; they possess AK-47s, submachine guns, fragmentation grenades, and tear gas—much of it supplied directly by the Venezuelan government.

Colombian guerrilla organizations have also established a significant presence on Venezuelan territory. The National Liberation Army (ELN) maintains operations in 13 Venezuelan states. According to a report by Colombian media outlet Connectas, the ELN has armed cells in roughly 10 percent of Venezuela’s more than 300 municipalities. The group controls territory in the Venezuelan states of Zulia, Táchira, Apure, and Amazonas—the four states bordering Colombia—and also operates in Barinas, Bolívar, and Delta Amacuro, with a presence of roughly 1,000 fighters in Venezuela and 6,000 members in total.

Segunda Marquetalia, dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) who rejected Colombia’s peace accords, operates with an estimated 1,000 members. Other FARC dissident factions add approximately 2,000 more fighters. These groups maintain Marxist-Leninist, anti-imperialist ideologies and view the United States as the primary threat to revolutionary movements. Combined, these irregular forces are in the tens of thousands with substantial weapons, territorial control, and operational experience.

It should be stressed that Venezuela’s official military doctrine has been explicitly designed around asymmetric warfare against a hypothetical U.S. invasion since the Chávez era. The strategy assumes initial conventional defeat followed by sustained guerrilla resistance—making occupation costly and politically unsustainable.

Nevertheless, Venezuela won’t just roll over without a conventional fight. Venezuela is the number one purchaser of Russian weaponry in Latin America. It boasts mobile Russian S-300VM and Buk-M2E air defense systems (described as “by far the most formidable in Latin America” by Military Watch Magazine) and KH-31 anti-ship missiles. Additionally, Venezuela boasts 24 Su-30MK2V Flanker fighters (approximately 21 operational) capable of carrying anti-ship missiles and critically, components of Russia’s C4ISR system—integrated digital warfare networks previously shared only with Belarus.

Most significantly, Russia signed a comprehensive 10-year strategic partnership with Venezuela in May 2025, ratified in October 2025, covering more than 350 bilateral agreements on security, defense, and technology. Russian cargo aircraft have recently been landing in Caracas with additional military supplies. In October 2025, Maduro requested Russian assistance enhancing air defenses, restoring Su-30 aircraft, and acquiring missiles. The Iranians have also cooperated with Venezuela on the development of drone technology and sanctions evasion assistance.

This great power backing has no parallel in Grenada (where Soviet/Cuban support was minimal during the invasion) or Panama (where Manuel Noriega’s late attempts to seek Cuban/Nicaraguan support proved futile against American forces.

The ultimate challenge for the United States comes the day after when Venezuelan forces, colectivos, militias, and allied guerrilla groups retreat to mountainous regions, jungles, and southern plains. From there, armed groups would be able to conduct asymmetric attacks on U.S. forces and any post-Maduro government, creating multiple overlapping resistance movements.

A 2019 U.S. Army analysis concluded Venezuela presents a “Black Swan” hot spot significantly more complex than the 1989 Panama operation, noting Venezuela has “115,000 troops, in addition to tanks and fighter jets” and “thirty million people, about 20 percent of whom still support the Maduro government,” with leaders having “been preparing for asymmetrical warfare for more than a decade.” In contrast, the study noted that “[Manuel] Noriega’s Panama had only fifteen thousand troops—of which, only 3,500 were soldiers.” The study highlighted that “there is no chance that countries in the region would participate in an effort to topple Maduro.”

It’s also worth noting that Cuba has deep penetration of Venezuela’s security apparatus through secret agreements signed in May 2008 that “gave Cuba vast access to the Venezuelan military and wide freedom to spy on and reform it,” according to the Havana Times. Approximately 5,600 Cuban personnel work in Venezuelan security sectors, including 500 active Cuban military advisors. Venezuela’s Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN) has been described as “almost a branch of the G2—the Cuban secret service—in Venezuela.”

This integration helps explain Venezuelan military loyalty despite economic collapse and has proved key in protecting the South American nation from U.S. covert operations. The Cuban intelligence network provides early warning of dissent and mechanisms for neutralizing opposition forces and other fifth columnists. For U.S. planners, any intervention would effectively fight not just Venezuela’s military but Cuba’s sophisticated intelligence apparatus with decades of experience countering U.S. operations.

Before contemplating another Latin American adventure, Washington should review its track record. Historian John H. Coatsworth documented that from 1898-1994, the United States intervened to change Latin American governments at least 41 times across 100 years, averaging once every 28 months.

The results? The 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion failed catastrophically, strengthening Fidel Castro. The 1980s Contra War in Nicaragua killed approximately 30,000 Nicaraguans, yet Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who lost the presidency in 1990, eventually returned to power in 2007. Ortega has currently ruled as an authoritarian president, exactly what the United States tried to prevent through the proxy war it facilitated during the Reagan era.

Beyond Latin America, the United States’ second invasion of Iraq cost over $2 trillion and killed 4,500 U.S. troops while creating conditions for the rise of ISIS and rival Shiite militias across the nation. The United States’ nation-building experiment in Afghanistan cost $2.3 trillion and killed 2,461 U.S. troops, only to see the Taliban return to power after 20 years.

Perhaps most striking is how overwhelmingly Venezuelans themselves reject foreign military intervention. September 2025 polling found 93 percent of Venezuelans oppose foreign military intervention, with only 5 percent supporting it. October 2025 polling showed this increased to 94 percent opposition.

This creates a paradox: Polling demonstrates 64 percent to 90 percent of Venezuelans wanting some form of democratic transition yet 93 percent to 94 percent reject foreign military intervention. When presented with peaceful alternatives, 63 percent have supported a negotiated settlement to remove Maduro, making negotiation by far the most popular option.

The Venezuelan opposition itself is deeply divided, with prominent figures like two-time presidential candidate Henrique Capriles—who remains in Venezuela—explicitly rejecting intervention. “Most people who want a military solution and a US invasion do not live in Venezuela. They don’t even understand the consequences of it,” Capriles said in an interview with the BBC. In an interview with The New York Times, he posed a pointed question: “Name one successful case in the last few years of a successful U.S. military intervention.”

As far as stateside is concerned, 62 percent of Americans also oppose invading Venezuela, with only 16 percent supporting such action, per YouGov polling.

Here’s what neoconservatives don’t discuss: Knocking out Venezuela’s conventional military is attainable. U.S. technological superiority would likely produce a relatively swift conventional victory. But then what?

A decapitation strike removing Maduro wouldn’t stabilize Venezuela—it would detonate it. Consider the armed actors positioned to fill the vacuum such as the colectivos with heavy weapons controlling urban neighborhoods; ELN fighters with decades of guerrilla experience; Segunda Marquetalia combatants; thousands of other FARC dissidents; and remnants of defeated military units retreating to mountains and jungles.

The result will likely be a multi-factional civil war. Various armed groups would compete over oil, gold, and minerals. Colectivos would defend urban territory. ELN and FARC dissidents would establish rural sanctuaries. Criminal organizations would exploit the ensuing chaos. The 20 percent of Venezuelans supporting Maduro ideologically would provide a substantial resistance base.

Such a conflict would trigger a massive refugee crisis. Venezuela has already had nearly 8 million people flee since 2015. Military intervention triggering civil war could produce millions more refugees, destabilizing Colombia, Brazil, Trinidad, Guyana, and the entire Caribbean basin. Moreover, many of these refugees would wash up on American shores—a prospect Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his cheap labor-addicted Republican cohorts in Florida would embrace with open arms.

Any U.S.-backed government would face prolonged insurgency, requiring sustained American military occupation, not the swift operation regime change boosters promise, but years or decades of counterinsurgency. Ironically, this could be dangerous even for María Corina Machado or whatever U.S. puppet is installed, as pro-regime forces remain heavily armed and motivated, while countless other militants will start carving out their own statelets nationwide. Not exactly an ideal climate for a prospective U.S. client regime to operate in.

Perhaps most underestimated would be backlash among Latin America’s radical Left. Since the end of the Cold War, leftist movements have been relatively pacified because the United States hasn’t taken direct, kinetic action in the region. But when Marines enter the mix, this will galvanize nationalist sentiment throughout the region.

The ELN maintains strong ideological affinity with Venezuela’s state ideology of Chavismo and sees itself leading the struggle against American imperialism. Colombian guerrillas already recruit Venezuelans. U.S. intervention would dramatically accelerate recruitment. One could see foreign fighters form international brigades to fight American forces and the puppet government they try to prop up.

Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro already condemned U.S. strikes as “acts of tyranny.” Full-scale invasion would trigger denunciations across the region, breathe new life into dormant anti-American movements, and create a generation of Latin American leftists radicalized by direct confrontation with U.S. military power. External actors like Iran, Russia, and China—who all have their own set of grievances with the United States—would pounce on this chaotic environment to further inflame tensions and poke Uncle Sam in the eye.

Comparing Venezuela to Grenada or Panama is fundamentally misleading propaganda. Those were brief police actions against micro-states in political chaos with minimal armed opposition, limited territory, no great power backing, and some regional support.

After 30 years of escalating intervention—coups, sanctions, economic warfare—Maduro remains in power while Venezuela has deepened ties with Russia, China, and Iran. The humanitarian crisis has worsened. Multiple coup attempts strengthened authoritarian control.

The historical record is unambiguous: U.S. military interventions consistently fail to achieve stated objectives. Initial conventional victories give way to protracted insurgencies, state collapse, refugee crises, and strategic disasters costing trillions. Venezuela would be worse because of its size, geography, complex array of armed actors, ideological polarization, and strategic importance to U.S. adversaries such as Russia, China, and Iran, who are all itching to get back at the United States.

Neoconservative strategists are engaging in dangerous wishful thinking. They promise swift operation followed by grateful Venezuelans welcoming democracy. Reality would be years of counterinsurgency, multi-factional civil war, massive refugee flows, regional destabilization, and a strategic quagmire.

Invading Venezuela won’t be a walk in the park. It would be a quagmire defining American foreign policy for a generation. After 30 years of failure, perhaps it’s time to try something radically different: Diplomacy, engagement, and respect for sovereignty. The alternative is catastrophe, something Donald Trump’s “America First” movement never voted for.

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