Fears of an imminent US attack set off alarm bells in Venezuela
The government understands that the US warships anchored in the Caribbean Sea are not focusing on alleged drug shipments as much as they are on President Maduro and his closest aides
María Elvira Salazar, a Republican congresswoman, wrote on X that Christmas, which has already begun in Venezuela, is nothing more than “a farce” decreed by Nicolás Maduro, as if he could change the date of Jesus Christ’s birth at will. “True Christmas for Venezuelans is coming,” she wrote enigmatically. Republican politicians, influencers, and even El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele have been sending out messages of this kind for a month now. The New York Times reported that a group of advisers is pressuring Donald Trump to “remove” the Venezuelan president by intensifying U.S. military deployment. Some time later, five fighter jets flew over an area bordering Venezuelan airspace, like birds of ill omen. The signs of an imminent attack have multiplied, with no one knowing whether this is a real scenario or just a high-level campaign to force the Chavista government to enter a negotiated solution.
One question has been completely cleared up, however: the U.S. war contingent anchored in the Caribbean Sea has as its primary target Maduro and his inner circle. Chavismo has correctly read the message sent from Washington. They knew, from the beginning, that the ships and submarines sailing on the edge of their territorial waters didn’t just want to stop drug trafficking to the United States, as Trump claimed. (If that were the case, they would be operating in other parts of the world where drug trafficking volume is vastly greater.) Maduro said as much on Thursday night: “There are people who think that bringing harm to their own country is a good thing. How did Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan fare after foreign aggression?”
Officials close to Maduro have been telling EL PAÍS, since the first attack on a boat off the Venezuelan coast, allegedly loaded with drugs, that this was a campaign to violate Venezuela’s sovereignty. Trump’s move caught them completely off guard. Maduro and Jorge Rodríguez, his main political operative, get along very well with Richard Grenell, the White House special envoy, a kind of Mr. Wolf (in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction). Grenell is non-interventionist in spirit, keen to achieve the best deals with other countries for the benefit of his own. According to profiles in the American media, he does not believe that the U.S. should be the world’s police, the guardian of democracy, the enemy of tyrannies. Grenell is often associated with Texas oil businessmen.
According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, these businessmen tried to get him appointed Secretary of State after Trump’s victory. They were unsuccessful; the 47th president of the United States instead chose Marco Rubio, a conservative politician of Cuban descent, the highest-ranking Latino to have held office in Washington. Rubio has built part of his career on opposing the governments of Cuba and Venezuela, with the classic rhetoric of a Republican hawk. Maduro considers him to be the devil; he knows that if it were up to Rubio, his life would be in danger. The Venezuelan president was convinced that with Grenell as his support, no one would succeed in getting to him. He even sent a letter to Trump through Grenell, but it had no effect. The White House press secretary publicly dismissed it, saying it was full of lies.
Logic dictated that Trump wouldn’t intervene in any country; he repeated this many times himself during the election campaign. But one morning, he launched Operation Midnight Hammer. Undetectable warplanes flew into Iran and dropped the most powerful non-nuclear bombs in existence, the GBU-57A/B, on Iranian facilities. The message was clear: Trump will never attack... until he wants to. Nothing is solid or definitive with this president, whom the U.S. press portrays as a pushover, until the next person walks into his office and persuades him to do the contrary. “You don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s no clear endgame, no roadmap. It’s impossible to predict what’s next,” explains an American analyst familiar with the Venezuelan situation.
The official who has made this point most bluntly has been Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino. On Thursday, he denounced the presence of five U.S. fighter jets north of the central coast. It was an Avianca plane that alerted the control tower at Maiquetía, Venezuela’s main airport. “This is a provocation, a great threat to the nation’s security,” the general stated. “Do not make the mistake of attacking Venezuela militarily. Think carefully, investigate thoroughly, and understand the national spirit,” the official warned.
“Venezuela’s integrated air defense system has detected, within the Maiquetía region, more than five vectors with flight characteristics of 400 knots and flying at an altitude of 35,000 feet. What does that indicate? These are fighter jets that U.S. imperialism has dared to bring close to the Venezuelan coast,” he added.
These are anxious hours. The latest events could mean everything, or they could mean nothing. The vast majority of analysts believe it’s impossible for the United States to do more, such as attacking alleged drug cartels inside Venezuelan territory. The deployment in the Caribbean, according to military experts, is insufficient to make the threat a reality. It seems impossible for a problem between countries to escalate into armed confrontation. It seems like a last-century issue. Or not so much, the same people say. Uncertainty is in the air.
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