Q24N — The worsening military tensions in the Caribbean between the Donald Trump administration and Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship in Venezuela will not lead to an invasion, which would require at least a two-year occupation to produce “regime change.”
However, it could lead to bombings and military incidents, which “could spiral out of control,” according to Dr. David Smilde, a professor of sociology at Tulane University and an expert on Venezuela and its bilateral relations with the United States.
During an interview on “Esta Semana”—a program now streamed on CONFIDENCIAL’s YouTube channel because of TV censorship in Nicaragua—Smilde discussed the rising tensions between the US and Venezuela.
The situation ramped up after the US destroyed a speedboat in the Caribbean that was reportedly crewed by Venezuelan drug traffickers, while at the same time, two Venezuelan F-16s flew over US warships.
Smilde believes that the military operation deployed by the United States has elements of “political theater” to weave a narrative of war with Venezuela, justifying the mass deportation of Venezuelan migrants, invoking the status of “external enemies” with a country at war.
The researcher at the Center for Hemispheric Studies at Tulane University, author of five books on Venezuela, explained that Trump’s strategy aims to create rifts around Nicolas Maduro, but warned that it also poses risks for the Venezuelan opposition: “Most likely, Maduro will put more pressure on the opposition, and the only thing that could benefit him is if there is a regime change. But the only way the opposition would occupy Miraflores Palace would be with an invasion and an occupation force for one or two years, and Trump isn’t going to do that.”
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