Venezuela highlights a familiar trap: invade and face insurgency, or withdraw and expose the limits of US power.
Here’s what’s probably happening in Venezuela today. All over the country, army bases are quietly moving weapons and explosives out of storage and handing them out to loyal members of the ruling United Socialist Party.
If US President Donald Trump does put American “boots on the ground”, the Resistance will want those weapons to be widely distributed and well hidden.
Trump was coy about how many boots he would send into Venezuela in his Mar-a-Lago “victory speech” last Saturday, but if he really intends to “run the country” until everything is “fixed” and the oil is flowing freely, it will be a lot of boots for a long time. Sooner or later, if there is an occupation, there will be a guerilla war against it.
From Napoleon in Spain two centuries ago to the US army in Iraq two decades ago, military occupations by foreigners usually generate armed resistance movements.
These will always be condemned as “terrorism” by the invaders, because resistance fighters cannot win stand-up fights against air strikes and armoured vehicles.
Instead, they use car bombs, assassinations and other low-tech methods that can be seen as unfair and even criminal.
Nevertheless, they usually win in the end, because the occupiers are fighting nationalism and sometimes also religion. It’s easy to conquer countries, but it’s getting harder to control them.
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We don’t yet know if this scenario will play out in Venezuela, because as far as we know there are not yet any US troops on the ground there.
Without them Trump has extremely limited leverage on the Venezuelan regime, which has not been decapitated or even seriously crippled by the kidnapping of former bus driver Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
So far, Trump has greatly enjoyed the show. “I watched it literally like I was watching a television show,” he said. “And if you would’ve seen the speed, the violence… it’s just, it was an amazing thing, an amazing job that these people did.”
But it’s not clear if the US president even understands that he now has to make a critical decision: boots or no boots.
Boots, and he will probably get mired down in a guerilla war eventually. No boots and he will have nothing to show for all that noise and effort, because the United Socialist Party of Venezuela will still be in power.
Does Trump understand this? He has doubtless been told it a few times, but he tends not to hear unwelcome news. The potential for seriously bad decisions therefore continues to grow, particularly elsewhere in Latin America.
Trump has just said that Colombia’s President Gustav Petro should “watch his ass” because “he’s making cocaine and they’re sending it into the United States”. (A good deal of cocaine does comes from Colombia, but not from official sources.)
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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, asked if Cuba is next on the US list, replied: “If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned.”
Or as the mobsters say: “Nice little country you have here. It would be a shame if something happened to it.”
Trump says Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is terrified of the drug cartels, which he alleges are running Mexico. “I’ve asked her numerous times, would you like us to take out the cartels? ‘No, no, no, Mr President, no, no, no, please.’ So we have to do something.” Guess what.
The one consolation that is available to them and all his other targets in the Western Hemisphere (Canada, Greenland, Panama and Brazil) is that both Trump and his key hench-persons are already seriously overcommitted.
In the past year he has sent American planes to bomb Iran, Nigeria, Syria, Venezuela, Somalia, Yemen and Iraq.
Several of these countries are on notice for further bombing soon, but Trump’s MAGA movement (Make America Great Again) is starting to revolt as he consistently prioritises foreign adventures over his long-standing domestic promises.
They are very loyal and very patient, but they are nearing their limits.
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