Caracas, Venezuela – December 2, 2025 – With U.S. warships patrolling the Caribbean and President Donald Trump issuing direct ultimatums, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's regime has activated detailed contingency plans for asymmetric defense: a prolonged guerrilla war in the countryside combined with a deliberate “anarchization” campaign designed to turn cities, above all Caracas, into zones of total ungovernability in the event of a U.S.-led invasion.
Venezuela’s conventional military is in no condition for a traditional confrontation. The Bolivarian Armed Forces number roughly 123,000 active personnel, but chronic underfunding, sanctions, and hyperinflation have left most heavy equipment inoperable. Soldiers are paid approximately $100 a month, tanks and Sukhoi jets sit grounded for lack of spare parts, and senior officers openly admit the armed forces would collapse within hours against the United States in open battle. Because of this stark imbalance, the regime has spent years refining an alternative doctrine known as “Guerra de Todo el Pueblo” (War of All the People), first formalized under Hugo Chávez in 2012 and now updated for the current crisis.
The cornerstone of the plan is classic guerrilla warfare modeled explicitly on Ho Chi Minh’s strategy in Vietnam. Regular army and National Guard units—around 60,000 troops—are to be broken into small, mobile groups and dispersed to more than 280 pre-selected strongholds across mountains, jungles, and coastal plains. These cells would be equipped with the 5,000 Russian-made Igla-S shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles still in inventory, along with light weapons, mortars, and improvised explosives. Their mission: bleed any invading force through ambushes, sabotage of bridges and power lines, attacks on supply convoys, and strikes against low-flying helicopters and drones. Maduro has repeatedly showcased these missiles on state television, claiming they are deployed “to the last mountain and the last town.”
In parallel, a far more sinister urban component—referred to internally as “anarchization”—is designed to make the capital and other major cities impossible to pacify. Intelligence operatives from SEBIN (Bolivarian National Intelligence Service), heavily armed cadres from the ruling United Socialist Party, and the notorious motorcycle-riding colectivos would be unleashed to ignite sustained riots, erect flaming barricades, cut electricity and water, and carry out targeted killings of anyone perceived as collaborating with an occupying force. Estimates circulating inside the regime suggest 5,000–7,000 dedicated participants could sustain weeks or months of chaos in Caracas alone, turning its steep hills and sprawling barrios into a deadly maze for foreign troops.
The civilian militia plays a central role in the official narrative. Maduro regularly claims eight million Venezuelans are armed and trained, but independent analysts place the real figure closer to 200,000–300,000, many of them public-sector employees compelled to attend weekend drills. Recent exercises in Miranda and Aragua states have featured militia units practicing drone attacks, anti-tank ambushes, and street barricades using burned-out buses and construction equipment.
These preparations accelerated after September 2025, when the Trump administration launched a sweeping maritime interdiction campaign, sinking dozens of vessels allegedly linked to drug trafficking and formally designating the so-called “Cartel de los Soles” a foreign terrorist organization—an accusation that directly implicates Maduro, his wife Cilia Flores, and several cabinet ministers. U.S. Navy destroyers, the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group, B-52 bombers, and Marine expeditionary units have since maintained a highly visible presence off Venezuela’s coast. Trump has publicly declared Venezuelan airspace “closed in its entirety” and, according to sources familiar with a late-November phone call, personally warned Maduro to flee the country immediately or face overwhelming military consequences.
Maduro has responded with defiance, brandishing the sword of Simón Bolívar at rallies and promising that any invasion would ignite a continent-wide “United Liberation Army.” Russia and Iran have quietly stepped up technical support, delivering radar components and missile reloads, while National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas along the Colombian border stand ready to open a second front.
Regional governments—from Mexico and Brazil to Argentina—have called for dialogue, warning that war would trigger an exodus dwarfing the seven million Venezuelans who have already fled economic collapse. Inside Venezuela, opposition leaders such as María Corina Machado denounce the regime’s strategy as a suicidal gamble that sacrifices the population to prolong one man’s grip on power.
Military analysts are blunt: Venezuela’s asymmetric plans face long odds. Morale is brittle, logistics are crumbling, and most militia members have no real combat experience. Yet even a partially successful campaign—snipers in the Ávila mountains overlooking Caracas, jungle ambushes along the Orinoco, weeks of burning streets in the capital—could exact a political and human cost that no U.S. administration would find acceptable in an era when Americans overwhelmingly oppose new ground wars.
As FPV drones buzz over training fields, anti-vehicle ditches scar highways into Caracas, and colectivos stockpile weapons in working-class neighborhoods, the country waits on a knife-edge. Maduro insists he seeks “peace with dignity,” but every new U.S. warship on the horizon pushes Venezuela closer to a conflict that few believe it can win—yet one that could prove catastrophically expensive for any invader.
