Donald Trump announced that his Secretary of War will “run” Venezuela until the United States can carry out what he calls a “safe, proper and judicious transition.” This is not happening.
https://x.com/SizweLo/status/2008094415470944641
Donald Trump announced that his Secretary of War will “run” Venezuela until the United States can carry out what he calls a “safe, proper and judicious transition.” This is not happening.
As of right now, Venezuela’s militias, specifically the Bolivarian Militia and the urban paramilitary networks known as colectivos, have not backed down. Far from allowing America’s Secretary of War and a US-appointed “group” to run the country, they have become the primary agents of what is rapidly evolving into a chaotic and dangerous resistance.
Since the abduction of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Caracas has effectively become a ghost town. Citizens are skipping work, businesses are shuttered, and people are staying indoors because of the colectivos.
The leftist paramilitaries are now the most visible armed presence in the capital.
While Delta Force and US air assets achieved overwhelming tactical dominance during the brief raid that removed Maduro, they have not established persistent control over residential neighbourhoods. That vacuum has been filled locally, block by block.
The colectivos have also reframed the conflict. What might once have been portrayed as a struggle to defend Maduro has now been recast as a “decolonial war” against US occupation.
This narrative shift matters. It transforms the struggle from regime defence into national resistance, and it makes the colectivos the main obstacle to the “security” Washington claims it intends to provide.
Despite US assertions that Venezuela’s military was “incapacitated,” Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino López appeared on national television alongside Vice President Delcy Rodríguez to declare that the armed forces and militias remain loyal to the Bolivarian Revolution.
Whether or not this reflects unified command is beside the point; it signals continuity, defiance, and an intent to resist.
America’s Secretary of War has insisted that “President Trump sets the terms.” In practice, those terms are already being rewritten by asymmetric warfare. This is not a promising start.
According to the Robert Lansing Institute, if the United States limits itself to air power and special operations while leaving Venezuelans to manage the transition, insurgency is likely to emerge not as classic guerrilla warfare against US troops, but as urban unrest, terrorism, and targeted attacks on perceived collaborators.
Conversely, Lansing warns that a large and prolonged US troop presence would almost certainly catalyse a broader, more organised armed resistance.
Either path is bleak. Trump has initiated a process he cannot easily reverse, and there is no clean off-ramp for him or his war secretary.
Over the next six to twelve months, the most probable pattern is episodic violence: bombings, armed clashes in pro-Chavista strongholds, targeted assassinations, and cartel-linked criminal activity exploiting the breakdown in authority.
The so-called “Iraq model” becomes increasingly likely the longer the US maintains a visible, large-scale military presence on Venezuelan soil. If Washington truly intends to “run” Venezuela until a transition can be engineered, it will require, and likely lose, a significant number of soldiers.
The contradiction is clearest around oil. While US officials talk openly about rebuilding Venezuela’s oil infrastructure, militias and loyalist military units are expected to target those facilities to prevent the foreign plunder.
This dynamic is already visible in the Orinoco Belt, which accounts for roughly two-thirds of Venezuela’s oil production. The United States may control ports and terminals, but militias control pipelines and territory. Production is in freefall.
Trump has promised to sell “large amounts of oil.” For now, that promise is being blocked by asymmetric warfare, the very phenomenon US officials publicly acknowledge while underestimating its consequences.
In short, the United States may “run” oil terminals and fortified government buildings, but Venezuela’s militias run the streets and much of the rural heartland.
What Trump and his handlers face a law-enforcement nightmare in which every urban block risks becoming a bloody battle zone. And by every available indicator, that nightmare has already begun.
posted by Satish Sharma at
15:05
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