NATIONAL SECURITY JOURNAL - A U.S. Invasion of Venezuela Would Be Slow, Costly and a Historic Mistake - Military Hardware: Tanks, Bombers, Submarines and More - A U.S. Invasion of Venezuela Would Be Slow, Costly and a Historic Mistake - ByAndrew Latham Published 4 days ago

 NATIONAL  SECURITY  JOURNAL

Military Hardware: Tanks, Bombers, Submarines and More

A U.S. Invasion of Venezuela Would Be Slow, Costly and a Historic Mistake

ByAndrew Latham

Published 4 days ago

Article Summary – Any U.S. war in Venezuela would be slow, costly, and strategically self-defeating. Caracas’s escalation over Guyana, tight ties to Russia, China, and Iran, and entrenched criminal networks might someday trigger intervention—but air dominance and quick strikes would only be the opening act.

-The real fight would be brutal urban warfare in cities like Caracas and Maracaibo, followed by a nationwide insurgency in jungle, river, and border regions.

-With little regional support and huge opportunity costs for U.S. global posture, a Venezuelan campaign would be less a show of strength than a strategic trap.

A U.S. Invasion of Venezuela Can Be Summed Up in One Word: Quagmire

Venezuela has drifted into a confrontation with the United States that no longer sits at the edge of strategic imagination. Caracas’s escalation over Guyana’s Essequibo region, its tightening embrace of Russian, Chinese, and Iranian economic, diplomatic, and security ties, the hybrid war it is conducting against the US, and the regime’s reliance on criminal networks for survival have pushed a once-hypothetical scenario back into serious discussion: under what circumstances would the United States send forces into Venezuela—and what kind of war would unfold if it did?

The honest answer cuts against the daydream of a quick strike. A war in Venezuela would be a slow, punishing campaign in America’s own neighborhood, with risks to U.S. personnel and U.S. credibility that would outweigh any illusion of easy victory.

The Motivations: Sparks, Irritants, and Strategic Gravity

No single development would drag the United States into Venezuela. The Essequibo dispute could trigger a crisis if Venezuela invades Guyanese territory, transforming a frozen border quarrel into open aggression.

Narco-trafficking and Venezuela’s sanctuary for armed groups would ramp up pressure from U.S. law enforcement and border agencies. Yet neither would, on its own, produce a consensus for war.

The deeper concern lies elsewhere. Russia’s military entrenchment, China’s financial and infrastructure leverage, and Iran’s intelligence and drone cooperation have turned Venezuela into a base of operations for outside powers in the Caribbean Basin.

For a United States trying to secure the hemisphere while managing major-power competition abroad, a rival foothold in Venezuela is the kind of structural shift that sets alarms ringing. If intervention ever moves from hypothetical to real, this is the gravitational force behind it — even if the public debate fixates on a border dispute or narcotics.

Opening Phase: Easy Airpower, Hard Realities

The first phase of a U.S. invasion is predictable. American forces would pulverize Venezuela’s air defenses, break its command networks, and secure air dominance within days. The Venezuelan Air Force — an aging fleet of Su-30s and rotting F-16s — would not survive long. The S-300 and Buk batteries that Venezuela acquired from Russia, never fully integrated into its command-and-control structures or properly maintained, would fall quickly.

But a clean opening is not victory. Airpower can shred the Venezuelan military, but it cannot compel control over a country this large, this fractured, and this well-suited for irregular fighting. The real war begins only after the skies are quiet.

Urban Combat: Where the Terrain Turns Against the Invader

Caracas, Maracaibo, Maracay, and Valencia are not empty grids waiting to be occupied. They are massive, uneven urban zones, rife with regime loyalists, intelligence officers, and colectivos who know the ground better than any invading force. They cannot stop the Americans. They can make every block costly.

Modern urban warfare burns through infantry, combat engineers, small drones, armor, and logistics at a pace that even seasoned commanders find surprising. Airstrikes help — but they cannot clear stairwells, basements, and dense neighborhoods where irregular fighters can blend into a battered civilian population. The early headlines would declare success. The reality on the ground would be the beginning of a prolonged occupation.

The Insurgency: A Country Built for Guerrillas

The geography beyond the cities makes matters worse. Venezuela’s interior — its Andean corridors, river networks, mining zones, and borderlands — has sheltered guerrillas, smugglers, and armed syndicates for decades. These groups are not loyal to Maduro. They are faithful to their territory, their revenue streams, and their autonomy. A U.S. presence threatens all three.

Once U.S. forces push past the coastal belt, irregular fighters scatter into terrain they know intimately. There is no safe rear area. Every convoy route becomes a target. Every river crossing becomes an ambush point. What begins as a regime-collapse operation morphs into a counterinsurgency across a country nearly four times the size of Iraq.

Regional Blowback: The Politics of Isolation

Even governments that distrust Maduro would oppose a U.S. invasion. Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico would face immediate domestic backlash, and Caribbean states would brace for migration shocks. The long memory of U.S. interventions in Latin America — Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama — would return with force.

Without regional backing, the United States would shoulder the entire burden of post-conflict stabilization: policing shattered cities, managing humanitarian emergencies, and constructing a political order in a state where every institution has been hollowed out. The occupation would be long, lonely, and politically corrosive.

Strategic Risks: A War That Undercuts U.S. Power Elsewhere

The final cost is the strategic one. A war in Venezuela would consume the very resources the United States needs for Indo-Pacific deterrence and a disciplined hemispheric posture. Every brigade assigned to secure a Venezuelan refinery is unavailable for Pacific contingencies. Every year spent chasing irregulars in the Orinoco Basin drains attention from the domains — maritime, cyber, and diplomatic — where the U.S. faces far greater stakes.

A Venezuelan campaign would not merely be expensive. It would drag Washington back toward the open-ended, regime-change wars it has spent a decade trying to escape.

The Victory That Becomes a Burden

Toppling the Maduro regime is the simple part. The hard part is everything after the flag comes down: the cities that resist pacification, the irregulars who refuse to dissolve, the borders that leak fighters and contraband, and the regional hostility that isolates the United States at the precise moment it needs partners.

A superpower can win every battle and still lose the war that follows. And for a United States slowly rediscovering strategic discipline, an invasion of Venezuela is less a show of strength than a trap disguised as an option.

About the Author: Dr. Andrew Latham

Andrew Latham is a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities and a professor of international relations and political theory at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. You can follow him on X: @aakatham. He writes a daily column for the National Security Journal.