Venezuela is preparing contingency plans that call for guerrilla-style resistance and deliberate street disorder if the United States mounts air or ground operations against the country, according to sources and planning documents reviewed by Reuters.
The preparations, described internally as “prolonged resistance” and a covert “anarchization” plan, reflect Caracas’s assessment that its conventional forces could not prevail against U.S. military power.
Under the “prolonged resistance” blueprint, small military units would disperse across more than 280 locations to carry out sabotage and irregular warfare tactics, while the “anarchization” option would reportedly rely on intelligence services and armed ruling-party supporters to foment chaos in Caracas and other cities to make occupation or governance difficult for any foreign force.
Sources said the two approaches are complementary and could be deployed depending on circumstances.
The plans acknowledge stark shortages in personnel, training and functioning equipment in Venezuela’s armed forces.
Much of the military hardware is decades-old and Russian-made; maintenance problems and supply shortfalls have left some units struggling even to feed troops, sources told Reuters.
Those inside assessments help explain why officials are betting on irregular tactics rather than a conventional defence.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has publicly invoked the idea of popular resistance and repeatedly rallied the military and allied militias, saying any foreign aggression would be met with “national unity.”
Maduro has claimed the deployment of thousands of portable anti-air missiles and other systems, rhetoric analysts say is aimed as much at deterrence through the threat of prolonged instability as at signaling true battlefield capability. Russia has said it stands ready to respond to Venezuelan requests for assistance, while urging against escalation.
The U.S. has recently stepped up strikes on vessels in the Caribbean and increased its military presence in the region; President Donald Trump has at times suggested the possibility of ground operations, though he later denied planning strikes inside Venezuela.
Washington frames some moves as part of an anti-narcotics campaign, but the strikes and deployments have heightened fears of a broader confrontation and prompted Caracas to press its contingency planning.
Analysts and the Reuters sources interviewed stressed the low odds any Venezuelan resistance strategy would succeed in a conventional fight.
Rank-and-file soldiers face poor pay and conditions, and while Maduro points to large militia numbers, independent estimates put the pool of likely active participants in orchestrated urban disorder at a few thousand rather than millions.
Observers say the principal aim of Caracas’s communications and preparations may be to raise the perceived cost and chaos of an intervention rather than to mount a sustainable military defence.
The communications ministry in Caracas did not respond to Reuters’s questions.
The developments come amid wider regional concern: U.N. experts and several governments have warned that strikes or covert actions in international waters and covert operations risk serious legal and humanitarian consequences and have called for de-escalation.
Source: Reuters
Written By Rodney Mbua
