Why Venezuela’s Military Did Not Fight

Yet the question as to why can’t Russia and China protect its perceived partners, can be answered today with another question, which is Why didn’t the Venezuelan military fight against the US?

Venezuela’s New President, Delcy Rodríguez, and the Venezuelan Defense Council

US President Donald Trump in a press conference stated that the US will run Venezuela now making it seem as if the new president of Venezuela Delcy Rodriguez, who was until Maduros’ kidnapping the Vice-President, will do the bidding of the US. Hours after Trump’s press conference Delcy Rodriguez made a televised address to the South American nation in which she made it clear that she considered the United States an illegal invader that must be repelled. Her defiance of Trump made it clear that Trump’s plans to invade and rule Venezuela as a US prize will face far more obstacles than he suggested in his Saturday press conference, in which he declared victory in Venezuela.

That being said, Delcy Rodríguez’s defiant televised address, condemning the US as an illegal invader, could be a performative act strictly in keeping with her side of a clandestine bargain. Her public fury and vows of resistance provide essential political cover, allowing her to maintain credibility and authority with the Bolivarian base and military while privately adhering to the terms that permitted Maduro’s removal. This calculated display of defiance ensures the Venezuelan government surviving architecture can manage the transition, positioning Rodríguez as a leader of “resistance” rather than a collaborator in a negotiated surrender.

Unraveling The Deal

Trump also alleged a series of specific operational details regarding the military action in Venezuela emphasizing that while several US special forces operatives were injured, there were no American fatalities. According to Trump, the assault leveraged overwhelming air power, with approximately 150 aircraft deployed to control the skies and respond to any threats, though one fixed-wing aircraft and several helicopters sustained repairable damage. A key to the operation’s alleged speed and success was the prior destruction of Venezuelan air defense systems, which allowed special forces helicopters to reach their target unimpeded. Yet despite Venezuela possessing advanced air defenses like the S-300 and portable MANPADS useful against helicopters, the Venezuelan military did not deploy them against the US assault. Trump concluded by asserting that the United States maintained the option to execute further strikes against Venezuela if necessary.

The meticulously crafted narrative of a daring military raid, complete with operational specifics and tales of heroism, serves a crucial political purpose, to obscure the far more likely scenario of a negotiated surrender by Venezuela. By glorifying the violent spectacle of a capture, the account actively suppresses the inconvenient truth that the operation’s success almost certainly required, and resulted from, a prior agreement with powerful factions within the Maduro regime itself. This emphasis on overwhelming force masks a behind-the-scenes bargain where regime elites, particularly in the military and intelligence services, exchanged the president for guarantees of their own safety, political survival, and protection from prosecution, transforming a potential bloody invasion into a managed transition that served both the invading power and the existing power structure, at the expense of a revolutionary narrative.

Back in october I wrote a piece “Can Russia And China Project Military Power To Help Venezuela?” which curious readers should read to understand the limitations of any help from powers of the eastern hemisphere. Yet the question as to why can’t Russia and China protect its perceived partners, can be answered today with another question, which is Why didn’t the Venezuelan military fight against the US? The intertwined questions of why global powers like Russia or China cannot shield their partners and why local militaries sometimes refuse to fight show a fundamental factor in international relations which is that the calculus of power is ultimately local, national, and profoundly personal. In the case of Venezuela despite years of political, economic, and rhetorical support from Moscow and Beijing, including arms sales, joint military exercises, and diplomatic shielding at the UN, economic deals , the Venezuelan military did not mount a conventional defense when faced with the palpable threat of US intervention. This was not due to a failure of Russian or Chinese commitment at that moment, but rather because the Venezuelan government and military’s primary allegiance was to its own institutional survival and the stability of the state it embodies. For senior officers, a war against the United States was not a winnable ideological struggle, but a suicidal act that would guarantee their destruction and the nation’s collapse.

This dynamic exposes the severe limitations of “perceived ally” protection in a unipolar,or now, multipolar,world. Russia and China can provide deterrents, economic lifelines, and diplomatic cover, but they cannot transplant their will into the command structures of sovereign nations. The protection they offer exists within a specific bandwidth, it is potent against sanctions, potent in proxy conflicts where they control the terrain as in Syria for Russia, and potent in supplying the tools of internal security, however, it hits a hard red line at direct, conventional military confrontation with the United States. For Caracas, Moscow and Beijing were sources of resilience against regime change, not guarantors of victory in a hot war. When the ultimate choice between capitulation and annihilation was presented, the local power chose to preserve itself, understanding that its great-power partners would not, and likely could not, escalate to a world war on its behalf.

Furthermore, the Venezuelan example underscores that the very nature of perceived alliances is often asymmetrical and transactional. For Russia and China, Venezuela is a strategic node in a broader contest,a foothold in America’s backyard, a source of energy deals, and a symbol of resistance to Western hegemony. For the Venezuelan military, however, the primary duty is to the nation’s territorial integrity and its own institutional continuity. When an external threat of overwhelming force materializes, the ideological and transactional benefits of the distant alliance pale before the immediate reality of survival. No amount of Russian propaganda or Chinese loans can convince a general to order his troops into a battle where they will be annihilated, inviting the total ruin of their country, for the geopolitical benefit of a partner half a world away.

Ultimately, the question of protection circles back to the essence of sovereignty and interest. Russia and China protect allies insofar as it serves their strategic interests and does not risk catastrophic escalation. They are not global security guarantors in the mold of a mutual defense treaty like NATO. Conversely, the militaries of nations like Venezuela are not mercenary forces for foreign powers, they are national institutions with a deeply ingrained instinct for self-preservation. Therefore, the inability to protect is not always a failure of the protector, but more often a reflection of a cold, local reality that when faced with existential confrontation, the protected will ultimately act in their own perceived national interest, which may be to stand down, not to fight a doomed war for the sake of a distant patron’s prestige. The Venezuelan military’s standing down was not a betrayal of Moscow or Beijing, but a definitive assertion of this sober, unforgiving logic.

The Venezuelan Stand Down And The Syrian Comparison

The stunning collapse of Venezuelan resistance to a US military intervention, without a major, coordinated defensive battle can be best understood as a catastrophic failure of “regime resiliency.” This concept is now tragically underscored by the parallel, final collapse of the Syrian Arab Army and the Assad regime in late 2024. The comparison between Caracas and Damascus reveals a factor which is that while an army’s internal cohesion can stave off collapse for years, as in Syria, its ultimate endurance against combined internal and external threats depends on a fragile calculus of foreign patronage and the leader’s willingness to fight to the death. Both cases demonstrate that when that calculus tips, the military and government institutions’ will to sacrifice for the leader evaporates, prioritizing its own continuity or survival.

In Venezuela, the armed forces were structured as an instrument of internal political control and patronage, not for existential external defense. The Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) was transformed under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, with its primary mission shifting to guaranteeing the socialist revolution. Loyalty was gained through control of state industries but when faced with a direct US attack, this set up disintegrated. For senior officers, the choice was between personal and institutional survival and certain annihilation. The FANB, possessed no deep, sacrificial commitment to Maduro personally as their main allegiance was to the state apparatus. When that apparatus was decapitated either by his disappearance, or by the deal being done as the US presented an ultimatum, the institutional will to fight evaporated and they chose to preserve the shell of the state.

In Syria, Russian and Iranian support was decisive for over a decade, but it was conditional on the existence of a viable, fighting local entity. Russia could offer asylum, but it would not wage a doomed urban siege of Damascus on behalf of a leader who had already quit. Similarly, in Venezuela, Russian and Chinese support created a mirage of strength but could not compensate for the absence of local will. When the crisis came, the critical component, the will of the Venezuelan high command to order the use of advanced defenses and absorb a devastating retaliation was absent.

Ultimately, the fate of Syria and Venezuela show a brutal hierarchy in modern conflict. At the pinnacle is a military with deep, existential cohesion fighting for a leader who shares its fate. Just below is a military and political apparatus with transactional loyalty to a leader who fails the ultimate test of shared fate, leading to rapid institutional capitulation, as seen in both Damascus and Caracas. Foreign backers like China and Russia are force multipliers, not foundational pillars and this is even more so for Latin American and the Caribbean region states. Russia and China can only sustain a fight that already exists, they cannot create the will to fight from nothing, nor can they sustain it once the local leader’s commitment to a shared doom is broken. The Venezuelan military chose the preservation of the state over a war for Maduro just as the Syrian military did in the end, appearing to have made a similar calculation of standing down.