The Caribbean is the New Front for US Decline

By Misión Verdad – Oct 29, 2025

On October 10, the Henry L. Stimson Center, one of Washington’s most influential security and strategy think tanks, published the analysis “The Strategic Costs of US Strikes Against Venezuela,” authored by Evan Cooper and Alessandro Perri. The text examines the potential consequences of the United States’ current policy toward Venezuela and the Caribbean and warns that any military escalation would leave Washington in a weaker, more isolated, and more vulnerable position.

From an institutional perspective far removed from critical approaches to US interventionism, the analysis acknowledges that the recent attacks and threats of new operations lack legal justification, increase regional instability, and expose the United States to a political and economic cost that is difficult to bear. Cooper and Perri describe three possible courses of action that the US could adopt: maintaining operations in the Caribbean, extending them into Venezuelan territory, or pursuing regime change.

In all scenarios, the projected outcome is the same: a loss of strategic legitimacy and a further erosion of US leadership in Latin America.

The Stimson Center’s warning does not come from a dissenting position but from the very intellectual core that has historically supported Washington’s foreign policy. For this reason, its diagnosis is significant.

Three scenarios, same dead end
The Stimson Center’s analysis identifies three possible paths in Washington’s military policy toward Venezuela and the Caribbean. Although they differ in scale and scope, all lead to the same point: a crisis of international legitimacy and increased regional instability that weakens the United States’ strategic position in the hemisphere.

The first scenario is the continuation of killings of civilians in Caribbean waters under the pretext of combating drug trafficking. As of October 28, 2025, at least 13 lethal attacks were carried out by US forces in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, resulting in 57 civilian deaths, including Venezuelan, Colombian, and Trinidadian citizens. The strikes, mostly carried out in areas of operation of the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), have been denounced by several governments in the region as violations of international law, and no links between the vessels and drug trafficking activities have been established.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro described the actions as a “war against all of Latin America,” while his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, called for restraint and respect for international law. Even governments that at one time held positions that were critical of Venezuela have repudiated the unilateral use of force in the region.

The second scenario is the extension of operations into Venezuela through air strikes or “selective” missions against alleged drug-trafficking groups. For the authors at Stimson, this option would entail even more serious consequences: it would turn Venezuela into an open war front and grant the Nicolás Maduro government a strengthened political position domestically and regionally. A direct attack on Venezuelan territory could trigger a sense of continental solidarity against a new foreign intervention.

The third scenario, the most extreme, is pursuing regime change. The article acknowledges that an operation of this nature would entail a large-scale war by the US against a state with organized armed forces, modern air defenses, and a significant social base. Furthermore, it underscores that the historical experience of regime changes imposed by foreign powers demonstrates their ineffectiveness: they generate institutional chaos, prolonged conflicts, and social fragmentation.

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The price of an impossible war
A direct intervention in Venezuela would represent an unsustainable strategic and economic cost for the United States. It would be a war of attrition that would deepen the United States’ internal fractures and undermine its international standing.

From a military standpoint, the report notes that Venezuela possesses a robust and diversified defense system, with Russian S-300VM radars, modernized F-16 fighters, Israeli-made missiles, and an integrated air defense network. In an open conflict scenario, defeating these capabilities would require a large-scale air and naval deployment, with a level of risk and expense comparable to prolonged operations in West Asia.

The analysis emphasizes that the supposed objective of curbing drug trafficking lacks any real basis. The authors point out that Venezuela is not a significant producer of fentanyl and that the main cocaine routes to the US run through the Pacific, not the Caribbean. The experience in Afghanistan, where US bombings of opium facilities failed to reduce production or the funding of armed groups, demonstrates that the use of force in such operations is ineffective.

In addition, there would be a global economic impact. An armed conflict with Venezuela would cause a 10% to 20% increase in oil prices, according to estimates cited in the report itself, which would directly impact the energy market and US consumers.

A doctrine of no return
The Stimson Center’s analysis offers, perhaps unintentionally, an implicit confirmation of what has already been highlighted by others: Washington’s policy of force in the Caribbean is part of a structural strategy of hemispheric control.

When Cooper and Perri describe the risks of unilateral actions, they are actually noting that the chain of command linking the White House, the Pentagon, and the CIA has, as a matter of course, carried out covert operations and targeted strikes without legal or political backing. In that regard, the report complements the analysis previously done by Misión Verdad, which described the formation of an operational axis between the CIA and the Pentagon within the framework of a reconfigured Monroe Doctrine.

The Stimson Center argues that a military escalation in the Caribbean or a direct assault on Venezuela would weaken the United States and accelerate its regional isolation. That conclusion, although framed as a warning, reveals that Washington recognizes the limits of its own power architecture but continues to act within it. That paradox defines current US foreign policy: the US continues to use war as a tool of geopolitical control despite being aware of the costs and contradictions.

The Caribbean, like West Asia or the Sahel before it, has become the arena where that doctrine is being put to the test. Venezuela, once again, finds itself at the center of this dispute because of its symbolic and geostrategic value. The Stimson Center’s discourse, like the Trump administration’s praxis, confirms that hybrid warfare is the contemporary means of exercising US hegemony in its own hemisphere.

(Misión Verdad)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

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