US Think Tank Advises Pentagon on Attacking Venezuela

By Misión Verdad – Nov 11, 2025

The Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), one of the most influential national security think tanks in Washington, with close ties to the Pentagon, the US State Department, and the military–industrial complex, published a report offering a technical and calculated assessment of the US military deployment in the Caribbean since August 2025.

The tone of the report is deliberately neutral, but its analytical framework reveals an operational logic typical of the US establishment: war is presented as a matter of management of forces, escalation thresholds, and theories of victory.

While the report could be described as a propaganda document, it is more accurate to call it cognitive groundwork—not to convince the Venezuelan public but to legitimize options for US foreign policy audiences and allies. This is one of the main objectives of US think tanks when they publish their reports, especially organizations like CSIS, that is, entities deeply embedded in the corridors of power in Washington.

The data: selective precision and structural omissions
CSIS boasts of using “data,” and indeed, it offers some concrete figures [regarding the US military deployment off the coast of Venezuela]:

2,200 Marines from the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU);
10 F-35s in Puerto Rico;
150 members of the Special Operations Forces (SOF) on the Ocean Trader;
4,500 crew members on the USS Gerald R. Ford, plus 960 on its escort ships;
Around 170 Tomahawk missiles projected into the area with the arrival of the Carrier Strike Group (CSG).

The report also provides data on the operational readiness of the Bolivarian National Armed Force (FANB) of Venezuela. These are plausible figures, derived from open sources, satellite observations, official statements, and air and naval movement records. Overall, there is no evidence of falsification but, rather, of curation of data. CSIS systematically omits any data that complicates the narrative of absolute asymmetry:

The status of Venezuelan electronic warfare systems is not mentioned, which could affect the accuracy of GPS-guided munitions such as JDAMs.
The ability to disperse and camouflage critical assets (command centers, radars, SAM batteries), a tactic learned from the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, is not addressed.
The vulnerability of US surface vessels—especially aircraft carriers—to asymmetric threats such as anti-ship missiles, maritime drones, or smart mines is not addressed.

The report assumes unrestricted maritime dominance, as if the US Navy’s doctrine of Littoral Operations in Contested Environments (LOCE) had not already recognized the limitations of carrier strike groups (CSGs) against low-cost A2/AD (anti-access/area denial) environments.

Additionally, CSIS treats the “150 SOF on the Ocean Trader” as neutral data, without contextualizing that the vessel—a converted logistics support ship—has been used in covert operations in Africa and the Caribbean for decades.

Its deployment is strategic: it facilitates influence operations, sabotage, and support for non-state actors without leaving a diplomatic footprint.

Therefore, we are not in the context of a conventional war deployment; rather, it is hybrid warfare in its purest form.

CSIS implicitly acknowledges this by mentioning that the deployed forces are insufficient for an invasion but sufficient for “air and missile strikes.”

This distinction is crucial: the threshold of “realism” is no longer invasion but aerial coercion and systemic destabilization.

The narrative of the “archer with drawn bow”
One of the report’s most revealing metaphors is that of the archer with the bow drawn: the US is no longer preparing; it is deciding.

The arrival of the Ford CSG—a combat group designed for power projection in high-intensity scenarios—is presented as a symbolic point of no return: “Poorly structured for anti-drug efforts, ideal for attacks against Venezuela.”

This statement is not innocent: CSIS is pointing out that the deployment has already gone beyond its official justification (the fight against drug trafficking) and entered a phase of coercive deterrence, at least in the Caribbean, while continuing operations in the eastern Pacific.

In this sense, the objective—still—is not to overthrow President Maduro by force—because there is no way to do so—but rather to create the conditions for him to collapse under pressure. The report makes it explicit: the initial attacks would be “to see what effect they have.”

It is a shock-and-assess logic, not a shock-and-awe one (Iraq-style).

Here, CSIS reveals its close ties to Pentagon planning:

Three sets of targets are considered: cartels (legal justification), the Maduro government (political objective), and dual-use facilities (the bridge between the two).
Targets that fragment internal control are prioritized: security forces, military telecommunications, and barracks.
Civilian economic targets (refineries, energy) are avoided not for humanitarian reasons, but out of calculation: a “short war” requires a viable “day after.”

It is notable how CSIS, in ruling out attacks on civilian infrastructure, does not do so on ethical grounds but because Venezuela’s “GDP had already contracted by 80% between 2013 and 2020.” In other words, according to its own narrative, there is nothing left to destroy that has not already been destroyed, and what remains is necessary for the “post-Maduro transition.” Better to call it the management of destroyed assets, never compassion.

US Navy’s Largest Aircraft Carrier Arrives in Caribbean Under Southern Command

Structural biases in the CSIS analysis
Although the report avoids ideological language, its assumptions reveal deeply ingrained biases:

Technocentric vision: It reduces war to firepower, sensor range, and the number of platforms. It underestimates factors such as morale, social cohesion, popular resistance, or the Venezuelan government’s ability to mobilize.
Military determinism: It assumes that the balance of power determines the political outcome. However, in asymmetric conflicts, political will and persistence often outweigh technical superiority (Vietnam, Afghanistan).
Deliberate underestimation of third parties: Russia “cannot offer much;” China is not mentioned. This is not a mistake: it is strategic wishful thinking. CSIS needs to believe that Venezuela is a manageable regional problem and not a front for global confrontation. However, this reading is strategically flawed because if Moscow or Tehran decide to directly provide services and expertise on the ground, for example, the cost calculus for the US would change dramatically.

There is also another critical omission: US public opinion is not analyzed. CSIS assumes that Trump can escalate without any domestic political cost, but polls show that most Americans reject military interventions in Latin America, especially after Afghanistan.

A prolonged air campaign with casualties (however minimal) or intelligence errors (civilian targets) could generate domestic resistance that even Trump would not be able to ignore.

A transitional document between coercion and war
The CSIS report normalizes war; it does not offer a prophesy. It is a manual for making decisions with one’s eyes more or less open but with one’s fingers on the trigger.

Its value lies in its technical transparency: it exposes the real limits of the current US military deployment (insufficient for invasion, sufficient for coercion), the escalation thresholds (initial attacks, then assessment, and then a prolonged air campaign), and the political pitfalls of the “day after” (a factor that it has failed to even acknowledge as a possibility, since it lacks any political assets to guarantee it, such as Juan Guaidó, Edmundo González Urrutia, or María Corina Machado).

Its danger lies in what it silences: the Venezuelan agency, non-militarized social resistance, the ability to improvise in environments of scarcity, and the fact that no government collapses solely under external pressure if it maintains internal cohesion and popular support.

CSIS understands war as a chain of rational decisions. However, in Venezuela, as in so many places, history is not written solely with missiles and F-35s; it is also written with loyalty, willpower, and strategic thinking.

These are variables that do not fit into a table of forces.

(Misión Verdad)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/SC/SL