Imperial Disaster: An Assessment of Trump's Operation in the Caribbean

By Misión Verdad – Dec 29, 2025

The maximum pressure operation launched by the Trump administration against Venezuela—centered in the Caribbean during the last quarter of 2025—is a strategic failure and a comprehensive defeat: diplomatically, militarily, legally, and symbolically.

What began as a multisectoral offensive to fracture the Venezuelan state and force a regime change in favor of its economic subordination has resulted in a crisis of legitimacy for Washington, a consolidation of a certain degree of regional and global resistance, and the exposure of criminal practices that threaten to destabilize the US power apparatus from within.

The offensive and its components: military coercion, false narrative, extrajudicial lethality
The strategy was deployed on three intertwined fronts, under the premise of US exceptionalism and the permanent invocation of an alleged “existential emergency.”

In military terms, tens of thousands of troops were concentrated in the Caribbean Basin—the largest presence since the Cold War. Operation Southern Spear was presented as a “humanitarian mission” by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

However, the contrast between the rhetorical facade and the operational practice is abysmal: without verification processes, gradual warnings, or captures, the US Armed Forces have carried out over 20 airstrikes against small boats allegedly linked to drug trafficking. These strikes have left a toll of over 100 civilians dead—among them Venezuelan, Colombian, and Trinidadian fishermen and crew members—in just four months.

The total absence of military courts, proportionality reviews, or accountability mechanisms turns each operation into an act of extrajudicial execution.

This pattern is not accidental; it is rooted in an institutional architecture that, as Parker Yesko’s research demonstrates, has normalized systematic impunity since Iraq and Afghanistan.

To give just one example: The September 2 strike—where two survivors, already out of action and clinging to the wreckage of their boat, were killed in the water—was not an operational deviation, but the materialization of a deliberate policy. Former military legal advisors (JAGs) have denounced orders such as “leave no survivors,” issued or validated by Hegseth. Under Title 18, §2441 of the US Code, these actions constitute conduct that can be classified as a war crime.

The Pentagon’s refusal to release the full video of that attack, despite having already released over 20 edited clips, reinforces the hypothesis that this is not a tactical failure, but a deliberate concealment strategy, where illegal violence is the central instrument of geopolitical control.

Geopolitical costs: hemispheric isolation and multipolar counterweight
Far from isolating Venezuela, the escalation has produced an unprecedented convergence in Latin America. Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico—three actors with divergent political agendas and historically tense relations with Caracas—have clearly condemned the military deployment.

Brazilian President Lula described it as a threat to regional peace, and Colombian President Petro suspended intelligence cooperation and condemned the attacks as assassinations. Meanwhile, Mexico demanded an immediate end to all armed pressure.

This regional triangulation does not respond to ideological affinities but to a shared perception of strategic risk. The US operation threatens Venezuelan sovereignty and undermines the principle of nonintervention that has sustained the South American security architecture since the Santiago Declaration (1986) and the Treaty of Tlatelolco.

The impact transcends the hemisphere. Russia and China have reaffirmed their support for Venezuela as part of a structural dispute over the configuration of the world order.

Speaking at the Security Council, Russian UN Ambassador Nebenzya condemned “unprecedented pressure” and warned that any attack would be an “irreparable mistake.” Meanwhile, Beijing insisted that Venezuela’s internal affairs should be resolved without sanctions or intervention.

This convergence is not circumstantial; it reflects the consolidation of a multipolar axis that offers alternative financial, energy, and diplomatic routes to unilateral dependence on Washington.

In this context, the Caribbean offensive not only fails to isolate Venezuela but accelerates its integration into value chains and alliances that erode US hegemony in the Global South. This is a strategic paradox that underlines the blindness of imperial planning.

Political costs: institutional breakdown and erosion of consensus
The operation has generated a governance crisis within the United States, fueling an institutional conflict that transcends partisan polarization. The bipartisan Congress has questioned the legality and transparency of the operations. A clause in the National Defense Authorization Act withholds part of the Pentagon’s budget until the full video of the September 2 attack is released. The measure was approved with 77 votes in favor and only 20 against, demonstrating widespread rejection.

Even senators like Lindsey Graham, a longtime advocate of armed intervention, implicitly acknowledged the overtly military nature of the operation by comparing it to the 1989 invasion of Panama. Meanwhile, Rand Paul condemned the violation of due process, and Chris Van Hollen called the second attack a “very likely war crime.”

These criticisms are not due to a sudden “humanist turn” but to a logic of internal dispute. In a context of deep fragmentation of the Republican Party—between MAGA, neoconservatives, and moderates—and with a presidential approval rating at historic lows (36%), the operation in the Caribbean has become a symbolic battleground.

As Senator Chris Murphy pointed out, the briefing given by Hegseth and Rubio lasted barely 50 minutes, with little time for questions and no clarity on the ultimate goal—to overthrow Maduro, to control the oil, or both. This exposes a strategic vacuum that undermines even the internal coherence of the executive branch.

The militarization of foreign policy, far from consolidating support, has generated an institutional boomerang effect. Each escalation increases the risk of litigation, formal investigations, and legislative obstacles that threaten to paralyze the White House’s energy, budgetary, and sanctions agenda.

Failure to achieve the core objectives: there is no surrender, no fracture, no subordination
The stated and underlying objectives of the US operation have not only failed to materialize but have actually backfired. The “psychological pressure” exerted against the Venezuelan Armed Force (FANB) and political leadership has not created fractures. On the contrary, it has strengthened institutional cohesion and the government’s internal legitimacy.

Maduro remains in power with significant popular support, evidenced in the recent regional and municipal elections, and with a growing capacity for diplomatic projection.

Trump’s rhetorical openness to “dialogue” in November, which disappeared in December (we will see soon in January), was not a sign of a willingness to understand but a tacit recognition of stalemate. When coercion does not produce surrender, the language of dialogue is instrumentalized as a last tactical resource to reposition oneself without de-escalating.

In economic terms, the “maximum pressure” strategy has also failed to achieve its central objective: control over strategic resources. Although Washington has seized oil tankers carrying millions of barrels of crude, this does not alter Venezuela’s ownership structure or energy sovereignty.

The US corporations, such as ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, have not returned to Venezuela, and any future negotiations will necessarily have to go through the current government.

Trump’s admission: “They took all our oil… We want it back”—is not bravado, but desperation. It is a confession that the strategy of strangulation has not generated concessions, and that the only possible way is the direct recognition of the interlocutor that was intended to be eliminated.

In that sense, the operation has achieved exactly the opposite of its intention. It has not weakened Venezuela, but has forced the US to confront it as a sovereign power on an equal footing—a symbolic defeat of the first order.

The symptom of a decline
This disaster is structural, not circumstantial. It reflects the collapse of a strategy based on unilateralism, blackmail, and legalized piracy—a strategy that no longer resonates even with Washington’s traditional allies.

Yesko’s investigation into war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrates that systematic impunity is an entrenched pattern. What is new is that, today, the pattern is being broken in real time, with public condemnations, leaks, and demands for accountability from within the system.

Russia Reaffirms Unwavering Support for Venezuela Amid US Imperialist Aggression

The difference lies not in the violence—which remains brutal—but in the world’s ability to name it, document it, and resist it.

Trump’s crude verbalization on December 16—”give back our oil, our land, our assets”—is no minor provocation. It is the brutal transparency of an imperial doctrine that no longer needs to pretend.

However, this frankness is not a sign of strength, but narrative exhaustion. When the story of the “fight against narcoterrorism” fades in the face of the evidence of hundreds of murdered civilians, all that remains is the naked confession of recolonization.

The problem is that the world no longer accepts that script. What the US has achieved is not the subjugation of Venezuela, but the construction of a new balance of power: a more sovereign region (for the time being), a more cohesive Global South, and an empire that, by exposing its war crimes as a tactic, has shed its last mask of moral exceptionalism.

The US disaster in the Caribbean is evidence that the era of unipolar hegemony has entered its terminal phase.

(Misión Verdad)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

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