Tactical Retreats: Why Venezuela’s Revolution Still Stands

By Manolo de los Santos – Mar 3, 2026

Just as the false claims of betrayal on January 3 are now easily disproved, so too are the claims of betrayal in the two months since.

The early morning hours of January 3, 2026, marked an inflection point in Venezuela and Latin America’s centuries-long struggle for self-determination and independence.

Operation Absolute Resolve, ordered by the Trump administration, constituted the most brutal and direct military assault on a sovereign state in the region in recent memory. In a shocking operation that left hundreds dead, President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores were illegally kidnapped from Venezuelan soil and transported to the United States, where they now face fabricated charges in a New York federal detention facility.

In the two months since this act of war, a torrent of speculation has emerged from so-called experts and pundits across the political spectrum. This has followed three main lines:

The operation’s success indicated treason at the highest levels of the Bolivarian Revolution.
Acting President Delcy Rodríguez and the remaining leadership have abandoned the Bolivarian project and socialist transformation, surrendering the country, its economy and its resources to US imperialism.
In foreign relations, the Venezuelan leadership has abandoned its historic anti-imperialism.

Taken together, these claims amount to a proclamation that regime change has succeeded in Venezuela.

They are each false, reflecting an amateurish and superficial approach to politics, reactive “hot takes” rather than real analysis or investigation, which provides a left-wing echo of Trump’s own presentation. To understand Caracas’s current trajectory requires a sober appraisal of what took place on January 3, a close look at the facts of Venezuela’s financial and commercial situation, and an honest assessment of the international correlation of forces in which Venezuela operates. It requires understanding what has changed in this new situation. To sort through the complicated reality of the present, certain examples in the history of socialist states can serve as a guide.

A close look at the facts will prove that what we are witnessing is not surrender but a tactical retreat in the face of overwhelming force for which there are clear analogies in revolutionary history.

The main claims that supposedly reveal “betrayal” are examined and refuted below, but before beginning, an important theoretical distinction must be drawn between government and state power. Government offices and ministries set and execute a range of policies, issue declarations, and so on, and temporarily change hands from “left” to “right.” The permanent institutions of state power (the military, the courts, and the police) represent the real power in any society. Almost all the leftist governments of the region have been elected to hold office in recent years, but they did not hold state power. Presiding over policy but with the same capitalist state in place (especially in the military), there is a clear limit to how much these governments can actually contest the capitalist order and transform social reality. The Bolivarian project likewise emerged as an electoral movement, with Chavez initially just holding government office, but with an important difference. Decades of US-funded coup attempts, internal struggles, and other crises have step by step led to the replacement of the forces loyal to the old order in the judiciary, police, and military with forces formed by and loyal to the Bolivarian Revolution. The United Socialist Party maintains its mission to advance working-class power and build socialism. The struggle may proceed in zig-zags, advances and retreats, based on the correlation of forces, but at every stage, the party works to preserve its gains and minimize its losses.

This is important because Venezuela’s concessions are primarily being made at the level of government, not at the state and party level.

Claim #1: The success of the US operation on January 3 indicated treason at the highest levels of the Bolivarian Revolution.

The so-called “evidence”

No US service members died in the operation that abducted Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores.
More than 150 US aircraft penetrated Venezuelan airspace without being shot down by the country’s advanced air defenses obtained from Russia.
The “peaceful” extraction of Maduro and Flores could have only occurred due to “collaboration” from Maduro’s inner circle. There was no immediate military counter-escalation by the Venezuelans.

The reality: Resistance in the face of overwhelming military superiority
Much more is now known about the events of January 3 than was initially clear. Contrary to the narrative imposed by Western media and repeated mindlessly by some on the left, there was resistance. Testimony from survivors and statements from President Trump himself confirm that the presidential security detail, alongside Venezuelan military units and a contingent of Cuban internationalist fighters, engaged the attacking forces in a firefight. Thirty-two Cuban combatants fell alongside more than 50 Venezuelans in the security forces and presidential guard, who defended the president with their lives.

First, US electronic warfare systems totally disabled the country’s air defenses and communications infrastructure. According to Venezuela’s defense minister Vladimir Padrino López, the US used Venezuela as a “laboratory” for weapons technologies never used before. Padrino is well-known as the military leader who consistently exposed US efforts to corrupt and bribe the military to turn on Maduro and the Bolivarian Revolution, as well as prior US assassination attempts. He personified the country’s “military-civic union” that blocked years of regime change efforts under the banner of “always loyal, never traitors.”

An official Venezuelan account of January 3 still has not been released, given that the country remains militarily surrounded (more on that later). But unofficial reports from witnesses and survivors back up Padrino’s comments. They recount that with all their communications and air defenses knocked out and all electricity in the area blacked out, Venezuela military forces were hit with drones and some kind of sonic weapon that incapacitated soldiers. Instantaneously, they were subjected to rapid and overpowering firepower that resulted in a one-sided massacre, even as they shot back.

In Trump’s State of the Union, he honored the pilot of the first Chinook helicopter, which landed at the presidential compound, carrying the Elite Delta Force units that then conducted the ground operation and kidnapped the president. The helicopter took heavy fire, severely injuring the pilot. The US has also admitted there were additional US casualties, although no deaths.

In preparation for this operation, it has since been revealed that the raid was rehearsed on a full-scale, exact replica of Nicolás Maduro’s compound, built in Kentucky. For weeks, Delta Force commandos practiced “blowing through steel doors at ever-faster paces” and memorizing the layout of corridors and safe rooms. Because Maduro was known to rotate between locations, they launched the operation only after he was confirmed to be at that specific site. Specialized nighttime aviation was provided by a group known as the “Night Stalkers.

The violence did not simply end, though. In leaked communications that have since been confirmed by multiple sources, Delcy Rodríguez revealed that from the first moments of contact on January 3, the Trump administration issued an ultimatum. Rodríguez stated, “The threats started the moment they kidnapped the president. They gave Diosdado, Jorge, and me 15 minutes to respond, or they would kill us.” Any refusal to negotiate, she said, would result not just in kidnapping, but the decapitation and annihilation of the remaining leadership of the Venezuelan state. They also were told that the US military would continue to surround the country. Every statement and every decision they made would be scrutinized as either a sign of compliance or resistance, and their lives could be taken at any moment.

This was negotiation at gunpoint, literally, and it has not ended. The moment required a leadership capable of making a necessary retreat to save the revolution, without fracturing its internal unity.

The United States did not succeed on January 3 because of betrayal by the Venezuelan leadership. It succeeded because, after over 25 years of failed coup attempts, economic warfare, and destabilization campaigns, imperialism finally deployed its most potent weapon: direct military intervention backed by technological superiority that no independent country in the developing world can successfully counter at present.

Analysis: Overwhelming hybrid war attack could not overcome political realities
The United States achieved its objective of capturing Maduro, but it did not achieve its objective of overthrowing the government or state. The remaining leadership, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, Minister of Interior Diosdado Cabello, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez, and the core of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and the Bolivarian armed forces, moved immediately to stabilize institutions, maintain continuity of command.

The US did not plan a larger occupation due to anticipated resistance and the armed mobilization of millions of the Venezuelan people. President Maduro’s call to massively expand the Bolivarian Militias saw over eight million citizens arm themselves. Combined with Venezuela’s professional military, which has not fractured, this created a scenario where any ground invasion would degenerate into a protracted people’s war, with unacceptable political and material costs for the United States. There remains a strong base of support for Chavismo, which the Trump administration tacitly admitted when it said there must be “realism” acknowledging that the Venezuelan right wing lacks the support to lead the country.

The Trump administration instead executed a surgical strike of extraordinary precision, as a way to shift the balance of forces and gain leverage with the Venezuelan government, which it had to accept could not be overthrown. No amount of bragging from Trump and Rubio about “regime change” can overcome this basic fact.

But when Delcy Rodríguez, now acting president, agreed to enter into dialogue with the Trump administration after the attack, many on the left reacted with confusion and dismay. Yes, Maduro and the leadership had pledged a people’s war, and if necessary, a guerrilla struggle along the lines of Vietnam. But the fact is, the US commandos were gone; there was no occupation force to fight. That should be understood as a feature of the revolution’s enduring strength, not weakness.

So how could the Bolivarian Revolution sit at the table with the very forces that had just murdered its defenders and kidnapped its president? The answer lies in the material conditions of survival and a proper understanding of revolutionary strategy. The revolution’s organized social base and military unity represented a kind of deterrent for foreign occupation, but that deterrent cannot expel the enormous military forces still surrounding it, imposing a total naval blockade of its oil while pointing advanced weaponry at their heads. On January 3, the government recognized the military reality and made a tactical decision to retain the institutions of state power under their control, to buy time and live to fight another day.

This decision has clearly required some concessions to the Empire but this too, requires closer scrutiny. Just as the false claims of betrayal on January 3 are now easily disproven, so too are the claims of betrayal in the two months since.

Claim 2: Acting President Delcy Rodríguez and the remaining leadership have abandoned the Bolivarian project, surrendering the country, its economy and its resources to US imperialism.

The so-called “evidence”

Venezuela has effectively opened its vast oil reserves to foreign private exploitation and sale.
Venezuela has initiated a process of “reconciliation” with the right-wing opposition, including freeing 2,500 prisoners convicted of forms of treason and violence.
US officials have been greeted in Miraflores Palace with smiles and musical accompaniment, typically accorded to allies and friends.

The reality: a new correlation of forces
Since January 3, the correlation of forces has been fundamentally altered. The US Navy’s largest regional armada in history has remained positioned off Venezuela’s coast.

No one is coming to Venezuela’s assistance. Looking at the region, in fact, we find right-wing governments in Argentina, Paraguay, Ecuador, El Salvador, Peru, and Bolivia outright celebrating the attack. Progressive governments in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico offered little more than rhetorical condemnation. The strategic support from Russia and China, while significant in preceding years, proved insufficient to deter imperial aggression and has also been primarily rhetorical. Each country has its own strategic military priorities. Direct intervention also poses the risk of a world war, and given their great distance, they would not have military forces in the region to sustain such a conflict.

The agreements taking shape between Caracas and Washington represent a bitter but necessary compromise. Under its terms, Venezuela has granted the United States significant control over its oil exports, returning to a licensing model similar to that previously operated by Chevron and other companies before the tightened blockade. After acquiring their licenses, foreign oil companies will no longer have to give a majority stake to the state as with previous joint ventures; taxes will be reduced, and they are free to sell their oil on the foreign market without selling to Venezuela’s state-owned company PDVSA. Instead, the US Energy Department has begun marketing Venezuelan crude with the assistance of commodity traders and banks, and Washington has claimed the authority to determine which companies may participate in rebuilding the country’s energy infrastructure. Under this arrangement, for the first time in decades and without any say in it, Venezuelan oil is reportedly even being shipped by foreign tankers to Israel—a country with which it has no relations whatsoever.

In exchange, Venezuela has gained access to revenue from its oil sales through two sovereign wealth funds overseas, effectively controlled by the US. These funds, while subject to US oversight, provide something the country has been denied for years under the sanctions regime: resources for investments in health, education, and infrastructure. The arrangement is exploitative and humiliating, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has openly described it as the US “taking all the oil.” But it keeps the Venezuelan state alive.

Is this a negation of Venezuela’s sovereignty over its oil decision-making? To some extent, yes. But core features of the agreement do correspond to Venezuela’s long-term desire to rebuild its oil exports to the United States, and resemble what Maduro himself was reportedly offering in negotiations with the Trump administration. This included an offer to reopen to US oil exploration and ownership in exchange for the removal of sanctions. This also corresponds to the reporting of Brazilian journalist Breno Altman. Based on discussions with Maduro’s son, Nicolás Maduro Guerra, Altman reported: “[Maduro] is informed, and his message is always one of support for the Acting President, Delcy Rodríguez.”

The fact of the matter is that Venezuela’s oil infrastructure was built primarily to service the US market, and US refinery infrastructure in the US south was largely built to process Venezuela’s crude. From a purely economic standpoint, these countries remain natural trading partners despite ideological opposition. Even under Chávez, the US bought 60% of Venezuela’s oil exports for a great deal of his presidency, and this constituted the majority of the country’s revenue. Even the expropriation of Venezuela’s foreign-owned oil projects was adopted by Chávez not chiefly as a matter of principle but a reaction to the attempts at sabotage and the deterioration of relations with those companies who refused his terms and exited the country.

In essence, the US was already crushing the Venezuelan oil industry and to devastating effect. First the oil corporations blocked the sale of unique parts and technologies to maintain their abandoned infrastructure. Then came a decade of financial and commercial sanctions, the sequestering of its overseas accounts (some of which remains, ridiculously, in the hands of Juan Guaidó) and finally a literal oil blockade. The Venezuelan economy as a whole had been greatly impacted by this loss of revenue, with soaring inflation, a shortage of hard currency and the collapse of a range of other industries. This is the real source of Venezuela’s out-migration. By releasing billions of revenue into the Venezuelan economy, even under these unjust siege-like conditions, it will undoubtedly lead to an improvement of living conditions. Millions are expected to participate in Venezuela’s people’s consultation on March 8, voting to select 36,000 commune-led initiatives, ranging from public service renovations to economic ventures, for government funding

The agreement with the Trump administration has also led Venezuela to amnesty over 5,000 people and release thousands of prisoners. This includes approximately 800 individuals convicted of different crimes associated with overthrowing the government, including violent acts. Those convicted of murder and “grave violations of human rights” or “crimes against humanity” will not be released. This amnesty, denounced in some quarters as freeing “political prisoners,” is better understood as strategic decompression. It further removes a pretext for humanitarian intervention, isolates the most intransigent sectors of the far-right opposition, and demonstrates that the Bolivarian state retains the authority to define the approach to its own judicial processes. We can assume that the Venezuelan government also hopes this will lead to recognition from other governments in the region and the world. Since the 2024 election, the government has been unable to maintain normal political and commercial relations with most governments in the region outside Cuba, Nicaragua, and a few small Caribbean nations.

Negotiation under gunpoint: Brest-Litovsk in the Caribbean
Here the history of the Russian Revolution provides an indispensable lesson. In 1918, the young Soviet Republic faced the advancing German imperial army with a shattered military and no capacity for effective resistance. Vladimir Lenin, against the objections of the so-called “Left Communists” who demanded a “revolutionary war” to defend the whole territory, led the young revolutionary state to sign the humiliating Brest-Litovsk Treaty. That agreement ceded vast territories, including all of Ukraine, and forty percent of Russia’s industrial base to German imperialism. It was, by any measure, a massive defeat.

Lenin’s critics called this a betrayal of the revolution, and especially of all the workers, peasants, and oppressed nationalities in the ceded territories who had fought and sacrificed everything in 1917, only to be returned to capitalism in the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty.

Yet Lenin understood what his critics did not: the goal was not to die beautifully but to preserve the political instrument of revolution. As the late Comandante Hugo Chávez reflected after the failure of the 1992 rebellion, “We must retreat today to advance tomorrow.” The treaty provided the breathing space necessary to consolidate the Soviet state, build the Red Army, and ultimately defeat not only the German Empire but the combined forces of counterrevolution and foreign intervention. Those who denounced Lenin as a traitor in 1918 were proved wrong by history. The ceded territories all ended up back in the USSR a few years later.

Still, this was not the end of retreats and compromises. Dealing with conditions of famine caused primarily by the civil war, Lenin accepted humanitarian aid from US capitalist charities, established relations with the countries that had just invaded it, and re-established deep economic and commercial ties to German imperialism. Abandoning “war communism,” he guided the state towards the mass reintroduction of capitalist property relations and invited foreign companies. This laid the groundwork, for instance, for the Soviet state to sign agreements with Ford Motor Company (led by fascist sympathizer Henry Ford) to set up shop.

What the government, through Delcy Rodríguez, executes today should be seen in this light. Seated across from US Energy Secretary Chris Wright, receiving CIA Director John Ratcliffe in Miraflores, these are not acts of capitulation but of survival under conditions of extreme duress. Whether she smiles or exchanges the same ceremonial welcome afforded to other state visits is irrelevant. The goal is to give up what can be temporarily sacrificed, oil control, market access, even 800 people convicted of violent crimes, to preserve what cannot be replaced: the revolutionary state, the party, and the lives of its leading cadres who have played an indispensable role in cohering the Bolivarian project as a whole. With that foundation preserved, a retreat now can become a step forward later.

Claim #3: In foreign relations, the Venezuelan leadership has abandoned its historic anti-imperialism.

The so-called “evidence”

When US-Israeli forces attacked Iran on February 28, 2026, the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry issued a carefully worded statement that, while condemning the aggression, also condemned the “undue” reprisals carried out by Iran against the Gulf states hosting US bases. The statement was later deleted.
Delcy Rodríguez posted a statement that expressed “solidarity” with Qatar after a phone call with its Emir, a close US ally. No statements of solidarity were issued with Iran.

The reality: Venezuela remains under the gun and wants to preserve its Qatari relationship
This criticism forgets that the Qatar relationship has played a particularly important role for Venezuela in recent years. Qatar has actually hosted Venezuela’s sovereign wealth funds and therefore controls Venezuela’s access to its own oil revenue there. Qatar was also the mediator and host of the last rounds of US-Venezuela negotiations. Venezuela had publicly thanked Qatar in particular for its role in securing the release of political prisoner Alex Saab from US prisons.

More than anything, this criticism forgets that Venezuela remains under the direct threat of US annihilation. Every word and statement remains under the tightest scrutiny, with the highest stakes. CIA Director Ratcliffe has personally warned Venezuelan officials that any deals will be off the table if it serves as a “safe haven” for US adversaries. In such a situation, diplomacy is not a profession of genuine faith but an instrument for preserving sovereign existence.

The formal close relations between Caracas and Tehran remain intact, but to proclaim solidarity with Iran against the US in this massive war would not only cut off a Qatari relationship that has become quite consequential; it would provide Washington with a pretext for a second and far more devastating series of strikes.

Who is Delcy Rodriguez really?
Much of the “betrayal” narrative has focused on the personage of Acting President Delcy Rodríguez. This lacks any real evidence, appears totally false, and is a classic tactic in US military strategy and psychological operations.

The Rodríguez family’s revolutionary credentials are etched in struggle and blood. The father of Delcy and her brother Jorge (the president of the National Assembly) was Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, a leader of the Socialist League, a Marxist-Leninist organization, which received training in Cuba. He was tortured and murdered by the Punto Fijo regime in 1976, in close coordination with the CIA when Delcy was seven years old. Both Delcy and her brother Jorge emerged from this tradition of clandestine and mass struggle for socialism. President Maduro himself was a cadre of the same organization. After Delcy Rodríguez returned to Venezuela from studies abroad, she threw herself into the Chavista movement and government alongside her brother, both of whom became top advisors to Maduro and among his most trusted negotiators and representatives in the most sensitive internal and international matters. She declared that building the Bolivarian Revolution would be revenge for the murder of her father, a form of justice. To suggest betrayal among them or capitulation born of cowardice or opportunism ignores four decades of shared political formation and sacrifice.

In his first statement on January 3, Trump implied that Delcy Rodríguez had expressed a willingness to cooperate with the US and meet its demands. Some on the left believed him, interpreting this as a sign of capitulation. Her press conference that same day reaffirmed Venezuela’s sovereignty and their own demands to the US, including the release of President Maduro. The next day, after leading a meeting of the party and state leadership, during which the unity of the military was also reaffirmed, she published a message calling on the US government to work together with Venezuela towards peace and development, but on the framework of sovereignty and equality.

This statement echoed every statement made by Maduro in the past and throughout the years of tensions with the US. Maduro himself consistently called for diplomacy and direct high-level negotiation to avoid an all-out war, and had already offered to negotiate comprehensive economic agreements with the US for Venezuela’s oil and mineral resources. Any such deals would have undoubtedly been conditioned on dialing down and downplaying strategic alliances with named “US adversaries,” including Iran, Russia and China. We can presume each of these countries would understand this given that they have clearly made similar difficult tactical decisions in recent history in the service of self-preservation and national interests. Nonetheless Delcy Rodríguez has repeatedly affirmed that Venezuela will continue to develop relations with people all countries.

If the Venezuelan government under Delcy Rodríguez were to sign a similar deal to what Maduro offered, but now with Maduro kidnapped, it would not constitute treason. It does raise the question of course of why then Trump decided to kidnap Maduro at all, but this has more to do with maintaining his own “tough guy” reputation than a substantive policy difference. In the weeks before January 3, sections of the ruling-class media were especially taunting Trump as a “loser” if he came to a deal that left Maduro in power. He needed a trophy and wanted to come out looking like the strongman who could dictate terms to anyone. Trump is claiming victory, that “we’re in charge.” He’s doing so chiefly for domestic political purposes. But that does not make it so. Unable to carry out actual regime change, he is essentially using words to falsely declare “the regime is changed.”

For her part, Delcy Rodríguez has stated that the return of Maduro and Flores remain the central objective of negotiations with the US.

Two Months After Maduro’s Kidnapping: Venezuelans Flood Streets in Nationwide Show of Sovereignty

Neutralizing the right-wing and seeking normalized relations
One unintended but significant consequence of this negotiation has been a massive political setback of the long-time US-backed opposition, which has been used to deprive Venezuela of normal international relations. María Corina Machado, who spent years calling for foreign military intervention and celebrating sanctions that devastated the Venezuelan people, has been rendered irrelevant since January 3. She has secured nothing from an administration that now deals directly with the government in Miraflores.

By establishing direct state-to-state relations based on the only commodity US imperialism truly values, oil, the Bolivarian leadership has outflanked the opposition. The United States, in its brutal pragmatism, has chosen to negotiate with the only force that actually controls territory and resources rather than with exile figures who command no real power. In their hasty retreat, Rubio and Trump went so far as to publicly discredit their handpicked opposition figure, thereby de facto recognizing the Bolivarian state as the sole governing entity. A full normalization of relations and recognition of the Venezuelan government is still a ways away, and may require even more tactical retreats and concessions, but if it takes place it will be regarded as a strategic victory for the Bolivarian project.

The task of international solidarity
For the left forces outside Venezuela, the current moment demands clarity about what solidarity means. It does not mean endorsing or defending each and every statement of the Venezuelan government, given the situation it is now operating under. But it also does not mean demanding that the Venezuelan leadership commit suicide in a gesture of revolutionary purity or honor. It does not mean echoing US propaganda about “splits” and “traitors” without evidence. It does not mean measuring every tactical decision against an abstract standard that no revolutionary project in history has ever met.

Solidarity means understanding that Delcy Rodríguez, sitting face-to-face with the representatives of an empire that has long targeted her own family, is engaged in the most difficult kind of revolutionary work: survival under conditions of maximum duress, with the future of 30 million people on the line. Her goal is to preserve a project that has transformed the Venezuelan state, restored Venezuela’s independence, instituted impressive social reforms, created a communal sector, and has held out against a sustained imperial economic, military, and political assault in a context of global isolation and an era of counter-revolution. To engage in revolutionary martyrdom in this context would achieve nothing but lead to the liquidation of the Venezuelan left and set back the Venezuelan revolution for generations.

The revolution has not ended. It has temporarily retreated, regrouped, and is fighting by other means. The breathing space purchased through these negotiations, however costly, provides the conditions for future advances.

Nicolás Maduro remains the legitimate president of Venezuela, even as he sits unjustly in jail cell, deprived of even the ability to pay his legal fees. The oil that flows north under this agreement is not tribute but ransom, paid to secure the lives of the Venezuelan people and the continuity of the socialist state. When the correlation of forces shifts, and it will shift, Venezuela will fight to reclaim what imperialism has temporarily extracted.

The point is not to die for the revolution, but to live and make the revolution.

(People’s Dispatch)