The revolution will not be televised; it will come via meme. We will know soon enough whether Donald Trump decides to oust Venezuela’s regime. Trump’s seemingly random obsession with the country is a distillation of his foreign policy. He is targeting it for domestic US reasons, building his case via social media and is contemptuous of law and ethics. Since Venezuela is in America’s backyard, regime change would carry few risks of global escalation.
The question is whether he can pull off regime change without putting US boots on the ground. The roughly 15,000 US military personnel Trump has put within striking distance of Venezuela is a measure of his ambivalence. By a factor of at least 10, the US presence is too great for even an intensified anti-drug operation. That is why even fishing boats are not safe. Yet the US build-up is too small for a land invasion. This puts Trump in a no man’s land between overkill and underprepared.
His hope thus seems to be to remove Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, via intimidation. That Trump’s manoeuvres are performative makes them no less real. Last weekend, he announced a no-fly zone. Yet he did this on social media rather than through the Pentagon. Though it would be a brave aircraft that strays into Venezuelan airspace, Trump’s edict carries no operational force. “Don’t read anything into it,” he said the next day. Naturally pilots are reading into it. Venezuelan airspace has gone quiet.