A frontal attack on Venezuela?

A new article entitled “How to Topple Maduro”, published Thursday by the highly influential “Foreign Affairs” journal, challenges the conclusion of our editorial from yesterday, “Next move on Venezuela”, which echoed the conclusions of a recent report by the International Crisis Group (ICG). This warned that, even if the U.S. succeeded in removing Maduro, it could a general breakdown in security, whether from senior military officers, parts of the security forces determined to “wage a guerrilla-type war against the new authorities,” other armed groups already active in the country, including the battle-hardened Colombian rebel group, the ELN, urban-based pro-Maduro gangs known as colectivos, or all of the above. The deterring premise is that the US would find such a war of attrition unacceptable.
The author of the new article is Elliott Abrams, who served as Special Representative for Venezuela in President Trump’s first term. He also helped prosecute the contra war in Nicaragua during the 1980s as Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs under former President Ronald Reagan and was former President George W. Bush’s senior Middle East adviser on the National Security Council (2002-2009) during which he promoted the U.S. invasion of Iraq. With this background, Abrams is uniquely positioned to comment credibly on the more hawk-like elements in the US administration – including president Donald Trump – on making a frontal attack on the Maduro regime in Venezuela, but without the need to commit large numbers of troops on the ground. It might very well, describe what Pres Trump has in mind when he recently broached the idea of extending Operation Southern Spear onto land.
This is his proposal: “First, Washington should expand its target list to include drug-trafficking speedboats in ports in addition to those on the high seas, because the threat must be brought home to the Venezuelan military. To protect U.S. planes that may strike targets in Venezuela (and to demonstrate that such strikes are planned), U.S. forces should destroy Venezuela’s air defense systems, F-16 fighter aircraft at the Palo Negro Air Base, and Sukhoi jets at the air base located on La Orchila, an island about 100 miles off the coast. Airstrikes should also target small airstrips in western Venezuela used for drug trafficking and bases in western Venezuela used by the National Liberation Army (known by its Spanish acronym, ELN), a Colombian terrorist group aligned with Maduro and also engaged in narcotics traffic.
“No single step would have a greater effect on the Venezuelan military, intelligence services, and police than removing [Interior Minister] Diosdado Cabello, the regime’s chief thug… …Removing him from power would show everyone in the regime’s security organs that they were not safe, and that its power to protect itself and them was fast eroding.
“It is not likely that [President Nicolas Maduro’s] regime could withstand such an assault,” according to Abrams, who stresses, that aside from the possible deployment of Special Forces to “apprehend indicted regime leaders,” “[i]t would be neither wise nor necessary to deploy U.S. ground forces to Venezuela.”
“Maduro’s departure from power [would be] followed by the installation of the legitimate government led by [Edmundo] González [the presidential opposition candidate widely believed to have defeated Maduro in the 2024 election], followed by economic recovery, free elections, and the kind of negotiated amnesty (for all but the top figures of the regime) and national reconciliation that has been possible in other Latin American countries after dictators have fallen. The loyalty of the army and police to the new government cannot be assumed, of course, but if it can pay them using frozen assets or loans, their fealty to the departed Maduro will rapidly disappear.”
“The escape hatch should be clear: Maduro’s departure from power, followed by the installation of the legitimate government led by González, followed by economic recovery, free elections, and the kind of negotiated amnesty (for all but the top figures of the regime) and national reconciliation that has been possible in other Latin American countries after dictators have fallen.”