In the image
Parade of a unit of the Bolivarian Armed Forces of Venezuela [FANV].
The naval deployment ordered by Donald Trump in the limits of Venezuela's territorial waters easily brings to mind the 1989 U.S. intervention in Panama to oust Manuel Noriega from power (and arrest him: the military operation did not end until the Panamanian tyrant boarded a plane and was transferred to a Miami jail).
Up to the very moment of the invasion, Noriega always believed that the United States was bluffing and would not dare to put its soldiers on Panamanian soil, even though Washington already had its troops "inside" the country, in the wide strip on both sides of the Canal whose sovereignty Panama had ceded to the Americans (logically, a larger contingent was added and more appropriate units were used for the operation).
Noriega had some moments of doubt and even lent himself to negotiations for his departure, but at the last moment his conviction that George H. W. Bush would not order the attack weighed more heavily. His self-confidence even led him to abuse the patience of the U.S. president to the extreme. In the months leading up to the invasion, he allowed his henchmen to beat the leaders of the civil service examination who had won the election and whose victory was not recognized. In the weeks and days leading up to Operation Just Cause, his men harassed some U.S. soldiers, to the death of one of them, who had left the Canal Zone to dine, off duty, at a restaurant on the other side.
If Noriega had not lost his hand in that final stretch, in a miscalculation, it is possible that the United States would not have acted, because for Bush the invasion was to solve a problem by creating a bigger one. Nor does Trump now seem inclined to use military force (in reality, Maduro is less fundamental in the drug trafficking routes than Noriega was) and everything indicates that the mobilization he has ordered has the sole purpose of putting pressure on the Chavista regime to see if this will break the loyalty at the top and crumble the system. But Maduro may also make miscalculations that worsen his status and leave him at the feet of a Trump attack.
It is difficult for the Venezuelan command to generate a "provocation" in a military incident with the U.S. ships, but there may be other reasons for escalation. One of them could be for the Maduro government to detain some U.S. citizens who are in Venezuela, with the purpose of having a bargaining chip for appeasement. Caracas has shown that this is its preferred tactic vis-à-vis Washington (in addition to using the oil lobby's pressure route), but that would get on Trump's nerves, and the American people have often been willing to support forceful actions to avenge their mistreated fellow citizens.
While circumstances may evolve, today the goal of the U.S. naval deployment is to put pressure on the regime. In the historical case of Panama, Noriega's control over the security apparatus was complete, as he himself had emerged from the ranks of the National Guard and had surrounded himself with absolutely loyal comrades-in-arms. Washington had no other way for a regime change than to enter the country and arrest Noriega. In Venezuela, on the other hand, the leadership has more poles of power; the threat of a military operation seeks to generate fear and distrust among them: it is a plausible strategy.
But it may happen that this pressure from the United States, to which other countries have begun to join (politically, without deployment of units), will not have the desired effect, and that at the same time Trump will not decide on an attack whose complete success is not assured in advance without a full involvement. The withdrawal of the Navy ships leaving Maduro in the Miraflores Palace would be giving all the oxygen to a regime that was having trouble breathing and would fatally demoralize the civil service examination.
* Emili J. Blasco is director of GASS. This text was originally published in the ABC newspaper, September 3, 2025.