Venezuela Announces Sweeping Military Exercises as U.S. Escalates Pressure

Venezuela’s government said this week that it had launched a sweeping military mobilization and begun training civilians for combat, portraying the moves as defensive steps against what it called an escalating threat from the United States.

The measures come as Washington has intensified military operations in the Caribbean, killing dozens of people in a campaign that U.S. officials say is aimed at drug trafficking networks. But American officials, in private, have said the ultimate goal is to push out President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela.

Mr. Maduro and top military officials said this week that they had activated new defense zones across the country and called on civilians to join what they described as a patriotic effort to protect the nation.

For days, Venezuelan officials have been warning the public. Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López told Venezuelans this week to “prepare for the worst,” citing what he called a “serious threat” posed by President Trump, who has told Congress that the United States is in a formal “armed conflict” with certain drug cartels.

Venezuela’s state television has long broadcast images of men and women crawling through mud with rifles, crossing rivers on ropes and aiming weapons under the instruction of soldiers. But recently it has also shown evacuation drills, as well as clips of the military moving weapons and documents out of bases.

“Now they’re doing things that would actually be relevant in case the United States intervened,” said Andrei Serbin Pont, president of the Latin American research group CRIES, who has been studying Venezuelan military affairs for 10 years.

Venezuelan officials, citing the U.S. military’s struggles in Vietnam and Afghanistan, have tried to present a strong front, claiming that several million combatants are ready to defend the country.

But experts say that figure is implausible and that the government’s rhetoric around protecting the homeland may be more about rallying support among citizens than anything else, since Venezuela’s military is no match for the United States’.

The government has drawn militia recruits largely from loyal or government-aligned groups. Many of those enlisted are tied to the ruling socialist party, neighborhood committees and food distribution networks, experts said.

“We’re not here to play games,” said Mr. Padrino López said in televised remarks. “We’re preparing.”

While Venezuela has significant military forces and weapons systems, Mr. Serbin Pont said, much of its equipment was designed to manage internal instability or regional conflicts, rather than fend off a full-scale attack from the hemisphere’s biggest military.

“These are weapon systems that were never really truly intended to stop U.S. intervention,” he added. “You can’t resist conventional U.S. military power.”

In the northern Venezuelan city of La Guaira on Thursday, the interior minister Diosdado Cabello presided over the swearing-in of what officials called a “peasant militia” to “defend the homeland.”

“Anyone who thinks this is a situation that can be resolved by dropping two bombs and then everyone surrenders does not know us,” he said. “They have not the slightest idea of what the people of Venezuela are made of.”

But experts say that only a small fraction of the population is likely to mobilize in the event of a U.S. intervention.

“You have people that might welcome it with open arms,” said Mr. Serbin Pont. “And then a lot of people that are just like, ‘You know what? As long as I get to go to work tomorrow or I can put bread on the table, I don’t care.’”