Pentagon Muscle Confronts China's Proxy Venezuela

Austin Bay on Oct 22, 2025

On Oct. 21, news sources reported roughly 15% of the entire U.S. Navy's warships were deployed in the Caribbean Sea. The exact type and number of warships was not revealed. Still, the fleet and aircraft deployed off South America had muy macho offensive and defensive firepower, enough to support a major air campaign and possibly an amphibious assault.

More Pentagon muscle supported the ships. U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) backed the fleet with massive aerial firepower, specifically USAF B-52 strategic bombers and squadrons of F-35 stealth fighters. Marine infantry units of unknown size were in the region. Three days earlier, excitable news outlets reported U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) had presidential permission to deploy its units near (inside?) Venezuelan territory. A story I scanned reinforced the excitable reports. The U.S. Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (an elite helicopter taxi service for commandos) had "assets in the region." That's Pentagon and CIA speak for preparing to insert Green Berets and SEALs.

Insert them where?

Venezuela.

The detailed press reports were the Trump administration's narrative warfare envelope from the Pentagon's Caribbean show of force.

Which leads to this question: Are we witnessing the Trump administration use a very large U.S. joint warfare demonstration to strike fear in Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro's Chavista socialist-cartel criminal regime?

Answer: Emphatic yes. The Chavistas have destroyed Venezuela. From four to seven million Venezuelans have fled the hellhole created by Hugo Chavez and his successor, Maduro. Venezuela was once South America's wealthiest nation, at least per capita.

In terms of outright proven oil reserves, Venezuela has more barrels than Saudi Arabia.

Yet today, thanks to Chavista socialism, it is impoverished. The civilized world knows this. Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for her courage and perseverance in the face of Chavista threats. She advocates a peaceful transition from the Chavista dictatorship to a revived democracy.

Peaceful transition faces a problem. Maduro and his thugs have all the guns, at least the guns in Venezuela. The Chavistas also have lots of money, from running drugs, selling oil and other sources -- like Communist China.

So the Trump administration's Pentagon show sends a strategic warning well beyond Venezuela and the Caribbean littoral -- a warning one hopes Communist China will not both see and heed.

The warning: China must end its disintegrative war on America. In a disintegrative war, a "unitary belligerent becomes increasingly fragmented by secessions."

The dark money and a lot of the drugs promoting the disintegrative war on America comes from Beijing. As I've written several times in the last three years, in 2010 China's People's Liberation Army published a treatise on disintegration warfare. Retired Japanese admiral Dr. Fumio Ota summarized the Chinese strategy: "The idea of (Chinese) disintegration warfare includes politics, economy, culture, psychology, military threats, conspiracy, media propaganda, law, information, and intelligence."

Move from the idea to operations. Open borders and unregulated migration. Lawless and disintegrating cities. Pushing deadly drugs.

More operations: For a cut of the action, the Chavista dictatorship gives drug cartels a safe haven and operational base. In doing so, the drug gangs become hybrid warfare militias backed by state actors who are waging disintegrative warfare against the USA. Though the actions appear disconnected and helter skelter, South and Central American politics, crime and regional war-making intersect with the U.S.'s internal war. The chief architect and dark money banker of the intersection: Communist China.

Indeed, the Navy and Coast Guard attacks on drug-laden Venezuelan speedboats serve a national defense purpose, a point Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has repeatedly made.

Maduro damns U.S. action as imperialism, but the Venezuelan dictator takes his cues from Russian imperialist Vladimir Putin. In December 2023, Maduro held a referendum asking Venezuelan citizens if they wished to annex the neighboring Guyana oil-rich Essequibo region. By "annex," Maduro meant seizing Guyana using military forces.

Guyana's ethnically and religiously diverse citizens despise Maduro. They sought help. The U.S. and Britain responded with very limited military forces -- overflights of jets, etc.

In 2023 Joe Biden vegetated in the White House. It's 2025. Donald Trump uses -- globally, regionally and very effectively -- the U.S. presidency's bully pulpit.

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To find out more about Austin Bay and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

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