(Part 3)
The Plan of Betrayal in Venezuela
Bodyguards
The Venezuelan operation’s success reveals something more troubling than American military capability. It suggests internal betrayal.
Venezuelan air defence did not warn of USA’s marines attack. Helicopters flew in with impunity. How did this happen? Was it electronic manipulation? Was it something like India did in Operation Sindoor?
Air defence systems don’t fail accidentally during precision strikes. Someone may have disabled it deliberately. If it was betrayal by Venezuelan bodyguards, it proved devastating for Maduro. If that has happened, it wasn’t American technical superiority. It was internal betrayal. When your own security apparatus sells you out, it confirms either that you’ve lost legitimacy domestically, or that American inducements were overwhelming, or both.
This matters strategically because it shows the operation wasn’t purely external force. It was enabled from within. That’s much harder to defend against and creates paranoia in every other government. If Maduro’s inner circle betrayed him in Venezuela, whose inner circle is reliable?
The evidence points to betrayal, even without confirmation.
The Sicilian
Fiction often illuminates reality better than analysis. The Sicilian is Mario Puzo’s separate novel about Salvatore Giuliano, the Sicilian bandit is about a man who believes he’s fighting for Sicily’s freedom, building a movement, maintaining popular support. But his most trusted lieutenant, Gaspare Pisciotta, betrays him. Not impulsively, but after careful negotiation with authorities who offer immunity and money.
Pisciotta’s famous line after killing Giuliano captures the logic: “We have to survive.” Not ideological disagreement. Not moral outrage. Just cold assessment that loyalty had become a losing bet.
Maduro’s bodyguards perhaps made the same calculation. The regime was weakening, American pressure was intensifying, and someone offered them a better deal. They disabled air defenses and opened the fortress because survival meant switching sides.
The Sicilian is specifically about how regional power structures collapse when the inner circle calculates that betrayal pays better than loyalty. And how the person being betrayed often doesn’t see it coming because they mistake tactical compliance for genuine allegiance.
Giuliano sends his diary to Don Corleone, believing it contains leverage with evidence of who really controlled him, who gave orders, who betrayed Sicily’s interests. He thinks this documentation will protect his legacy or provide posthumous justice.
But Don Corleone reads it and sees only transaction material. The diary isn’t a historical record or moral testimony. It’s a bargaining chip. Don tells his son Michael, the following lesson:
Live your life not to be a hero, but to remain alive. With time, heroes seem a little foolish.
Maduro likely believed he had leverage too. Venezuelan oil reserves, Chinese relationships, Russian support, regional allies, popular legitimacy. He thought these were protective assets.
Washington thought Maduro’s position wasn’t a sovereign right to be respected. It was an obstacle to be removed or a bargaining chip to be used. And once internal betrayal was secured, none of his supposed leverage mattered.
Foreign Relations
Maduro stayed in Venezuela, made speeches, issued statements. But he built no personal capital with any leader who could impose costs on Washington for his removal. No one owed him anything. No one had invested in the relationship enough to defend it when tested.
Putin has personal relationships with leaders across multiple continents. Xi Jinping maintains direct channels with dozens of heads of state. Even leaders of smaller countries invest heavily in personal diplomacy like visits, summits, bilateral meetings that create human connections and implicit obligations. But Maduro lived in his cocoon.
When Maduro was taken, the calculation was simpler: “we barely knew him anyway.”
The cocoon wasn’t just physical isolation in the fortress. It was diplomatic isolation from the network of personal relationships that make removing a leader costly. He governed as if Venezuela’s resources alone would protect him. Resources attract predators. Relationships create complications that deter them.
China and Russia issue statements, but they’re not defending a person they know. They’re defending an abstract principle while calculating their own interests.
Administration of Venezuela
USA executed a tactically brilliant operation without strategic follow-through. Kidnap Maduro, apply maximum pressure, see who emerges willing to deal. It’s improvisation disguised as decisiveness.
Rubio’s interview confirms this. He can’t answer basic questions about governance, elections, or transition timelines. Everything is “premature” or “we’ll see what happens.” The only concrete demands are transactional: stop drugs, remove Iran and China, give us oil access. Beyond that, they’re waiting to see who steps forward as their Pisciotta.
Who in Venezuela will volunteer to be America’s administrator knowing that (a) they’ll be hated domestically as collaborators, (b) America’s protection lasts only as long as you’re useful, and (c) once American interests are secured, you’re expendable?
Rodriguez is trapped, not volunteering. The military officials are calculating, not cooperating enthusiastically. Nobody is stepping forward to be the face of American occupation because everyone understands the role has no good ending.
Maduro tried to be the hero resisting American imperialism. Now he’s in custody and his wife is hostage. The hero looks foolish. Rodriguez, the military officials, anyone with power in Venezuela right now is absorbing that lesson. Don’t be the hero. Survive.
The Trump
It appears Trump has no plan to run Venezuela. His remark to run it is a rhetoric. He took a leap of faith and order capture of Maduro hoping that a plan will emerge from chaos and vacuum.
The leap of faith assumes someone will volunteer to navigate this. More likely, what emerges is chaos: different factions maneuvering, temporary arrangements that collapse, escalating violence, and eventually either a new strongman who consolidates power against American wishes, or prolonged instability that makes resource extraction impossible anyway.
Trump thought he, like Don Corleone, was making offers people can’t refuse. But he’s actually more like the impatient nephew who creates a crisis without understanding how to manage the aftermath. The Don would never kidnap someone without knowing exactly who would fill the power vacuum and how to control them.
Is there a Plan that we do not know? There are theories making round.
Read about it in Part 4.
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