This strategic impasse explains why the United States, lacking a viable “lead from behind” partner, has periodically resorted to overt displays of military power, such as deploying an aircraft carrier strike group, several destroyers and amphibious war ships, rebuilding military bases in Puerto Rico with drones and F-35s, and sending 15,000 troops to the region of the Caribbean, as a tool of coercive actions such as the partial closing of Venezuelan airspace in late November. Moreover, also in late November, CNN claimed that President Nicolas Maduro offered to resign in 18 months in a phone call with US President Donald Trump, while the phone call probably took place, the resignation part is probably a piece of strategic propaganda, designed to weaken Venezuela’s domestic support by suggesting his departure is privately inevitable.

The deployment of an armada is a blunt, costly, unilateral signal precisely because more nuanced, multilateral options have failed to materialize. A major, sustained US military deployment in the Caribbean, involving ships, aircraft, and thousands of troops, easily exceeds $1 billion due to massive daily operating costs for fuel, personnel, logistics, and contractor support. Even a three-month operation can cost over $2 billion when accounting for the full price of moving and sustaining forces far from home. Instead of enabling a proxy or a regional leader to take the fore, the US is forced to place itself directly in the belligerent push, reaffirming the very image of unilateral interventionism that neighboring states reject and givng the Venezuelan government with potent arguments to rally nationalist and anti imperialist sentiment against an external threat.

For over a decade, the term “lead from behind“ has described a core US foreign policy tactic of avoiding direct, unilateral military intervention in favor of empowering regional vassals, or mercenary groups or multilateral regional organizations to take public ownership of a crisis, while Washington provides critical support from the shadows. The concept of “Lead From Behind” was initially used to describe America’s role in the Libyan War using France and the UK as local capos to control the military action. Its also used in relation to Poland and Turkey’s involvement in the destabilization of Ukraine and Syria respectively. While France and the UK engaged in more traditional combat roles, Poland and Turkey took a different approach, adhering to the principles of empowering asymmetric warfare with Fourth Generation Warfare.

The strategy relies on several key conditions that must be met, firstly a coherent and willful local partner, could be a capable opposition or a mercenary or a proxy force or neighboring states that can act as the primary vehicle for change. Secondly, there must be strong, unified backing from neighboring states and regional organizations to legitimize action and share the burden and to serve as resupplying stations for the forces that would ultimately be involved. Thirdly, limited opposition from other major global powers that could escalate the conflict into a proxy struggle, lastly a defined coherent support function for the US, such as intelligence, logistics, sanctions, or diplomatic cover.

Image: Juan Guaidó (from France24)

The Venezuelan opposition, despite international recognition of figures like Juan Guaidó from 2019-2022, and María Corina Machado has failed to garner strength within Venezuela. Although Machado was not the presidential candidate in the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election, she remained the leader of the opposition to Chavismo during the electoral process while Edmundo González the actual former presidential candidate for the 2024 elections has not integrated itself in a strong fashion into the current push for regime change or invasion of Venezuela by the US.

The US-controlled Venezuelan opposition has been plagued by internal fragmentation, strategic missteps, and an inability to connect with crucial segments of the Venezuelan populace, including the poor and the military. Unlike the Syrian rebels or Libyan militias which were a combination of local actors and foreign mercenaries linking up with US support, there is no unified opposition army for the US to empower. The Venezuelan government has successfully consolidated control over the state military and security apparatus, and has guaranteed a strong security apparatus that while not perfect is efficient enough to snuff any security threat efficiently. Without a viable, unified local force, there is no one for the US to “lead from behind.”

Latin America is deeply divided on Venezuela but even the states that do not like the Venezuelan government are not willing to deploy forces for war against the Bolivarian state. While groups like the Lima Group initially formed to condemn the Venezuelan government, key regional powers have consistently opposed interventionist measures. These regional governments that are against Venezuela mostly confine themselves to public condemnation and to voting in their regional bodies to limit the role of Venezuela in the region accentuating US sanctions.

Key regional powers like Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico possess their own complex national interests, deep historical aversions to US imperialism or desestabilization of their countries preclude them from adopting a confrontational proxy role although they are geoeconomically subservient to US policies. Brazil, under Lula da Silva and under various administrations, has prioritized regional stability and its own leadership ambitions. Colombia, despite historically aligning closer with Washington, has been cautious of actions that could trigger a wider regional conflict or a massive new refugee crisis on its border. Moreover the victory of Gustavo Petro in Colombia’s 2022 presidential election represented a significant geopolitical inconvenient timing for US belligerent strategy toward Venezuela. Unlike his right-wing predecessors, who largely aligned with Washington’s pressure campaign, Petro’s leftist government explicitly rejects acting as a regional proxy for regime change thus removing the United States’ most capable and geographically crucial potential partner for executing a “lead from behind” strategy.

While smaller states like Puerto Rico which is an unincorporated US territory, along with independent states such as Panama, Trinidad and Tobago, the Dominican Republic or Guyana are exhibiting greater geopolitical alignment with Washington, yet their capacities to serve as effective proxies is negligible as their militaries are considerably weaker or they don’t have a military at all. Making them unable to spearhead a destabilization campaign, rendering them strategically insufficient for a “lead from behind” framework as most they could do is allow their territories to be used against Venezuela. Thus without a NATO-like regional alliance fully on board, there’s no one to “lead” from behind due to a profound unwillingness of its most powerful neighboring states to serve as war vassals or frontline destabilizing agents.

All-in-all, the US finds itself without a credible regional anchor for its strategy, forced into a position of direct, unilateral pressure that only reinforces the very narrative of imperial bullying that hardens regional resistance and bolsters the Venezuelan government’s defiant posture.

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Miguel Santos García is a Puerto Rican writer and political analyst who mainly writes about the geopolitics of neocolonial conflicts and Hybrid Wars within the 4th Industrial Revolution, the ongoing New Cold War and the transition towards multipolarity. Visit his blog here. 

Featured image is from the author

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