Nicolas Maduro may have had a few years when he could scoff at the US. After Donald Trump’s strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, that calculus has clearly changed. And now that Trump has ordered a carrier strike force into range of Venezuela’s own military assets and has made destruction of narco-trafficking boats a routine occurrence, it’s changing even more.
Suddenly, Hugo Chavez’ successor to the socialist dictatorship wants a conversation with the Yanquis:
🇻🇪 🇺🇸 Venezuela’s Maduro ready to talk ‘face to face’ with Trump President Donald Trump says he will talk to Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, as Washington’s military buildup stokes tensions in the region. Hours after Trump’s comments, Maduro said he was ready to talk “face to face”.
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) Nov 17, 2025
Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro has said that he is willing to hold face-to-face talks with representatives of the Trump administration as US pressure on him grows.
Maduro made the comment hours after US President Donald Trump said he had not ruled out deploying ground forces to the South American country.
Maduro offered an olive branch after Trump made clear that he intended to force a change on Venezuela, one way or another. Trump accused Maduro of partnering with cartels to flood the US with illegal and dangerous narcotics, and of oppressing the Venezuelan people in a narco-military junta. The remarks came just after the Trump administration designated the Carta de los Soles a narcoterrorist group and alleged that Maduro commanded it:
President Donald Trump said Monday that he will not rule out the possibility of sending U.S. troops into Venezuela, as a buildup of U.S. forces in the region — and his increasingly combustible rhetoric — raises the prospect of military action there.
“I don’t rule out anything, we just have to take care of Venezuela,” Trump said when asked at a news conference about putting American personnel “on the ground” in Venezuela.
That certainly got Maduro’s attention, and for good reasons. Maduro has rattled the saber enough to know what it looks like, and he’s also played footsie with the cartels enough to grasp why Trump has put a bullseye on him. The Washington Post explained last week how vulnerable the Maduro regime would be if open conflict erupted with the US, despite the assistance of allies such as Iran, China, and Russia:
Venezuela’s military is well-armed, with some advanced weapons it obtained under the leadership of former president Hugo Chávez, who died in office in 2013. They are believed to include a Russian-made S-300VM air-defense system.
But this air defense system is only partially operational right now, and it was never intended to be used against the United States, said Andrei Serbin Pont of the Latin American research group CRIES.
According to Global Firepower, Venezuela has 109,000 active military personnel. But the former Venezuelan military official said it is probably fewer.
By 2018, Venezuela had fewer than five Russian Sukhois operating, the former Venezuelan military official said. He argued that Maduro does not have the military capacity or support from Venezuelans to fight a war against the U.S.
The Post also offers a pretty clear order of battle if Trump decides to make good on an ultimatum, just as he did with Iran:
“Look for precision kinetic strikes against narcotics targets and military capability and, if that doesn’t have the desired effect, against leadership,” Stavridis said. “I think the game here is to convince Maduro that his days are numbered, but convincing him of that will take a fair amount of strikes against Venezuela’s infrastructure.”
In the face of such force, Maduro might hunker down, Stavridis said. That would leave the Trump administration to potentially deliberate whether to carry out strikes against Maduro’s security or a Special Operations mission to capture or kill the authoritarian leader. Such an effort, Stavridis said, “would be pretty high-stakes, with a lot of potential risk.”
Stavridis suggested the United States could begin with strikes on airports or seaports that it identifies as potential shipping hubs for drugs. It also could strike shipment points near Venezuela’s border with Colombia, where significant quantities of cocaine originate. But the Pentagon also would want to attack Venezuelan air defenses to keep its own aircraft safe, the retired admiral said.
It’s clear that Maduro now realizes he’s dealing with a very different American president – different even from Trump in his first term. The arrival of a US Navy carrier strike group tends to have that kind of impact on one’s perspective. The use of military force in Iran by Trump also makes it clear that the US will act muscularly to destroy threats to its security, if and when necessary. Maduro’s head already lies uneasy these days, and it won’t take much before his own people will revolt to pull down his regime. If the US starts striking his security assets in the name of ending Maduro’s narco trafficking, his goose is cooked and he knows it.
The question will be this: what is there to discuss? Maduro may not survive if he agrees to end narco trafficking; the cartels would depose him, or kill him. He’d need US security to survive, and the US won’t prop up Maduro under any circumstances. He might agree to kick out Iran, Russia, and China, and bow to the “Donroe Doctrine” that Trump has clearly decided to impose on the hemisphere. Trump will likely demand the return of commercial interests seized by Chavez to American businesses, primarily oil companies, but Maduro can’t do that without looking like an utterly weak fool.
About the only realistic dialogue to be had would be Maduro’s safe exit from Venezuela and a transition to a legitimate, elected government and normal economic activity. That’s clearly what Trump wants, and it’s probably the only real topic of whatever talks take place.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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