Venezuela Surrounded: Invasion or Deterrence?

Venezuela Surrounded: Deterrence or Invasion?

3 Narratives News | October 27, 2025 (Pacific Time)

Subheadline

As the USS Gerald R. Ford, a reported U.S. nuclear-powered submarine and Marine assault units hold position off Venezuela’s coast, Washington calls it regional security. Caracas calls it an impending invasion. Between them: a whispered “hundred-hour plan,” an admitted CIA mandate, and millions of Venezuelans who just want to eat.

Intro

The first images are not ours. They belong to the 60 Minutes crew that flew into Caracas expecting to sit across from Nicolás Maduro and left with something closer to a prelude.

The segment opens on low, sea-hour light off the Venezuelan coast. Far out past the fishing boats, steel blurs against the horizon: the floating city of the USS Gerald R. Ford, the largest aircraft carrier in the world. The camera lingers. Off-screen, the correspondent explains that Maduro had agreed to an interview, then cancelled at the last moment. Security around the Miraflores presidential palace tightened. His location was no longer disclosed. The country’s president, the anchor says, “is now unavailable.” (CBS News / 60 Minutes, October 26, 2025)

What the camera shows next is what Venezuelans are replaying on their phones: not just a carrier, but a formation. Destroyers. Support ships. Talk of a nuclear-powered submarine. U.S. aircraft overhead. You do not park that kind of force off a struggling petrostate, people say, just to chase drug boats.

In WhatsApp groups from Caracas to Miami to Bogotá, a phrase circulates like contraband: el plan de las cien horas — in English, the hundred-hour plan. Some say it belongs to the Venezuelan opposition, to María Corina Machado and her circle. Some say it’s American. Some say it’s psychological warfare. Nobody can show you the document. Everyone can tell you what’s in it.

Context

Over September and October 2025, the United States positioned major naval and air assets in the southern Caribbean within reach of Venezuela’s capital. According to public reporting, the USS Gerald R. Ford — a nuclear-powered supercarrier capable of launching around 90 aircraft — is part of that posture. The Ford is escorted by guided-missile destroyers and an amphibious assault ship embarked with a Marine Expeditionary Unit, a rapid-entry force typically built around roughly 2,000 Marines trained for crisis response, embassy security and fast shoreline seizure. Analysts and regional media have also described the presence of at least one U.S. fast-attack nuclear submarine operating in the area, plus long-range U.S. bombers and fifth-generation fighters staged for theatre support. These details have been widely cited in U.S. defence briefings and regional coverage as of late October 2025.

Formally, U.S. officials describe the buildup as a regional security mission: counter-narcotics, maritime interdiction, deterrence against foreign actors operating out of Venezuela, and contingency planning if the Maduro government fractures and the refugee flow spikes again. The line from Washington is “stability,” not “invasion.”

Caracas calls that a lie. Maduro’s government has said publicly that the fleet is not defensive at all but a “direct threat of intervention,” and state media frames the U.S. posture as a rehearsal for forced regime change. Venezuelan officials argue that if this were only about drug interdiction, you would not need a carrier strike group, a nuclear-powered submarine, and Marine assault elements sitting off their coast. That framing has been repeated on Venezuelan state television and in statements amplified by Caracas.

Into that standoff drops something rare: public confirmation from Donald Trump, now back in the White House, that he has authorized CIA operations inside Venezuela and attached a multimillion-dollar reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest. In his language, Maduro is not treated as a head of state but as a fugitive. The message is not subtle.

So the question becomes the heart of this story. Are these ships and planes a shield — or a countdown?

Narrative 1 — The Defensive Posture

In Washington’s framing, this is containment, not conquest.

Supporters of this view say the U.S. is trying to prevent something worse, not launch it. Venezuela is not just another country on a map; it is a failing oil state with collapsing infrastructure, contested armed groups, and active ties to Russia, Iran and, to a lesser degree, China. A sudden fracture in Caracas could send another wave of desperate migration toward Colombia, toward Panama, toward the southern U.S. border. It could open a vacuum for rival intelligence services, proxy militias and covert weapons pipelines. From this angle, the show of force offshore is a way to freeze that chaos before it spreads.

Inside this logic, the Gerald R. Ford is not a battering ram but a flying command post. A supercarrier can coordinate surveillance flights, maritime patrols, drones, radar coverage, refuelling, search and rescue, and noncombatant evacuation — all without landing a single soldier on Venezuelan soil. The destroyers and cruisers around it bring advanced Aegis radar, anti-missile defences and Tomahawk-capable strike range that can neutralize threats without moving inland. The submarine, rarely acknowledged on the record, is there to listen, to stalk, to cut off anything hostile that tries to slip through the water. The amphibious assault ship and its Marine unit are the insurance policy: evacuate diplomats, secure an airfield and extract American citizens if the capital starts to burn.

“This is pre-crisis stabilization,” is how one retired U.S. naval officer described similar forward deployments in past theatres. The point, in that worldview, is to be close enough to move fast if hospitals go dark or if gangs fill a security gap — but far enough offshore to avoid being seen as occupiers. That school of thought points to Iraq and Libya as hard lessons: the U.S. goes in heavy, breaks the regime, then spends years trying to glue together institutions that never recover. The pitch now is different. Stay at sea. Project pressure. Deter everyone at once. Avoid the occupation trap.

From inside this narrative, the “hundred-hour plan” is mostly rumour and opposition bravado. The Pentagon will not say out loud that it is preparing to swap governments in Caracas within a four-day window. The White House will not say it is choreographing an outcome with María Corina Machado. Instead, U.S. officials talk about “hemispheric security,” “narco-trafficking corridors,” “threat monitoring,” and “regional stabilization.” That language is deliberate. It is meant to calm allies, discourage Russia and Iran from treating Venezuela like a forward outpost, and warn Maduro that any sudden escalation — a brutal round of domestic repression, a mass arrest of dissidents, shots fired at U.S. aircraft — will be watched by overwhelming force just offshore.

In this telling, the ships are there to hold the line, not cross it.

Narrative 2 — The Regime-Change Countdown

The other narrative does not see a shield. It sees a clock.

Inside opposition circles and exile channels, the “hundred-hour plan” is described as choreography, not fantasy. The idea is simple and ruthless: once Maduro loses his grip — through internal fracture, an elite defection, a mass uprising, or a negotiated exit — there will be a four-day window in which Venezuela must not be allowed to fall into pure vacuum. In that window, ministries get locked down, oil fields get secured, airports and ports are placed under controlled access, and a provisional authority steps forward before chaos can. The first one to reorganize the state wins the state.

The people most often named in that scenario are María Corina Machado and those around her. Machado has long pitched herself as the post-Maduro figure who can offer legitimacy to Washington and credibility to Venezuelans exhausted by corruption. The “hundred-hour plan,” in this view, is the playbook for bringing her (or someone she backs) to the surface fast, with recognition from the U.S. and allied governments already in hand. The plan, supporters whisper, includes immediate guarantees over oil — who gets to export, under what terms, what percentage of proceeds are ring-fenced for humanitarian relief — as well as a stabilization role for outside actors in the first phase.

That is where the fleet comes in. A carrier strike group does not just “monitor.” It establishes air superiority, intelligence dominance, logistics control and amphibious access. It makes it physically possible to fly in advisers, secure refineries and deter loyalist counter-coups without a formal U.S. “invasion.” A Marine Expeditionary Unit aboard an amphibious assault ship is designed to take or defend strategic nodes quickly — a port, an airport, a ministry — and hold them long enough for a friendly authority to claim control.

In this worldview, the reported nuclear-powered attack submarine off Venezuela’s coast is not there to interdict cocaine. It is there to insert special operations teams quietly, listen to Venezuelan naval communications, watch for any last-ditch attempt by Maduro loyalists to flee with assets and shut down hostile vessels if necessary. The surrounding destroyers carry long-range precision strike capability. The aircraft overhead — including carrier-launched fighters, U.S. long-range bombers and stealth-capable jets such as the F-35B — are the air umbrella over the transition.

And then there is language from Trump himself. Trump has publicly said that Maduro is “terrified,” and that Maduro was willing to trade Venezuelan oil access in exchange for staying in power. He has also said he has authorized the CIA to operate in Venezuela and offered a large cash reward for information leading to Maduro’s capture. For supporters of the regime-change interpretation, that combination — CIA authority, bounty and naval muscle — is not a defensive posture. It is pre-clearance. It is the White House saying out loud: the President of Venezuela is, to us, a target.

This view goes further. It argues that what sits off Venezuela right now is one of the most intimidating visible power concentrations near a sovereign nation in the Western Hemisphere in generations. Critics of Maduro say you have not seen this scale of coordinated carrier, Marines, submarine, long-range bombers and intelligence integration pointed at a Latin American government in living memory. They call it, bluntly, the rehearsal for a managed handover that will unfold in days, not months, once the first crack appears.

In this telling, the ships are not just “nearby.” They are the scaffold of a new government waiting to be lit.

Narrative 3 — The Silent Story: Venezuelans in Limbo

Between those two cleanly marketed stories — stability management versus forced transition — is the part you rarely hear from a podium: the life being lived under all of this.

More than six million Venezuelans have already left the country in the last decade. They are in Colombia, Peru, Chile, Spain and Miami. They drive taxis in Santiago. They deliver food in Bogotá. They sleep on sofas in Doral. They send money back, because cousins and parents in Carabobo and Zulia and Lara cannot afford protein anymore.

“I don’t care who runs the palace,” says Ana, a nurse from Maracay now working nights in Bogotá and wiring half her pay home every month so her parents can buy hypertension pills on the black market. “I just want the electricity not to cut out in the ICU. I want the baby not to die because the ventilator oil ran dry.”

Inside Venezuela, the mood is something colder than fear. It is fatigue. Some people in Caracas still believe in a dramatic U.S. landing. Others say that is naïve, that no one is coming and that the ships offshore are there for cameras, not for them. Older men in Maracaibo talk openly about leaving for Chile. Younger men try the jungle routes north through Darién. The women who stay behind are left to guard houses in blackout heat.

For them, “hundred hours” sounds like a slogan from somewhere else. Regime change sounds like a press conference they will watch from a room with no running water. They have watched promises of liberation before, and they remember how quickly the poetry turns into ration books and batons.

And yet: almost everyone is still watching the water. Not because they are eager for a foreign landing, and not because they trust a negotiated transition. They are watching because, for the first time in years, something larger than hunger seems to be moving. Hope, even cruel hope, can travel on naval steel.

This is the quiet truth under the carrier decks and palace walls: Venezuelans are no longer asking “Who will rule?” as much as they are asking “Will I survive the handover?”

Key Takeaways

The United States now has a heavyweight naval, air and Marine presence positioned within reach of Venezuela’s capital — including the USS Gerald R. Ford supercarrier, guided-missile destroyers, an amphibious assault ship with a Marine Expeditionary Unit, and what analysts describe as a nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine. That posture is paired with a U.S. presidential sign-off for CIA operations on Venezuelan soil and a multimillion-dollar bounty on Nicolás Maduro.

Washington frames the mission as regional stability: deter traffickers, prevent a refugee surge, keep rivals like Russia and Iran from exploiting a failing state, and be in position to evacuate civilians if Venezuela fractures internally. This is Narrative 1.

Opposition-linked voices and exile networks frame the same posture as a visible countdown to regime change. In this view, the “hundred-hour plan” is a rapid handover script credited — sometimes loosely, sometimes explicitly — to figures around María Corina Machado, designed to secure ministries, oil assets and legitimacy in four days once Maduro falls. This is Narrative 2.

Below both narratives is the human ledger. Six million Venezuelans abroad and millions still inside the country are not debating carrier doctrine. They are trying to keep refrigerators on, get antibiotics and make rent in exile. They are living through a pause that could become history or just another false dawn. This is the Silent Story.

Questions This Article Answers

1. What exactly is sitting off Venezuela’s coast right now?

   As of late October 2025, public reporting describes a U.S. carrier strike group built around the USS Gerald R. Ford (the world’s largest aircraft carrier, capable of launching roughly 90 aircraft), guided-missile destroyers with Aegis radar and long-range strike capability, an amphibious assault ship with an embarked Marine Expeditionary Unit (typically about 2,000 Marines trained for rapid insertion and site control), at least one U.S. nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine, and supporting aircraft including long-range bombers and stealth-capable F-35B fighters. This is an unusually muscular posture for an operation described as “regional security.”

2. Has the U.S. said it will invade Venezuela?

   No. Publicly, U.S. officials use language like “maritime security,” “counternarcotics” and “regional stability.” The argument is: we are here to deter chaos, not to install a government. This is the framing the Pentagon prefers because it sounds less like 2003.

3. Then why do Venezuelans talk about a “hundred-hour plan”?

   Inside exile networks, opposition circles and street talk in Caracas, there is a belief that once Maduro cracks, a four-day transition script will activate — locking down ministries, oil terminals and ports and elevating a transitional authority seen as legitimate by Washington. María Corina Machado’s name is often attached to that scenario. No one has published the plan, but it is treated as real in conversation.

4. What did Trump actually authorize?

   Trump has said he allowed CIA operations inside Venezuela and publicly offered a multimillion-dollar reward for information leading to Nicolás Maduro’s capture. He has also claimed Maduro was so frightened that he offered some control over Venezuelan oil in exchange for staying in power. Those remarks move beyond “monitoring.” They describe active regime-pressure mechanics: intelligence work, leverage over oil and personal targeting of Maduro’s status.

5. What do ordinary Venezuelans want out of this?

   Most are not asking for a flag change. They are asking for light in hospitals, food that is not rationed, a currency that can buy meat and a job that pays more than bus fare. Whether the carrier sails away tomorrow or Marines walk into a ministry next week, their urgent question is survival during and after whatever comes next.