Mystics & Statistics

Our government claims that all options are on the table in response to the situation developing in Venezuela. I gather this includes military options, which according to news reports, the U.S. had yet to actually mobilize for. So, if military options are a possibility, what does the Venezuelan military actually look like?

First, Venezuela is not a small country. It is over 32 million people and almost a million square kilometers in area. Population wise, this is more people than were in Vietnam in 1965, Afghanistan in 2001 or Iraq in 2003. Area wise, it is several hundred thousand square kilometers bigger than Afghanistan, Iraq or Vietnam.

The Venezuelan Army has 128,000 troops of six divisions. They have 192 T-72s, 84 AMX-30s, 78 Scorpion light tanks, and 111+ AMX-13s, several hundred armored personnel carriers and over 100 armored cars. They also have 48 Hind Mi-35 attack helicopters. The Venezuelan Air Force has 10+ F-16s and 23 Sukhoi Su-30s. The Venezuelan Navy is 60,000 personnel including 12,000 marines. It has 2 submarines, 3 missile frigates, 3 corvettes, 10 large patrol boats and gunboats, 19 smaller patrol boats and 4 LSTs (landing ship tank). Added to that is a National Guard with police functions of around 70,000 troops. They have up to at least 191 (and eventually up to 656) of the white Chinese-built APCs that were running over people a couple of days ago (see picture). There is also a National Militia and a Presidential Honor Guard brigade. So we are looking at 258,000+ people under arms. All data is from Wikipedia.

Added to that, the source of Chavez (Maduro’s predecessor) power and popular support was the military. He was a career military officer for 17 years, He was a captain when he attempted two violent coups in 1992. To date, the government of Maduro has maintained the support of the military. This is probably the key to his ability to hold onto power.

Now, retired General Jack Keene recently did discuss three military options 1) move forces to Colombia and threaten, 2) move a coalition of forces (Colombia and Brazil) into Venezuela to provide humanitarian aid and 3) invade with the purpose of conducting regime change. See: Keene Interview

I suspect that any form of direct intervention, like we did in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq is not being seriously considered. So, one wonders what other military options is the United States considering, if any.

We are looking at a rather extended series of protests in Venezuela now. Sometimes the successful street protests or people power protests that overthrow governments are fairly brief and sudden. For example, the street protests that ended the attempted coup, saved Boris Yeltsin as president of Russia, and eventually resulted in the dissolution of the 74-year old Soviet Union lasted only 3 days and resulted in only 3 deaths. Many other of the people power protests in Eastern Europe in 1990/1991 were also brief and not very bloody.

But often these things last a little longer with a lot more blood shed. For example, the Romanian protests of 1991 lasted 12 days, and involved considerable violence, with snipers firing on the protesting crowds as foreign (Libyan) soldiers tried to protect the regime. When it was done 689 to 1,290 people were dead but the government was overthrown (and executed). The more recent “successful” street protests that overthrew the 29-year Egyptian government of Mubarak in 2011 lasted 17 days.  Some 846 people died in the violence during the protests. One of the more extended efforts, conducted in the freezing winter of Ukraine, and also under sniper fire, was the Euromaiden Protests of 2013/2014 that lasted a little more than three months. When it was done, the government of Yanukovych was overthrown (for a second time), but at a cost of 104-780 people’s lives, and the loss of territory due to political protests and seizure by Russia. On the other hand, there is the Tiananmen Square protests on 1989, which went on for about a month and half before the government sent in the tanks. This failed protest cost at least 1,045 lives, and some claim thousands.

Now, we have never done a survey of people power protests and attempts to remove governments by protest. This would be useful. I do not know if longer protests have a higher or lower success rate than shorter protests. Right now we are looking at the most recent round of protests in Venezuela that started on 10 January 2019 and that have now gone on for four+ months. One could make the claim that the protests started in 2017 or 2014. They have also been bloody with at least 107 people killed in 2019.

The question is, as these protests extend, does this mean that Maduro has a greater chance of hanging on to power? This may be the lesson of Syria, which started as a series of protests in March 2011 that then morphed into a bloody civil war (over 200,000 dead) that is still going on today.

I would be sorely tempted to assemble a data base of people power protests since WWII (which is not a small effort) and then see if I could find some patterns there (like we did in our insurgency studies), including success rate, duration, size, and the reasons for successful versus unsuccessful protests.