Diplomacy & Crisis News

Première nation d'Afrique à avoir accueilli les championnats du monde de cyclisme sur route, en septembre 2025, le Rwanda finance aussi des équipes de football de renommée mondiale. Si cette diplomatie sportive en plein essor lui permet de redorer son image, abîmée par un régime autoritaire et (…) / Rwanda, Sport

The president’s pay-to-play mentality is undermining U.S. foreign policy.

Washington wants a free hand for Silicon Valley and Russia investment. The EU is an obstacle—and the far right is an ally.

After the deadly attack on a Hanukkah celebration, accusations arose that not enough has been done to protect Jewish Australians from a clear rise in antisemitism.

The failure to declare a winner – when both top contenders had advocated for dropping relations with Beijing – is reopening the geopolitical map of Central America.

Is Washington moving away from the formula that has governed the tenuous Taiwan Strait equilibrium for 50 years?

As local officials scour every corner for cash, businesses are taking the hit – in unpaid contracts.

Once a vehicle for global cooperation, international science has become a high-stakes arena of geopolitical rivalry.

Taliban officials admit that at least half of the stockpile is now "unaccounted for.” Many of those weapons ended up with militant groups operating across Afghanistan’s borders.

It divides the world into spheres of influence, with one for the U.S. in the Western Hemisphere and one for China in Asia.

The Islamic republic no longer controls the symbolic universe that once anchored its legitimacy.

José Kast’s right-wing agenda has implications far beyond Chile’s borders.

Peninsular-origin parties suffered a catastrophic rejection in the late November polls, while a local duopoly emerged in East Malaysia.

Why the lessons of Ukraine don’t apply to a conflict with China.

How to rescue Washington’s most important partnership in Latin America.

Despite the bombastic rhetoric, America Isn’t retreating.

Myanmar's generals are counting on Western governments overlooking the sham election that they have scheduled for December 28.

Manila claims that around 20 fishing boats were hit with “water cannons and dangerous blocking maneuvers” close to Sabina Shoal in the South China Sea.

The Royal Thai Army says there will be no ceasefire “until Cambodia ceases its hostilities and attacks against Thai troops and civilians in the border area."

Colombian Air Force Kfir fighter jets fly in formation during the military parade to commemorate Colombia’s Independence Day in Bogota on July 20, 2024. (Alejandro Martinez/AFP)

There has been a lot of discussions on US plans in addressing security issues with Venezuela, as US forces take to targeting boats related to cartels attempting to bring narcotics into the United States. While the likelihood of a full assault on Venezuela would mirror the recent strikes on Iran as opposed to a strategy of regime change like in Iraq and Afghanistan, the success in assaulting the most well equipped nation in Latin America comes with significant risks to US forces.

Venezuela has been the benefactor of past procurements of weapons systems from the United States. In the pre-Chavez era, Venezuela was tasked with protecting not only itself, but American and foreign owned oil production assets. This close relationship between the US and Venezuela enabled the former ally to purchase early F-16 jets and rely on the overall protection of US assets in the region. With the start of the Chavez regime, Venezuela moved to a policy of expropriation, the cutting of ties with the West, and massive purchases of Russian military equipment, specifically the SU-30 fighter platform. With Venezuela’s border nations flying older Kfir jets and Mirage IIIE/5s, the SU-30s gave Venezuela a massive advantage in air superiority, now having the most capable fighter jets in the Americas after the United States.

While air defence over Venezuela would start with their SU-30 radars and longer range missiles intercepting incoming threats, Venezuela also obtained a layered air defence network from Russia and radars from China. Venezuela has not just one of the most capable air defence networks in Latin America, but worldwide. Chinese radars are some of the more modern variants available for territorial defence, systems which are now operational in Venezuela. To target longer range threats from the air and evasive missile threats, the export version of the S-300VM is operational in Venezuela. The S-300VM is the export tracked version of Russia’s S-300 missile system, and is one of the most capable systems in the world. To support the S-300VMs, Venezuela also uses the modern BUK-M2 for medium to long range air defence, a system that matches anything operational in the War in Ukraine in 2025. An assault on Venezuela may require more advanced techniques than even the recent strikes on Iran, as their systems are more modern than some of those that were operating in Iran before the strikes.

Being well known for many decades, and becoming more popularized in the movie Top Gun: Maverick, Venezuela operates the SA-3 air defense missile system. While not used as they would operate in real life in the movie, the SA-3 when used en masse would cause a lot of chaos in the air for any non-stealth aircraft conducting an assault on Venezuela. While the F-35s and F-22s would be a solution to avoiding the SA-3’s modernised radars in Venezuela, it would have made for a less exciting movie. A a mark of excellence, of good training by the SA-3 radar operators, and mistakes by the pilot and his support structures, an SA-3 was able to shoot down a F-117 stealth bomber over Serbia in the 1999. Even in chess, the Pawn sometimes is lucky enough to kill a King.

While the common theme when speaking about a US assault on Venezuela does not consider the mission to have great risks overall, mistakes could lead to US pilots being shot down. With multiple scenarios of defeating both S-300 systems and BUK-M2s having taken place in Ukraine, US forces likely have a good base of knowledge on how to defeat these systems in real world combat scenarios. Venezuela is quite a large country, and the very limited number of S-300VMs is not adequate to defend the entire territory. Lacking a sufficient number of BUK-M2s is also a problem and the SA-3 systems can be carefully avoided or defeated via cruise missile strikes on their radar hubs and launchers themselves. In reality, those missiles would have been taken out by overwhelming waves of Tomahawk cruise missile strikes in order to save Tom Cruise an Miles Teller a lot of grief, and in real life, all of the S-300VMs, BUK-M2s and SA-3s would be hit early with the Chinese made radars seeing the strikes coming in and being subject to them directly. If US bravado on Venezuela turns to conflict, waves of missiles would be what strikes Venezuela first and perhaps last, with no pilots being put at risk in the initial assault. The loss of US lives in combat with Venezuela would sour the public on any coercive actions, but the bluff might be worth the reward in the view of the current US Administration.