The immediate political vacuum left in Venezuela by the abrupt removal of Nicolás Maduro from power was filled by former vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who was sworn in as interim president on January 5, 2026.
But the situation is far from stable. Rodríguez represents just one of multiple and competing members of a Venezuelan elite comprised of a precarious civil-military alliance officially committed to a left-wing populist ideology called Chavismo.
Delcy and his brother Jorge Rodríguez, Maduro’s longtime right-hand man, are the main faces of the civilian factions. Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López, both members of the armed forces, represent their military interests.
Even this difficult civil-military division represents only the institutional dimensions of power in Venezuela. There are also numerous armed groups and organizations with different interests that will respond differently to what happens in the coming days and weeks.
As scholars who have spent decades researching these armed groups, we know that the Chavista leadership now faces a clear dilemma: does it give in to US pressure and coercion over domestic economic and political decisions or does it resist? Both paths carry the risk of armed conflicts of varying severity, with far-reaching consequences for the future stability of the country.
Below, we identify the main armed actors and examine how they may respond to the decisions made by the Chavismo leadership in the face of Trump’s use of force.
A fragile unit
If the current cohesion of the elites is maintained and the Chavista leadership accepts Trump’s plans for the country, in our opinion the probability of a large-scale armed conflict remains low.
Over the years, the government consolidated loyalty by appointing officers to head state institutions and granting access to resources such as oil, gold mining, and drugs. The future cohesion of the government would depend on the military’s continued control over key institutions, as well as the legal and illicit markets that support the wealth of senior officers.
But the risk of instability also lies outside the elite unit, with the armed “collectives.” These diverse groups range from loyal supporters of the government to factions more critical of the government. Although their number is unknown, the groups are numerous, coordinated, often heavily armed, and control significant territories, including in the country’s capital.
Although many are now driven primarily by economic interests, a subset maintain insurgent and anti-imperialist commitments. If Chavista elites were perceived as bowing to US pressure in the future, these groups could interpret such accommodation as ideological betrayal and resort to guerrilla violence.
As one of the founders of one of the largest and most powerful collectives said when we interviewed him in 2021: “As long as imperialism exists, armed struggle will always be present because imperialism seeks to destroy the people.”
Although members of the collective remained largely silent immediately after Maduro’s kidnapping, some videos posted on social media and media outlets have shown men believed to be members of the collective harassing journalists and people on the streets.
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Potential for political disruption
It remains unclear how resilient the current unified but already strained Chavista front will be. In fact, Rodríguez’s civilian wing and the Cabello-Padrino López military apparatus likely have different levels of tolerance toward Trump’s proposals.
The Rodríguez brothers have generally taken a pragmatic stance: in recent years, Delcy has shown a willingness to move away from state socialism toward market-oriented policies in an effort to stabilize the Venezuelan economy. Furthermore, adopting free-market policies could help the brothers attract support from business elites and segments of the general population.
Military factions have increased their political weight since the death of Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s predecessor. These military forces want economic controls that allow them to benefit from crony capitalism and secure their interests in strategic enterprises—including oil, gold, food distribution, and drug markets. Furthermore, Chavismo’s anti-imperialist nationalist ideology is especially prominent within the armed forces.
Trump’s statements indicating that the United States would be the de facto ruler of Venezuela were likely perceived within Chavista circles as blatant imperialism and intentional public humiliation. While the Rodriguez brothers may be willing to undertake this to preserve their stability and their own survival, more radical military figures may be much less inclined to do so.
For now, the civilian leadership is at least officially committed to Maduro. Still, Trump’s framing of Maduro’s operation as an overt spectacle of subjugation raises the military’s political cost of continuing to align itself with civilian leadership that is potentially perceived as acquiescing to Washington’s demands.
Whether this perceived offense translates into desertion will also depend on how any potential Rodriguez realignment threatens or preserves the military’s economic interests.
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The contours of the resulting conflict
An open rift over the United States’ role in Venezuela would likely result in an asymmetric conflict between the US and Venezuelan armed forces.
The Bolivarian National Armed Forces of Venezuela are composed of approximately 123,000 active personnel supported by approximately 8,000 reservists. The Bolivarian Militia, a fifth component of the armed forces that integrates civilian volunteers into the army, adds between 200,000 and 300,000 members to this count. Although severely weakened by a years-long economic crisis, the Venezuelan armed forces remain a formidable player.
This conflict would likely also involve the collectives, which collaborated with the armed forces for years as part of what Maduro called the Civic Military Union. In short, we would see both a formal armed conflict and a guerrilla war break out.
The relationship between the government and police forces has long been characterized by mistrust, but senior officials are aware that the continued future of their institutions is tied to the survival of Chavismo.
Of the more than 140 police forces in Venezuela, the most powerful are the Bolivarian National Police, the CICPC, the investigative and forensic police, and the SEBIN, the political intelligence police that has become synonymous with torture. The PNB and the CICPC have benefited from widespread corruption under Chavismo.
Their agents are implicated in rampant extortion and kidnappings, and both played central roles in systematic state violence during the Maduro era. At the same time, the CICPC is widely viewed as lacking ideological loyalty to the government and has at times challenged state policies and guidelines.
The police forces are more aligned with the army than the civilian faction of Delcy and Jorge Rodríguez. In the event of a breakup, this alignment would likely hold.
The role of criminal and guerrilla groups
Meanwhile, numerous gangs and criminal organizations operate throughout Venezuela, ranging from groups of 10 to 12 men to more sophisticated “mega-gangs” with more than 100 members. Although the Trump administration often misrepresented these groups, it is true that relations between the Maduro government and some groups allowed them to become more organized, better armed, and better able to govern the territories they control, although others were weakened or dismantled by the state.
Gangs and criminal organizations have no ideological loyalty to the government; Their priority is to preserve control over illicit markets, including drugs, kidnappings, extortion and food distribution. In the event of a civil-military split, such groups could remain neutral, choosing instead to focus on protecting their criminal businesses and potentially using the instability to expand them.
At the same time, Delcy and Jorge Rodríguez could revive a familiar strategy: negotiate informal agreements with the gangs in exchange for calm in the streets and tacit support.
In the past, Chavista governments have prohibited police forces from entering gang-controlled areas and tolerated gang dominance in illicit markets. Although such agreements can generate territorial stability in the short term, they also deepen tensions with the police.
The last major armed actors in Venezuela are the guerrilla political groups. The National Liberation Army, or ELN, and FARC dissident groups operate in several states along the Venezuela-Colombia border. Well armed and deeply involved in illegal mining, extortion and smuggling, both groups have benefited from the Chavismo government. They have largely moved away from seeking national political power to capture local state infrastructure and establish parallel authorities to control illicit markets.
However, insurgent ideologies and opposition to demobilization efforts in Colombia remain central to understanding their motivations.
Guerrilla organizations such as the ELN and FARC dissidents would also likely seek to preserve—and potentially expand—their control over illicit economies in any future political arrangement. However, unlike local gangs, these groups maintain articulated political agendas, although those agendas continue to be oriented largely toward Colombia.
Any future alignment of these groups would reflect both ideological commitments and a strategic calculation that civilian factions aligned with Washington would pose a greater threat to their political and economic interests.
Addressing this constellation of armed groups through state-building and multilateral cooperation could go some way to providing stability for Venezuelans in the post-Maduro era. But that is far from guaranteed in this uncertain time, especially if the Trump administration continues its policy of direct coercion over Venezuelan affairs.
*Rebecca Hanson is an associate professor of Latin American Studies, Sociology and Criminology at the University of Florida and Veronica Zubillaga She is a Mellon Visiting Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago..
This text was originally published in The Conversation
