November 13th, 2025: Inside Venezuela’s Plan To Resist A U.S. Invasion & Ukraine’s Air Defenses Falter
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It's Thursday, the 13th of November. Welcome to the President's Daily Brief. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. First up, as the American military buildup in the Caribbean continues, a new report sheds light on just how Venezuela plans to fight back if the U.S. makes a move on the Maduro regime, turning to guerrilla tactics and chaos to grind U.S. forces to a halt. At least, that's the plan, apparently. I'll have those details. Later in the show, troubling news for Ukraine. New data shows that its air defenses are slipping as Russia's missile and drone barrages intensify. Plus, Colombia has become the latest nation to suspend cooperation with the U.S., cutting off intelligence sharing over Washington's recent strikes on drug traffickers.
And in today's back of the brief, Yemen's Houthi rebels, remember them? Well, they say they've halted all attacks on Israel and the Red Sea shipping, signaling a pause in their campaign as the Gaza ceasefire holds. But first, today's PDB Spotlight. America's most powerful aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, along with its strike group, arrived in the Caribbean this week. And just hours after the carrier group appeared on the radar, Venezuela's defense minister, Vladimir Padrino Lopez, announced what he called a, quote, massive national mobilization. He declared that the country's entire military arsenal was now on, quote, full operational readiness. Ooh, how about that? According to Caracas, the order includes the deployment of ground, air, naval, riverine, and missile forces, with every branch of the armed forces, militias, and security units participating.
Maduro's government claims that some 200,000 personnel are involved. Now, it's worth noting that numbers like that are hard to verify. But one thing is certain, the Maduro regime wants the world, and particularly Washington, to believe, anyway, that it's ready for a fight. Now, obviously, Venezuela's conventional military is no match for the U.S., and for that I give myself the PDB statement of the obvious award for the day. But that's where a new Reuters-exclusive report sheds some light on how Caracas actually plans to respond if things do get messy. If you're a regular listener, you'll know that we focus largely on the massive amount of U.S. hardware that's been pouring into the region, the ships, the aircraft, and precision munitions.
But one thing we haven't given much attention to is just how Venezuela would potentially mount its resistance in the event of a conflict with the U.S. Well, today's Reuters report gives us some insight, and what they're planning says a lot about the shortcomings of the Venezuelan military. According to internal documents and interviews with senior officers, Venezuela has no illusions about winning a conventional war. One officer told Reuters, quote, we wouldn't last two hours. Instead, the Venezuelan government is quietly preparing for asymmetric warfare, a guerrilla style campaign designed to turn any U.S. invasion into a drawn out, chaotic fight. The plan includes two key elements. First, what they call, quote, prolonged resistance.
Venezuela forces would scatter into hundreds of smaller units. More than 280 different sites have already been identified, each capable of operating independently. These groups would use hit-and-run tactics, sabotage, and ambushes against U.S. and allied forces. The second element is somewhat darker, something that Venezuelan officials describe as anarchization, in other words, creating chaos, fueling unrest, riots, and internal disorder to make any occupation ungovernable. The idea is to flood the zone with instability so that the U.S.
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