Examining Russian and Chinese Military Operations in Venezuela

January 21, 2022 With inflation at a record high, millions of its citizens fleeing the country, and a political opposition recognized by most Western democracies as the legitimate government of Venezuela, the regime of Nicolás Maduro seemed to be on the brink of collapse in 2019. But Maduro regime survived, thanks to a number of factors — among them the external support it received from malign state actors such as Russia and China.

Moscow and Beijing never wavered in their political support of the Venezuelan regime, or of Maduro himself, including by refusing to recognize the constitutionally mandated interim presidency of Juan Guaidó. Most analysis of Russia and China’s support has focused on the political and economic support provided to Venezuela, including close cooperation in energy, industry, heath, finance, and trade. But the support of the two countries has gone far beyond the political and economic realms, and encompasses military and defense cooperation that has helped harden Maduro’s dictatorship and enhanced its capabilities to cause chaos with its neighbors.

When Hugo Chávez ascended to the Venezuelan presidency 22 years ago, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Hu Jintao immediately began building a defense relationship with his regime. Over his 14-year tenure, Chávez visited Russia nine times and China six, in the process establishing a security and defense alliance that the Maduro regime maintains to this day.

Russia has sold more than $11.4 billion in military equipment and armament to Venezuela in the last 20 years, including fighter jets, attack and transport helicopters, air defense and naval platforms, tanks, armored personnel carriers (APC), self-propelled artillery, and various small arms to include surface-to-air-missiles.

The booming arms trade is complemented by Russia’s deployment of two nuclear-capable strategic bombers to Venezuela every five years since 2008. The Tu-160 bombers can carry conventional or nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and have been tested in combat in Syria, where they launched, for the first time, conventionally armed Kh-101 cruise missiles. The bombers last took the 6,200-mile flight to Venezuela in 2018,4 making 2023 the next expected deployment if Russia keeps to its five-year rotation.

China, while selling significantly less arms to Venezuela than Russia, has a hand in shaping the next generation of Venezuelan military leaders through defense education and special operations training. Since 1999, the 76th Group Army of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been training jointly with Venezuelan Special Forces on language, diving, sniping, and helicopter landing operations. Moreover, Venezuelan flag officers have steadily attended professional military courses and China’s military war colleges and the PLA National Defense University.

In the last 10 years, China has sold upward of $615 million in weapons to Venezuela, including K-8 trainer aircraft, VN-16 light tanks, anti-tank and anti-ship missiles, self-propelled mortars, and the infamous VN-4 light armored personnel carrier, nicknamed the “Rhinoceros,” which saw action on the streets of Venezuela when the Maduro regime quashed protests in 2014, 2017, and to this day.

Moreover, the three countries have been able to build interoperability and joint capabilities by regularly attending the International Army Games, an annual multinational military exercise organized by the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation. Their participation includes joint military training for Special Forces and Marine Infantry units from Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, and Belarus. At the 2019 Russian Army Games, Venezuela’s Defense Minister, General Vladimir Padrino López, signed a strategic naval agreement with his Russian counterpart, General Sergei Shoigu, governing future port visits by the countries’ naval warships.

Russia and China’s military support to Venezuela blends the use of conventional military equipment with irregular armed non-state actors. This strategy of hybrid warfare is consistent with similar strategies employed in Syria, Ukraine, and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. And like in those other conflicts, the deployment of Russian and Chinese military contractors and companies is critical to augmenting the capabilities of the Maduro regime’s military while maintaining plausible deniability.

In 2019, according to Reuters, Russian private military contractors (PMC) with reported ties to the Kremlin were used to beef up security for Nicolás Maduro and his regime. Russian PMCs have also been reported to use Venezuelan military uniforms in the capital, Caracas, in the country’s mineral-dense eastern region, and along the Colombia-Venezuela border.

These Russian PMCs arrived in Venezuela aboard an Ilyushin Il-62M long-range jetliner and an Antonov An-124 cargo aircraft, Russian Air Force transport planes which had built a strategic airlift from Moscow to Caracas. Meanwhile, Chinese security companies (CSC) are spearheading the development of unconventional combat capabilities in the Bolivarian Armed Forces of Venezuela (FANB) and the Maduro regime’s repressive domestic apparatus. In November 2020, the U.S. Department of Treasury, through its Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), sanctioned China National Electronics Import & Export Corporation (CEIEC), a service provider of defense and social security systems, for helping the Maduro government undermine democracy, including via “efforts to restrict internet service and conduct digital surveillance and cyber operations against political opponents.”

According to OFAC, CEIEC provided Venezuela with the commercialized version of China’s “Great Firewall.” The use of private contractors and private companies with ties to the military allows Russia and China to protect their oil, mining, and infrastructure investments while collecting tactical and strategic intelligence — and, most importantly, providing the Maduro regime with military logistical and intelligence support to manage the myriad irregular armed non-state actors operating on Venezuelan territory.

The paramilitary approach is augmented by high-level technical intelligence collection that allows the Maduro regime to improve its internal and external espionage. In 2018, China’s ZTE Corporation, once sanctioned for its role in espionage and cybersecurity risks, built a Venezuelan surveillance system that monitors citizen behavior through the “fatherland card,” a new Venezuelan national ID. China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has close ties to two firms that partially own ZTE, which has become critical to the PLA’s military industrial complex. This includes a PLA offshoot at the Capitan Manuel Rios military airbase in the Guárico state of Venezuela that tracks military operated, Chinese built satellites in orbit.

The technical and paramilitary support from Russia and China has benefited many Venezuelan military commands, but none more than the Venezuelan Aero-space Defense Command (CODAI). The CODAI has the mission of executing defensive aerospace operations, and Russia’s P-18 mobile radar system and China’s JY-11B 3D electronic radar have enhanced the Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence (C4I) systems that are actively used to monitor and surveil Venezuela’s borders.

Since 2018, Russian military aircraft have routinely arrived in Venezuela, while Russian military advisors regularly appear at military installations, carry out training exercises, and provide logistical support to the Maduro regime’s military. China, for its part, has a less visible but equally impactful on-the-ground presence, training Venezuelan Special Operations Forces and managing military technology. Combined, these “global powers” are turning Venezuela into a serious front for gray zone conflict — one that provides a strategic and operational challenge to U.S. partners in the region, namely Colombia and Guyana.

In March 2021, the Maduro regime launched an offensive in the Apure state on the Colombia-Venezuela border. This offensive provoked a direct clash between the Venezuelan military and irregular armed actors (a faction of the FARC) operating on the border. The Maduro regime reacted by deploying a stronger military presence on the Venezuelan side of the border, complete with Chinese-made K-8 combat planes and Russian-made Orlan 10 unmanned aerial vehicles, which are reconnaissance drones used for electronic warfare.

This was complemented by a robust disinformation campaign that sought to draw a moral equivalence between the democratically elected government of Ivan Duque Marquez in Colombia and the undemocratic, authoritarian regime in Venezuela.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry chimed in by praising the Venezuelan military efforts to combat against drug trafficking and violence on the border, and urged the Colombian government to engage its Venezuelan counterparts to “solve the border conflict.” Meanwhile, in offshore Guyana, ExxonMobil recently discovered massive oil deposits, reviving a historic border dispute that was supposedly settled in 1899.

Located west of the Essequibo River, the disputed region consists of 61,600 square miles, and although the Maduro regime previously did next to nothing to recover the disputed territory, it is now deploying Venezuelan warships to conduct naval exercises in the maritime border zone. China is well-positioned to exploit this maritime border dispute, providing anti-ship missiles to the Venezuelan Navy. If a conflict erupts between Venezuela and Guyana, China will likely reap the benefits by leveraging its bilateral agreements with both countries to access the Essequibo’s burgeoning oil and gas resources.

This century has seen Russia and China create and exploit gray zone conflicts in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Venezuela represents an example of this same strategy in Latin America, a region with vast strategic natural resources that is increasingly vital for Russia and China’s global positioning. While not a natural alliance, Russia and China have found common ground in Venezuela in partnering with the Maduro regime. Moscow provides the weapons and manpower, while Beijing provides the military technology, to the Maduro regime. This assistance helps Venezuela’s strongman to persist, and to continue projecting power throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

*Jose Gustavo Arocha is a senior fellow for the Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS), a national security think tank based in Washington D.C., and a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the Venezuelan Army. In 2018, he graduated with an MPA from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Iran, Russia, China To Run War Drills in Latin America
https://freebeacon.com/national-security/iran-russia-china-to-run-war-drills-in-latin-america/

Adam Kredo
July 5, 2022
Iran, Russia, and China are gearing up to run a series of major war drills in Latin America in a show of force meant to signal how these militaries can reach the United States.

Venezuela, under the leadership of anti-U.S. socialist president Nicolás Maduro, is scheduled to host the war games in mid-August, according to a report by the Center for a Secure Free Society, a think tank that tracks malign regimes. Along with 10 other nations, Russia, China, and Iran will move their militaries into the Western Hemisphere for war drills that will “preposition forward-deployed military assets in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

The war games, known as the Sniper Frontier competition, show that these malign regime from across the globe are uniting and “getting ready to make a loud statement that the region is ready to embrace the multipolar force,” according to the think-tank report, which focuses on Latin America’s embrace of authoritarian regimes. A key portion of Russia’s “military is prepping to bring, for the first time, some of these military games to the Western Hemisphere”—even as Moscow is bogged down with war in Ukraine.

The war drills are one of the starkest signs to date that Latin America’s coalition of anti-U.S. regimes is working to boost relations with Russia, China, and Iran. Maduro recently wrapped up a diplomatic tour of the Middle East in which he inked a 20-year strategic deal with Iran that laid the groundwork for an Iranian oil tanker to dock in Venezuela and offload Tehran’s illicit crude. “The strategic deal between Iran and Venezuela is meant to mirror similar strategic agreements that the Islamic Republic signed with China and Russia in recent years,” according to the think-tank report. Latin American regimes also are inking military pacts with Russia.

“Russia and its allies Iran and China are about to make a major show of force with the army games competition in August in Venezuela. But it’s important to understand that this force is molded by cyber-enabled, digital disinformation that is at the heart of how this kind of joint military exercise is used to legitimize authoritarian states and delegitimize democracies in the Western Hemisphere,” Joseph Humire, a national security analyst and executive director of the think tank, told the Washington Free Beacon. “By normalizing military movements of U.S. adversaries in the Caribbean, we run the risk of weakening the moral legitimacy of democracies in Latin America.”

There are also signs that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the country’s paramilitary fighting force, is boosting its presence in Latin America.

(excerpt)

Brazil and China Expand Bilateral Relations During State Visit by President Xi Jinping

https://www.gov.br/planalto/en/latest-news/2024/11/brazil-and-china-expand-bilateral-relations-during-state-visit-by-president-xi-jinping

“In the context of this visit, almost 40 international acts were signed in areas such as trade, agriculture, industry, investment, science and technology, communications, health, energy, culture, education and tourism,” listed President Lula during his statement to the press.

The official partnership between the two countries dates back 50 years. It has fostered a productive relationship within international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization (WTO) and groups such as the G20 and BRICS. Lula emphasized that this meeting further strengthens the strategic partnership between Brazil and China in defense of global governance reform and promoting a more democratic, equitable and environmentally sustainable international system. The President Xi endorses these views.

(excerpted)

Chinese Marines Participate in Brazil’s Military Exercise for the First Time
https://fmso.tradoc.army.mil/2024/chinese-marines-participate-in-brazils-military-exercise-for-the-first-time/

The participation of Chinese Marines in Operation Formosa, a multinational military exercise hosted by Brazil’s Navy, caps off a diplomatically busy summer between China and Brazil.[i] However, Chinese media coverage of the military exercise was muted. The excerpted article in the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported on a single statement from the Chinese Defense Ministry, which noted the exercise would “deepen friendship and cooperation between the Chinese and participating militaries and enhance their ability to jointly respond to security risk challenges.” The SCMP article noted the focus of the exercise was joint landing and anti-landing combat drills—the same type of exercises the U.S. is engaging in across the nations of the South China Sea, to include the Philippines. The SCMP article did acknowledge that the Chinese military participation in Brazil was unusual given that Chinese military exercises are overwhelmingly focused on the South China Sea.

The exercise received different coverage in the Brazilian press. According to the excerpted article in Brazilian flagship news outlet Globo, the annual exercise featured 3,000 military personnel from Brazil, 63 U.S. Marines, and 32 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Marines. Eight additional countries sent military observers.[ii] The U.S. had participated in the same exercise in previous years, but it was the first time for PLA personnel. While Brazil heralded the trilateral military exercise as significant for bringing the United States and China together, U.S. defense officials confirmed that U.S. troops participating in the exercise did not train nor participate alongside the contingent of PLA Marines participating in the exercise.[iii] No further explanations were publicized.

While minimal in scope, the participation of Chinese PLA Marines in Operation Formosa is but one of a host of other diplomatic collaborations between China and Brazil. This includes Brazil’s July pronouncement that it would like to participate in China’s Belt and Road Initiative; the joint commemoration of the 50-year anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Brazil in August; and Brazil and Chinese participation at the recent BRICS summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, in September.[iv] Seen in conjunction with these other events and pronouncements, the participation of Chinese Marines in Operation Formosa adds to the body of evidence of a deepening China-Brazil relationship.

Sources:

Yuanyue Dang,“In rare shift, China will send marine corps to Brazil for joint military exercise,” South China Morning Post, 6 September 2024. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3277473/rare-shift-china-will-send-marine-corps-brazil-joint-military-exercise?module=perpetual_scroll_0&pgtype=article

China’s Maritime Moves in South America: A Wake-Up Call for U.S. Leadership

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/chinas-maritime-moves-south-america-wake-call-us-leadership-213761

Donald Trump Should Look South to Compete with China: China is still Mahanian. Twenty-one years ago, I closed out my very first hefty journal article, over at Comparative Strategy, with an offhand observation that the works of Alfred Thayer Mahan, the fin de siècle American maritime historian and theorist, had found favor in a Communist China that had cast its gaze seaward in search of economic prosperity and martial clout. Just as Mahan molded geopolitical thought in the Kaiser’s Germany during his lifetime—that was my article’s subject—he could do so in China a century hence.

As indeed he has. Mahan’s ideas radiate allure for seagoing societies beyond his life and times—and beyond North America.

Exhibit A: last Thursday the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Xi Jinping, descended on Lima, Peru, to start a weeklong diplomatic tour of South America. Xi will round out his travels by visiting Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to take part in a Group of 20 summit. There’s a Mahanian tinge to his itinerary. The CCP supremo joined Peruvian president Dina Boluarte at a virtual ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Peruvian seaport of Chancay, some forty-eight miles north of Lima. Beijing bankrolled the project to the tune of $1.3 billion.

And gained a lodgment for Chinese sea power on this side of the Pacific Ocean. Money well spent.

(excerpt)

Thus is an interesting source, not seen before.

At the bottom of the article, it states: "This article was first published on the December 2021 issue of the Defense Dossier (The Americas Influx), a publication by the American Foreign Policy Council."

The magazine is published by the US Southern Command, through FWG Solutions in Washington DC, a private company well connected with the defense industry.

The domain was registered in the last year of the Clinton administration, in 1999, and operates until now. USASpending.gov shows its last contract from the government ended in November of last year, and so the current DOD under Secretary Hegseth, in line with cost reductions as the Trump-Vance administration moves forward, might affect FWG Solutions and Diálogo magazine, which oddly printed a disclaimer against its articles at the bottom of the page sourced.

This is not just China and Russia. The Maduro regime has followed the strategies of Hugo Chavez and uses Cuban, Iranian, Nicaraguan and advisors and security people from other terrorist/evolutionary states to act as strategic partners and enforcers for his regime.

All are looking at developing military bases and infrastructure in Venezuela as a staging ground against the US .

China has been the most aggressive and Russia typically uses Iran as a Proxy. Lula is doing the same in Brazil and the Chinese have been in the process of taking over the Panama Canal for a long time. America's

Democrats are not far behind.

Bill Clinton leased out the the Long Beach Naval Shipyards and the Long Beach point of entry in California to the Chinese in 1999 and Obama tried a similar scheme with various strategic US ports while he was in office.

The only thing that seems to change is that Republican Party seems to have become as bought off by the Chinese as the Democrats and present a united Uni Party front when it comes to selling access and influence to China and Chinese interests

Yes, an older article but within the context of the poor coverage we get regarding happenings in South America it helps to reveal the scope of some of President Trump’s concerns.

I have people wondering why the big deal with the Panama Canal etc. And if people understood what China, Russia, and Iran have been busy doing ...well folks might get a better understanding there’s been a slow march by those friend/enemies within striking distance.

A few of the other linked articles are more recent, demonstrating the ‘goal’ of the opposition.

Item of significance that is frequently gotten wrong.

Oil. Venezuelan oil is usually thought of as very low API number, meaning viscous and thick and heavy, and consequently hard to refine.

The oil in the Orinoco region is indeed like this. It would require an effort on the magnitude of the entire oil sands area of Northern Alberta to get out that oil. But what is often gotten wrong is that not all of Venezuela’s oil is like that. More tolerable oil exists in the country and largely pays for what Russia and China are doing there.

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