As the USS Gerald R. Ford navigates uncomfortably close to the Venezuelan coastline and some 15,000 U.S. Marines remain stationed across Caribbean waters, Venezuela’s political crisis has entered a volatile new phase. In Caracas, Nicolás Maduro is publicly calling for peace and dialogue — even quoting John Lennon’s “Imagine” and delivering rally slogans in English — while the country’s most prominent opposition figure, Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado, has issued an expansive “Freedom Manifesto” envisioning a democratic rebirth after the collapse of Maduro’s rule.

Both gestures — Maduro’s unusually soft-spoken overtures and Machado’s sweeping declaration of national principles — arrive just days before a major U.S. decision that could redefine Washington’s policy toward Venezuela. On November 24, the State Department is expected to designate the Cartel de los Soles, a Venezuelan military-linked drug trafficking network allegedly headed by Maduro, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).

Secretary of State Marco Rubio reiterated that the group “has corrupted the institutions of government in Venezuela and is responsible for terrorist violence conducted by and with other designated FTOs, as well as for trafficking drugs into the United States and Europe.”

Yet even as Washington prepares its most severe sanction to date, President Donald Trump has said he is open to speaking directly with Maduro. “I would probably talk to him, yeah,” Trump said. “I talk to everybody.”

That combination — tightening pressure paired with a sudden willingness to talk — has created what regional observers describe as an unprecedented moment of strategic ambiguity. Across Latin America, many now wonder whether the United States has a coherent plan for Venezuela or whether it is improvising amid escalating military preparations.

Maduro appears intent on exploiting that ambiguity. In recent public appearances, he has addressed the U.S. public directly, shifting between Spanish and English, at one point even singing. Over the weekend, he declared he wanted a “face-to-face” with Trump, urging: “Dialogue, call, yes; peace, yes; war, no — never, never war.”

In a televised address Monday, he warned that any U.S. military intervention would mark the “political end” of Trump’s leadership, accusing advisers around the U.S. president of “provoking” an armed conflict for political gain.

But even while denouncing Washington’s “hawks,” Maduro simultaneously extended yet another olive branch: he was willing to speak, he said, “with anyone in the Trump administration who wants to talk to Venezuela.”

This duality – hostility mixed with conspicuous calls for peace – reflects the delicate position Caracas faces as U.S. firepower mounts offshore and covert options reportedly expand.

According to a report published Tuesday by The New York Times, Trump has authorized the CIA to prepare potential covert operations inside Venezuela, part of a broader pressure campaign to weaken Maduro’s government. The same report said the White House has quietly reopened back-channel communications with Caracas, during which Maduro suggested he might consider stepping aside after a negotiated transition.

The State Department has also fueled speculation by delaying the FTO designation until November 24 — a move some analysts view as an ultimatum: enter negotiations or face an escalation that could sever what remains of Venezuela’s diplomatic and economic links to the outside world.

Vision for “The New Venezuela”

While Maduro navigates the diplomatic minefield, María Corina Machado is attempting to position herself — and the opposition — for a post-Maduro future. On Tuesday, Machado released her “Freedom Manifesto,” a sweeping philosophical and political declaration, that lays out a roadmap for what she calls “a Venezuela reborn from the ashes.”

The document is sharply moral in tone. It presents Venezuelans as having endured “chains of tyranny” and calls for the restoration of dignity, property rights, free markets, unrestricted speech, secure voting, institutional reform, environmental protection, and the return of nine million exiles forced abroad.

“We stand at the edge of a new era – one where our natural rights will prevail,” Machado writes. She envisions a country with a revitalized energy sector, a diversified high-tech economy, demilitarized institutions, and a reinvigorated place in the “international community of democracies.”

Her manifesto is both a political program and a counterpoint to the perception  prevalent in several Latin American capitals – that Washington’s next steps, not Venezuela’s internal politics, may determine the timing and nature of Maduro’s exit.

Even before the FTO designation, the United States had already escalated its military posture. Since early September, U.S. forces have carried out 21 strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific, killing 83 people, in what the administration describes as anti-narcotics operations. Trump has hinted that known trafficking sites within Venezuela are potential targets.

The prospect of further strikes has unsettled the region’s leftist governments, most notably Colombia, under Gustavo Petro. While Washington is willing to keep the door to dialogue open with Maduro, it remains water-tight shut to a democratically-elected president described by President Turmp as an “illegitimate drug leader”.

For Maduro, calling for dialogue may be a defensive tactic — an effort to avoid isolation at a moment when Washington appears to be tightening multiple pressure channels at once. For Machado, the combination of international pressure and internal exhaustion presents a rare opportunity to present the blueprint for a new Constitution.

Yet the central question remains whether the United States has a clear strategy for a peaceful transition to democracy. A show of overwhelming force without a defined political horizon could embolden Maduro’s close allies – including Russia and Colombia’s Petro – to argue that Washington lacks staying power in the hemisphere. Should the military arsenal in the Caribbean fail to deliver tangible results – from regime transition to a negotiated exile for Maduro – the Chavista leadership will feel emboldened to stay the course.

The next ten days, leading to the November 24 FTO designation, will prove decisive. Either Maduro exits quietly – triggering the removal of the U.S. government’s $50 million bounty for his arrest – or the United States crosses a legal and diplomatic threshold that could redefine the region for decades to come.

The Colombian government of President Gustavo Petro has acknowledged that at least 15 minors recruited by illegal armed groups were killed in four military operations carried out between August and November, after a report by the National Institute of Forensic Medicine revealed a higher number of child casualties than initially disclosed by the Defence Ministry.

The deaths occurred during a series of bombings and clashes in the departments of Guaviare, Amazonas and Arauca, according to the forensic agency. The figures have intensified scrutiny of President Gustavo Petro’s security decisions and the conduct of the Armed Forces under a government that has repeatedly pledged to uphold human rights protections while pursuing its “total peace” agenda.

Defence Minister Pedro Sánchez said the military was aware of the probability that minors were present in the camps targeted during the operations but insisted all actions were carried out in accordance with the principle of distinction under International Humanitarian Law (IHL), which obliges armed actors to differentiate between combatants and civilians.

The revelation comes a week after an operation in Calamar, Guaviare, on November 10, that left seven minors dead in a bombing against dissident factions of the FARC. The incident prompted a wave of criticism and forced the government to respond publicly to accusations that it had failed to take sufficient precautions to avoid killing children forcibly recruited by armed groups.

According to the forensic report, the first of the four operations took place on August 24 in the rural village of Nueva York, in El Retorno, Guaviare. The agency received eight bodies from the site — seven men and one woman. Three of them were minors: two boys and one girl. The institute did not provide ages or identities.

The second operation occurred in Puerto Santander, Amazonas, where four bodies were transferred to the forensic institute on October 7. All four — three males and one female — were identified as minors. The bombing, reported earlier this month by local media, targeted structures allegedly belonging to the FARC dissident group led by alias ‘Iván Mordisco’ .Military intelligence believed Mordisco might have been in the area, but he later escaped, officials said.

The most lethal operation occurred on November 10 in Calamar, Guaviare, where 20 bodies were recovered from a bombing site and transported to forensic authorities on November 12. Sixteen have been identified, while four remain unidentified. Thirteen of the victims were male and seven female. Of the total, seven were minors, Forensic Medicine said.

The fourth incident took place on November 13 in Puerto Rondón, Arauca. Eight people were killed there – three men and five women – including one girl.

The forensic report has deepened the political crisis surrounding the deaths of children in military operations, a long-standing and highly sensitive issue in Colombia’s armed conflict. It has also revived long-running questions about the state’s responsibility to ensure the protection of minors, even when they have been forcibly recruited by illegal armed groups.

The Public Ombudsman’s Office, which monitors human rights violations, reiterated after the latest bombings that the presence of minors in illegal armed groups does not justify attacks that could endanger them, stressing that the Armed Forces must adopt “all possible precautions” to protect children, who are guaranteed special protection under both domestic and international law.

The warning underscores concerns that date back years. In 2019, then-Defence Minister Guillermo Botero resigned after revelations that a military bombing in Caquetá killed eight minors. At the time, opposition senators – including Gustavo Petro, Iván Cepeda and Roy Barreras – sharply criticized the government for failing to prevent avoidable child deaths.

Now in power, Petro faces similar criticism over what rights groups describe as a recurring pattern: intelligence-driven bombardments aimed at neutralizing armed groups, but which result in the deaths of children who have been forcibly recruited and used as human shields by illegal organizations.

Defence Minister Sánchez rejected accusations that the government attempted to conceal the new information. He said the operation on August 24 in El Retorno was not a bombing but a ground confrontation, disputing suggestions that authorities had misrepresented the conditions under which the minors were killed.

Minister Sánchez now faces a no confidence vote in Congress following the Guaviare incident in which seven minors were killed. The no-confidence vote comes as the Petro government is as odds with the United Nations over cocaine productions figures. According to the UN, 3,000 tons of the illegal narcotic were produced in 2024, and number the leftist leader refutes.