Nicolás Maduro’s regime has long relied on support from China, Cuba, Russia, and other authoritarians to stay afloat. But now that the United States is stepping up the pressure, will his fellow autocrats leave him high and dry?
November 2025
As the United States steps up military pressure on Venezuela, will Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian allies stand by him, or will this be the moment their solidarity flags? Maduro’s endurance in power is not a matter of luck or just about adaptive domestic strategies to cope with a multitude of crises. For more than a decade, China, Cuba, Iran, Russia, and Turkey have kept Maduro afloat with money, technology, diplomacy, security assistance, and intelligence. But it was one thing to defend and support him in the court of rhetoric and quite another to back him amid the risk of open confrontation with the United States.
When Maduro assumed Venezuela’s presidency after Hugo Chávez died of cancer in 2013, few expected Maduro to last. He lacked charisma and popular appeal, faced a sharp collapse in oil prices that burned the state’s main source of revenue, and inherited an economy already weakened by years of chronic mismanagement. The oil bonanza that had financed Chavismo’s social programs and patronage networks, both domestically and abroad, had vanished.
Soon came a number of shocks. There were mass protests in 2014 and 2017, to which the regime responded by killing and jailing dissidents in unprecedented numbers. There were severe shortages and mass emigration, and an international push to delegitimize Maduro’s rule. Yet even after opposition candidate Edmundo González defeated Maduro in the 2024 presidential election, the regime defied expectations. Maduro remains in office, condemned by most democratic governments but recognized by authoritarian allies.
The Maduro-Chavista regime’s endurance has raised new questions: When pressure intensifies, will Maduro’s autocratic backers deepen their commitment or retreat into caution? And how is the current U.S. naval deployment in the Caribbean testing the resolve of Maduro’s main authoritarian partners?
The Autocratic Web of Survival
Venezuela’s partners offer distinct but complementary lifelines which, together, have allowed the regime to withstand both domestic turmoil and growing international isolation. The cooperation among these partners reveals both the adaptability and the vulnerability of authoritarianism in the twenty-first century: Each ally helps Maduro to survive, yet his reliance on them exposes his regime’s dependence. What binds these allies together is not ideology but a shared interest in countering Western pressure and sustaining an anti-U.S. foothold in the Western Hemisphere.
The People’s Republic of China provided the early financial oxygen, lending sums worth billions of U.S. dollars in oil-backed loans between 2007 and 2015. The lending paid for infrastructure projects and kept PDVSA, Venezuela’s state oil company, afloat. These loans offered short-term liquidity but left Venezuela heavily in debt. Many projects failed, prompting Beijing to be more careful about lending money to Caracas. Even so, China continues limited cooperation through technical partnerships as well as political and diplomatic backing. Its interests lie in preserving access to Venezuelan resources and maintaining influence in Latin America.
Russia under President Vladimir Putin became the Maduro-Chavista regime’s geopolitical guarantor. Russian firms such as Rosneft and Gazprom acquired stakes in Venezuela’s oil sector, while Russian arms and military advisors bolstered Maduro’s repressive capacity. Russian state media has consistently amplified Russian narratives and portrayed Venezuela’s government as a victim of Western interference. Moscow’s ability to sustain assistance is not what it once was, however. The costs of Russia’s war in Ukraine—including the sanctions this war has brought down on the Russian economy—have forced the Kremlin to focus on Russia’s own needs, with involvement in the Western Hemisphere a distinctly lower priority. The October 2025 arrival of a Russian Ilyushin Il-76 military transport in Caracas was less a show of readiness than a gesture by Moscow to show that it still claims reach in the Caribbean, even if it lacks resources to act decisively.
Cuba has long provided the regime’s intelligence backbone. Since the early 2000s, Cuban advisers have trained Venezuelan military officers, embedded within the intelligence services, and taught the art of surveillance. Paired with Chinese technology firms such as ZTE Corporation, Havana helped to implement the “Carnet de la Patria” or “Fatherland Card,” a digital identification system that tracks citizens’ voting participation and controls their access to social benefits. The relationship between Havana and Caracas is one of elevated mutual dependence. Although Cuba remains vital to the working of Maduro’s repressive machinery, the fragility of Cuba’s economy prevents Havana from providing more than intelligence and security cooperation.
Iran and Turkey have filled the economic and financial void left by sanctions. Through nontransparent dealings, the Islamic Republic of Iran has gone from throwing Maduro an emergency lifeline to offering a multifaceted sanctions-busting partnership since 2022. After the fuel airlifts and oil-refinery troubleshooting of 2020 and 2021, Iran now sells military drones to Venezuela and Bolivia, sending to the Western Hemisphere systems tested and mass-produced for Russia’s war in Ukraine. Iran uses opaque cargo flights and oil-for-goods-swaps that set off terrorism-finance alarms. Reports since 2017 detail the irregular issuance of Venezuelan passports to citizens of Syria and Iran, while the United States is worried about activities in Venezuela by Hezbollah, which the U.S. government has designated a “foreign terrorist organization” since 1997. Turkey’s engagement, by contrast, is largely transactional. It refines hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars’ worth of Venezuelan gold, possibly reselling it to Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran and other allies, providing ways for Caracas to obtain hard currency.
A Moment of Reckoning for Authoritarian Solidarity
Since August 2025, the U.S. naval buildup in the Caribbean has turned what was once a rhetorical standoff into a material confrontation. This moment will reveal which of Maduro’s partners see Venezuela as a strategic outpost worth defending and which will quietly step back. Each of these partners faces its own calculus of capability, cost, and risk, and their decisions together will reveal the real limits of authoritarian solidarity.
Venezuela’s military capabilities are modest. Its navy and air defenses have suffered from years of underinvestment, corruption, and maintenance failures. To compensate, the government is increasingly relying on a network of criminal groups, paramilitaries, irregular militias, and politicized police forces. These auxiliary actors have been positioned in the past weeks to step in during a potential conflict. Yet Russia has provided some leverage. The Kremlin furnishes access to advanced systems, training, and above all, credibility. Moscow uses limited but visible transfers to signal resolve: It sent Caracas new air-defense systems in October 2025. On the diplomatic front, Russia has condemned the U.S. decision to send what the Kremlin calls “excessive military force” to the Caribbean. Yet there is a ceiling on what Russia can do to help Maduro. Ukraine is straining the Russian military, and Russia’s economy is laboring under sanctions. Moscow’s involvement with Venezuela will likely remain limited to symbolic deliveries, the dispatch of military advisors, diplomatic and business meetings, and rhetoric that aims to deter U.S. escalation.
Facing mounting pressure, Maduro recently sent a formal message to China’s leader Xi Jinping urging deeper military cooperation, particularly in the production and deployment of radar systems. Maduro wants Chinese-built radar to bolster Venezuela’s surveillance capabilities in the face of U.S. naval activity. In the short term, at least, what Maduro is likely to get will be not direct military aid but rather calibrated shipments of “dual-use” technology (in other words, officially civilian radar technology that can be used for military purposes) plus diplomatic cover.
Maduro’s request for radar is more about desperation than preparation: Even if China started shipping new radar sets tomorrow, Venezuela’s ability to make them operational (complete with trained teams to run them) would inevitably not be enough to keep up with the U.S.-dictated pace of events in the Caribbean, a body of water so close to U.S. naval bases. Beijing, meanwhile, is far more concerned about the Indo-Pacific and so will condemn what it calls U.S. force and interference in the Caribbean while recognizing that it lacks the reach there to do much more in the near term than provide Maduro with rhetorical and diplomatic support.
Iran denounces U.S actions as interventionist and appeals to the principle of national sovereignty. The Islamic Republic’s support for Maduro will likely not go beyond such expressions, plus shipments of drones and electronic-warfare gear. Iran is a long way from the Caribbean, has limited logistical capacity, an economy under strain, and conflicts closer to home to worry about.
As pressures rise, Turkey is expected to preserve rhetorical ambiguity while steering clear of any move that could complicate its NATO standing and partnerships. Thus far, there is no evidence that Maduro has sought direct engagement with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan regarding the current crisis, nor has Ankara issued any official statements expressing support for the Venezuelan regime.
Maduro’s most enduring partner remains Cuba, but it gives him his intelligence backbone, not a combat arm. Havana has condemned the U.S. buildup while casting the Caribbean as a “zone of peace.” Cuba will continue the functions that matter most to regime survival—intelligence sharing, counteropposition tradecraft, and limited logistical help—while avoiding steps that could trigger a direct U.S. response and jeopardize the Cuban regime’s already fragile domestic situation.
The United States possesses both the intent and capability to project power across the Caribbean with existing infrastructure. While U.S. military deployments may not translate into imminent large-scale intervention, they reinforce Washington’s strategic dominance and remind Maduro’s partners that the Western Hemisphere’s balance of power remains asymmetrical. For China, Iran, and Russia, defending Venezuela now implies potential confrontation with a capable power and thereby alters the cost-benefit calculations that have underpinned their support for Maduro so far.
How Far Will Maduro’s Partners Back Him?
Whether Maduro’s partners stand firm or scale back their support will reveal much about the future of authoritarian cooperation under pressure. This moment is revealing not only for Venezuela but for the global autocratic system: How far will opportunistic solidarity among autocracies extend when placed under credible U.S. pressure? As the United States is reasserting its military presence in the Caribbean, the strategic environment that sustained Maduro’s alliances is likely to shift. None of these external partners can quickly match U.S. power projection in the Western Hemisphere, and all have pragmatic reasons to avoid escalation. Likewise, the existence of reservations within the highest levels of the U.S. government regarding strikes inside Venezuela reinforce the sense that this confrontation remains a contest of signaling rather than force. Washington’s caution underscores the broader dynamic: Powers on all sides are testing resolve while avoiding commitments that could entangle them in open conflict.
For Russia, the current crisis offers an opportunity for symbolic signaling rather than proxy confrontation. Moscow will likely use the situation rhetorically to keep projecting defiance of U.S. influence, but lacks both the resources and strategic incentive to transform Venezuela into a battleground. Most likely, Russia’s involvement will remain limited to direct contacts with members of the Venezuelan regime, condemnations of U.S. actions, selective spare-parts deliveries, and perhaps minor joint exercises meant to preserve visibility without risk, a strategy that Russia has previously used in the Caribbean. Russian military support for Venezuela is unlikely even if the United States strikes targets inside the country. Russia is showing its flag, not girding for war.
For China, the incentives also urge caution. Beijing prizes stability and incrementally growing influence in Latin America and the Caribbean, not direct confrontation. China may use the crisis to criticize U.S. militarization of the Caribbean and to show itself as a responsible actor, but it will avoid any move that turns Venezuela into a military proxy. Rhetorical leverage and trade agreements, not operational engagement, remains the safer course for Beijing. Even as China has expanded its economic and diplomatic footprint across the Caribbean thought infrastructure investment, port modernization, and trade, its primary objective is diversification and long-term access, not direct military confrontation with the United States in this region.
Finally, for Iran, the calculus is primarily symbolic. Iran, like Russia, welcomes the optics of defying Washington in a place close to the contiguous United States. Iran is likely to remain in constant direct contact with members of Maduro’s regime, working with them on drone sales, cyber tools, and sanctions evasion. These interactions sustain a network of asymmetric capabilities that worries U.S officials, who cite the potential influence of Hezbollah-linked actors as evidence of Tehran’s wider regional footprint. Yet such activities remain limited in scale. Iran’s engagement serves as a low-cost mean of signaling defiance, rather than as a preparation for a sustained proxy confrontation.
In sum, the Maduro regime’s autocratic partners possess, to varying degrees, the ability to help that regime more directly, but none appear willing to transform Venezuela into a genuine proxy conflict with the United States.
Adriana Boersner-Herrera is assistant professor of political science at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. Her publications include the chapter on Venezuela in The Palgrave Geopolitical Atlas: State and Quasi-State Actors in Great Power Competition (forthcoming).
Copyright © 2025 National Endowment for Democracy
Image credit: Sergey Bobylev / Host photo-RIA Novosti / Pool/Anadolu via Getty Images
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