Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said on Monday he is ready to declare a state of emergency over what he called the threat of U.S. “aggression,” following a spate of deadly U.S. strikes on suspected Venezuelan drug boats.
“Today the consultation process began … to declare a state of emergency in accordance with the constitution and protect our people, our peace, and our stability if Venezuela were attacked by the American empire, attacked militarily,” Maduro said in a televised address.
Earlier in the day, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez told foreign diplomats that Maduro had signed a decree giving himself “special powers” as head of state to act in matters of defense and security in the event the United States “dares to attack our homeland.”
A government source, however, told AFP that Maduro had not yet signed the document.
“The vice president presented the document to show that everything was ready and that the president can decree it at any time,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The left-wing authoritarian Maduro placed Venezuela on high alert over a major U.S. military deployment near his country’s coast.
U.S. President Trump has deployed eight warships and a nuclear-powered submarine to the southern Caribbean as part of a stated plan to combat drug trafficking, but which appears particularly aimed at pressuring Maduro.
U.S. forces have destroyed at least three suspected drug boats in the Caribbean in recent weeks, killing 14 people in a move decried as “extrajudicial execution” by U.N. experts.
Donald Trump via Truth Social/via REUTERS 
Last month, thousands of civil servants, housewives and retirees lined up in Caracas to join the country’s militia in case there is a U.S. invasion.
The Trump administration says two of the boats that have been sunk left from Venezuela, whose president is often described by White House officials as a drug trafficker and leader of a gang known as the Cartel of the Suns.
Maduro denies the charges and has described the U.S naval buildup in the Caribbean as an attack on his country. Maduro has called the warships an “absolutely criminal and bloody threat.”
On two occasions earlier this month, Venezuelan fighter jets flew near a U.S. naval ship, in what multiple Defense Department officials described to CBS News as a “game of chicken.”
Venezuela also accused the U.S. of seizing a fishing vessel in its exclusive economic zone and detaining nine fishermen for several hours.
Declaring a state of emergency would allow Maduro, whose disputed reelection last year was not recognized by much of the international community, to temporarily suspend Venezuelans’ basic rights.
Rodriguez was confident that Venezuelans would unite behind Maduro in the event of a U.S. attack.
“Venezuela is united in the defense of our country,” she said, vowing: “We will never surrender our homeland.”
In his address, Maduro also asserted that he had “good feedback” from a private conversation he’d had with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Maduro said that Guterres had expressed his “astonishment at an unprecedented escalation, an extravagant escalation, which, for almost seven weeks, was announced and launched against a peaceful country, Venezuela.”
These assertions have not been confirmed by the U.N.
