A police Force is the answer

Daniel, the optimum solution is for Guaidó to request assistance to create a 100% Venezuelan police force, with a core made up of military personnel who fled and will flee. I believe it can start with about 5000 but has to grow to at least 20000. 

A sound intervention strategy has to aim to preserve the armed forces structure and as much personnel as possible, therefore what is needed is a group of well armed police (using the term police is important even though they can be armed with full military gear). The regime is relying on convicts, colectivos, and small contingents of PNB and GNB to do the heavy lifting. Therefore a ground force focused on taking control of a small part of national territory, BACKED with air, naval, and logistical support provided by other nations, can have success. Rule of thumb tells us that 5000 "police", backed by an air carrier air wing can control an area with 100,000 inhabitants quite easily. Thus the initial target has to be a small city, or a rural area with small towns.

Let's observe what was regime response to events on the 23rd: in Ureña they used small GNB contingents which numbered about 50 at each bridge, and the presence of Iris Varela tells me the "security forces" must have been, or included, convicts. The response to the Pemon rebellion in Santa Elena de Uairen was a convoy of school buses loaded with colectivos, milicianos, and some PNB and GNB which proceeded to shoot up the town. 

Therefore I deduce the regime lacks a rapid response force, it's made up of lightly armed irregulars, and can't use the Armed Forces AS LONG AS THE ENTRY IS BY ARMED VENEZUELANS BRINGING FOOD, MEDICINE, AND SECURITY. 

Using the same rule of thumb I explained, with a 20000 strong force it's possible to control an area with 1 million inhabitants. The premise is that close air support will be available. And that logistics are set up to provide food medicine water, gas bottles and power. 

Once this expeditionary force has one million within its control, it should start receiving a flux of volunteers to allow creation of a militia. Whole military units may shift allegiance, and thus the main issue will be figuring out how to sort out spies and saboteurs. I have used a boilerplate ratio precisely because I'm afraid the regime will be infiltrating their guys. 

So what's the Cuban reaction going to be? They can't send bus convoys loaded with colectivos because they would be cut off by air power, they are unlikely to send army units, the navy and Air Force will be useless, and they will see that, once a significant force has punched through that cellophane they use to keep 30 million Venezuelans hostage, all they can do is caused a bunch of dead and risk the capture of Cubans who will reveal their role in Venezuela. 

I'm describing this to you openly because I think that once they know this is coming down the road, they'll start figuring out how to fold and get out while the getting is good.

President Guaidó

By now 98% of Venezuelans heard of Guaidó. 

How do you “know Guaidó is the right man”? You don’t. What you need to know is that Guaidó was elected president of the National Assembly by a large majority of its deputies on January 10, 2019. The Venezuelan constitution requires the Assembly meet and vote one president, two vicepresidents and two secretaries, therefore the vote was required. 

Guaidó got the Assembly to vote for him because the four largest democratic political parties made an agreement in 2015 which led to a deputy from Voluntad Popular being proposed, and voted almost unanimously (54 socialist deputies backing Maduro walked out, one socialist deputy is abroad and actively opposing Maduro).

President Juan Guaidó 

Maduro’s presidential term expired Jan 10, he’s the expresident. He claims the right to continue with another term because he organized rigged elections on May 20 last year (his popularity was dropping so fast he had the election held months ahead of time in a futile attempt to get more backing). These pseudoelecciones were boycotted by the large democratic parties, so he propped up two fake opposition candidates which of course “lost”. 

These elections were denounced as illegitimate by the EU and the OAS, so in a sense they marked Maduro as a tyrant who was executing a self coup. 

Most nations don’t really care when a government goes rogue like this, but Maduro also caused a huge humanitarian crisis driving millions of Venezuelans to leave, and they are straining resources in neighboring countries. Plus the human rights abuses are gross. So over the last six months a consensus evolved in countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile and Brasil that Maduro had to go, he was causing them problems and the current flood of refugees wasn’t slowing down. 

The USA has been very careful to follow behind these nations, and didn’t take a more proactive stance until it was told they would back USA moves. 

The Europeans are more like the US left, taking the low moral ground and doing what they can to help Maduro survive. But I don’t think they count for much at this point. 

So you see, Maduro isn’t “retiring”, he’s an expresident who has evolved into a tyrant, and will probably be forced out of office by brute force if he doesn’t flee to Cuba. I am pressing to have this resolved as quickly and peacefully as possible, but I wrote that Guaidó should get backing to create a new police force with 20 thousand volunteers, a move which will put a lot of pressure on Raul Castro to remove his military from Venezuela because it would be a diplomatic disaster for him if we start capturing Cuban prisoners and putting them on YouTube

Is there a brave people?

Maduro risks having ambassadors removed because he isnt recognized, which is a bit different from breaking relations. I believe it's legal for say the US to state it doesn't recognize Maduro, and ALSO to refuse abandoning its embassy, because Maduro isn't recognized, and therefore he lacks the authority to break relations and order that embassies be vacated. Should he take action against the embassy it would be considered an act of war, and the US president isn't Jimmy Carter. 

What Latinamerican nations other than Colombia and Brazil do is irrelevant. Those cockroaches have been kissing Castroite butt for six decades, so I expect the same spinelessness and cowardice they have always exhibited. The question in my mind is whether the "Bravo Pueblo" has the testicles needed to create a government in exile which takes over Citgo and bank accounts, arm a few thousand men and take Zulia. I'm afraid Castro chose well, because Venezuela is both rich and its population is as tame as any I've ever seen. 

So after january 10 we'll see if from 30 million venezuelans, and 3 million in exile, there's leadership and a few thousand volunteers ready to do what has to be done.

Human nature

The key is to remember that homo sapiens evolved as hunter gatherer which adopted herding and agriculture about 9000 years ago. It's also important to understand we descend from the winners of thousands of years of fighting, genocide and murder. This means we have behavior that's wired in, and can't really be modified. At best it can be lacquered over and perfumed. But in the end we are what we are.