7th Group Soldiers Keep A Wary Eye as Unrest In Venezuela Intensifies

One unit of the 7th Group Special Forces just returned from a six-month tour of Honduras, where they trained with local special forces, but they are ready to head out the door again soon. “If you have been watching the news, that question is a bit more dynamic,” one soldier told the Military Affairs Committee (MAC).

That soldier referenced the significant amount of instability in Venezuela – part of the 7th Group’s area of responsibility in South America – following a contested election that many Latin America Watchers believe incumbent Nicólas Maduro fraudulently claimed victory.

While they look towards the threat emanating from the southern Caribbean Sea, they must also work to reshape how they fight as the Army prepares for “large-scale Combat Operations” (LSCO) —all while attempting to maintain a healthy faaily life for their troopers.

In Venezuela

The Washington Post reports that the opposition to current Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was able to build a coalition and defeat the man who replaced Bolivarian revolutionary and erstwhile hater-of-all-things-American-except-baseball Hugo Chávez when he died more than ten years ago. Chávez and Maduro’s political party, The United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), has been in power for a quarter century. The Post says their independent analysis of the election results through tally sheets, independent exit polling, and other independent analyses – they believe the opposition received twice as many votes as PSUV.  

Protestors who believed the Maduro government rigged the election in their favor took to the streets, and violence broke out between the two groups.

If the President of the United States chose to intervene or assist those groups that could further US interests in the region, among the first on the ground would be the members of 7th Group. 

LSCO

While the world waits to see if the situation in Venezuela will boil over into civil war, the 7th Group’s administrative efforts have concentrated on shifting the way they do business—from fighting in the Global War on Terror to preparing to take on near-peers in what the military has coined “Large Scale Combat Operations,” or LSCO.

Major James McCoy noted that the last two decades have seen the 7th Group’s attention almost wholly focused on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency efforts in South America. “We had to work on countering asymmetric threats with things such as close-quarters combat or fitted, which is foreign internal defense,” McCoy noted. However, now we are seeing the rise of what we like to call the near-peer adversaries: China and Russia. And the strategic environment has now shifted.”

As the Group has begun to make those changes – they have had to figure out something new – how they integrate with the ‘Big Army,’ the conventional forces that will do the lion’s share of the fighting in a near-peer conflict due to their size relative to special forces. “I think right now, as ‘Big Army’ shifts its focus to what a war looks like when you’re fighting as divisions and corps, right? We have to figure out how we tie into that picture,” McCoy added.

Making Friends

For now, the 7th Group continues to work as an arm of the United States Government’s international relations teams, specifically with the members of foreign armies that the US may one day rely on to help protect Americans or further their interests.

The members of the 7th Group spend much of their time training other soldiers of foreign nations – working to get their special forces teams to the level of a US infantryman. The training of those foreign soldiers is a long-term investment – as the 7th Group hopes their teaching and partnership with leaders of other nations in the early stages of their career creates a friend of America in the long term who will one day lead the military or even the government of that nation. That nation, in turn, can serve as a staunch ally of the US government as it solves its problems in a world of near-peer competition.

“It may just be a Lieutenant or their equivalent of those Corporal or Sergeant today who will be one of their senior enlisted or officer leaders. And the connections you make now may be the difference in thinking and how your partner thinks you’re fighting. So we know what you do is very important,” MAC Vice Chairman Buster Hernandez added.