Millions of Americans woke up with the same question on the first Saturday of a new year: Are we at war with Venezuela?
President Donald Trump’s ouster of President Nicolás Maduro has stunning implications for Venezuela, American global power, and the shattered remnants of constitutional curbs on US presidents and international law.
The ostensible justification is that Maduro was the pinnacle of a cartel state that threatens America’s security and the well-being of its citizens with narcotics trafficking. But Trump’s claims overplay Venezuela’s role, and his transparent relish at wielding a big stick in his geopolitical backyard highlights more ambitious motives.
Few of Venezuela’s repressed citizens will lament the removal of a dictator who wrecked lives and ruined economic opportunity.
But the swoop against Maduro was a stunner, and not just because the overthrow of a foreign leader is considered an act of war.
Trump’s entire political philosophy was rooted in avoiding any more US shock-and-awe operations to enforce overseas regime change after two decades of quagmires.
What happened to the plan to stop meddling in intractable foreign politics that the US doesn’t understand? Is “America First” over?
Probably not. Instead, it’s on steroids.
Trump is still acting in the hard-eyed pursuit of what he perceives to be vital US national interests. It’s just that his definition of the concept has expanded massively since 2016. So has his appetite for wielding unchecked power, which has burst US borders and is racing through the Americas and beyond.
“America will never allow foreign powers to rob our people or drive us back into and out of our own hemisphere,” Trump warned at a remarkable news conference Saturday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. “Under our new national security strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.”
Saturday proves that the United States has reverted to days when presidents and intelligence agencies sought to topple autocratic or inconvenient leaders in favor of puppet governments. It also conjures dark reminders of CIA political meddling, including in Latin America, which has often backfired.
If upside projections of Trump’s bet play out, his domestic political exposure could be limited. He might ease the torment of the Venezuelan people; create stability in the northern part of South America; allow a return home of Venezuelan refugees; and blunt efforts by US foes China and Russia to gain a foothold that could threaten US security and interests.
An apparently well-executed military operation without US combat deaths to grab Maduro will only enhance Trump’s reputation for orchestrating thunderclaps of military power after his strikes on Iran’s nuclear installations last year.
His recharged strongman’s personality cult will please some Republican voters, as will his defiance of constitutional limits and liberal critics. This may discourage rebellions from GOP dissidents who understand that the Constitution stipulates that Congress and not presidents declare war.
But the president is taking a risk with many in his fraying political base already chafing at his strikes in Iran, Nigeria, Syria and now Venezuela and apparent obliviousness to grinding economic conditions at home. Democrats are already hammering the theme as a bedrock of their campaign ahead of November’s midterm elections.
It’s critical to GOP political prospects that the US does not get sucked into Venezuela in vast ground troop deployments that mirror the chaos of the post-9/11 wars. But if the initial shock ouster of Maduro degenerates into violence — as it did with earlier US regime change operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, he will slide into deep political trouble.
Trump’s triumphant morning news conference at Mar-a-Lago, as Maduro was transported into US custody in New York, dripped with hubris. It was hard not to recall President George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” victory lap on an aircraft carrier in 2003, shortly before a bloody insurgency rocked Iraq.
“No other president has ever shown this kind of leadership, courage, and resolve, the most powerful combination the world has ever seen,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gushed, ignoring Abraham Lincoln’s Civil War heroism, Franklin Roosevelt’s daring oversight of the D-Day Normandy landings and John F. Kennedy’s steely resolve preventing nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The administration’s hagiography could be especially dangerous for the mindset of a president who already thinks he’s infallible and omnipotent.
Disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well Libya after the ouster of Moammer Gadhafi in 2011, cut deep into Americans’ psyche because they were born from Washington’s negligence after an initial triumph. Venezuela — with its 31 million people; brutal security forces; criminal and gang culture; and fractured governance and economy — looks a prime candidate for the societal implosion that often results when tyrants are suddenly deposed.
Trump was glib on what exactly comes next, but his candor was shocking. And his true motives appear to add up to a modern form of colonialism.
“We are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said, seemingly playing into every regime change trope. “We’re not afraid of boots on the ground if we have to have,” he said, apparently raising the possibility of sending American forces into a volatile semi-failed state where government thugs and militia run rampant.
And remember the incessant complaint of anti-Iraq War campaigners that the war there was “really about the oil”? There’s no confusion this time.
“The oil companies are going to go in. They’re going to spend money. We’re going to take back the oil that, frankly, we should have taken back a long time ago,” Trump said.
But he had no answers on how the United States would “run” Venezuela, although he suggested at one point that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine and Hegseth would be involved.
Any attempt to revive the oil industry wrecked by Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez will take years and require a huge US security footprint. So this is no quick in-and-out operation by the US. Trump will own the aftermath, whether there’s peace, civil disintegration or a new tyrant to replace Maduro.
Still, no one can comfortably predict what will happen.
The first wave of criticism of regime change Trump-style carried the whiff of critics rhetorically fighting the last war. The Iraq template may not fit Venezuela. Although the latter is often seen as a vast criminal enterprise, the country lacks the religious and tribal schisms and the belligerent neighbors such as Iran that helped push Iraq into hell in 2003. And the Trump administration has not so far dismantled the state apparatus, as Bush’s viceroys did in Baghdad to disastrous results.
Trump seemed to imply that his administration was talking to Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez. He said she was “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.”
The vice president, however, seemed defiant in an address from Caracas, saying that the US was guilty of “kidnapping” Maduro and demanding his return. And while calling for a “judicious” transition, Trump didn’t commit to a return to democracy, leaving open the implication that a pliant regime in Caracas is his preference.
The president’s actions have already ignited a political firestorm at home.
While officials initially tried to portray Maduro’s capture as a law enforcement operation to fulfill a narcotics indictment he faces, Trump’s expansive new claims about running the Western Hemisphere and taking Venezuelan oil put the operation onto even shakier legal and constitutional grounds.
Attacks on air and land in Venezuela seem to clearly meet the definition of US combat action that requires the prior authorization of Congress — as was sought and received by Bush before the war on terrorism and the invasion of Iraq.
“Last night, President Trump waged war on a foreign nation without authorization, without notification, and without any explanation to the American people,” Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement. “Whatever comes next, President Trump will own the consequences.”
Reed added: “This has been a profound constitutional failure. Congress – not the President – has the sole power to authorize war. Pursuing regime change without the consent of the American people is a reckless overreach and an abuse of power.”
Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, who has long sought to narrow presidential discretion in taking the US to war following White House overreach in the post-9/11 years, said, “Congress must reassert our critical constitutional role in matters of war, peace, diplomacy, and trade.”
But in the short term, at least, Trump appears immune from pressure on Capitol Hill. Leaders of the GOP Senate and House majorities expressed support and said they expected briefings in the coming week. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who has questioned the legality of Trump’s boat strikes against alleged drug traffickers off Venezuela, said he supported Maduro’s removal, while noting that the founders limited the president’s power to wage war.
But Trump’s political foundation is still thin. Before he acted, the prospect of US adventures in Venezuela was deeply unpopular. A CBS poll in November found 70% of Americans would oppose military action. The disaffected include members of his already-cracking MAGA coalition. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on X that never-ending military aggression and costly foreign wars were “what many in MAGA thought they voted to end.”
Abroad, Trump’s strike against Maduro confirmed that his contentious US national security strategy — which calls for US dominance in its own sphere of influence and a narrowed focus elsewhere — is for real. When Russia and China get over the shock of losing an ally in Maduro, they’ll work out how to use this new global organizing principle of the strong over the weak to their advantage.
“The 47th president of the United States is not a game player,” Rubio said. “When he tells you he’s going to address a problem, he means it. He actions it.”
The big question about Trump is now more acute than ever.
How far will he go? And who is going to stop him?
