Can Trump’s War Be Prevented?
October 30, 2025
A congressional war powers resolution could exert pressure and is the best hope for avoiding another disastrous war.
“I think we’re just going to kill the people who bring drugs into our country, okay?” President Trump told reporters at a news conference last week. “We’re going to kill them, you know? They’re going to be dead.”
Trump had sent his message: he can kill whoever he wants, without any legal process. Judge, jury and executioner. As he has since early September, when the military blew up a boat in the Caribbean, killing 11 people.
The day after Trump declared that “we’re just going to kill people,” the Pentagon announced that the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Fordreportedly heading to the Caribbean from Europe. He left Croatia for this trip on October 26.
The aircraft carrier is equipped with around 90 aircraft, including helicopters, early warning aircraft and F/A-18 Super Hornets, combat aircraft capable of attacking ground targets. The Ford Carrier Strike Group, which includes five guided-missile destroyers, will join five other Navy warships and a submarine in the region, in addition to amphibious warships with Marines aboard.
This gives the impression that the Trump administration is preparing for a much bigger war, with Venezuela as its target. This could end very horribly, as other US-led “regime change” wars – for example in Iraq and Libya – have ended.
Can this war be stopped? It is not clear whether Trump decided on a military operation to try to bring about regime change in Venezuela.
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Trump is doing everything he can to send the message that he doesn’t care what those who disagree with him think.
But he can come under pressure. In 2019, for example, both houses of Congress passed a historic war powers resolution that demanded that the U.S. military end its support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, which has cost hundreds of thousands of civilian lives since 2015. War Powers Resolution of 1973, which requires Congress to vote on whether lawmakers seek to end the introduction of U.S. military forces into hostilities without prior authorization from Congress.
Trump vetoed the resolution, but he stopped U.S. in-flight refueling of Saudi planes bombing Yemen. This was one of the most important parts of this legislation and ended up saving many lives, along with other de-escalations that followed the pressure generated by this legislation.
Trump is currently under the same type of pressure from Congress. On October 8, a war powers resolution that would have required an end to unauthorized U.S. military operations in the Caribbean was introduced by Senators Adam Schiff and Tim Kaine. It was blocked by 51 votes to 48.
But now there is another, introduced in the Senate on October 16, to prevent the US military from engaging in war in Venezuela. Republican Senator Rand Paul joined Kaine and Schiff on this war powers resolution.
There are also pressures within the army, which are also being noticed. On October 16, Admiral Alvin Holsey, commander of SOUTHCOM, announced that he would retire in two months. It oversees U.S. military operations in Central and South America (and the Caribbean).
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He still had two years left in his position, and it is unprecedented for someone in his current responsibilities to resign in the middle of an operation like the one currently taking place in the hemisphere.
It’s a big deal. This indicates that there is some division within the military over this potential war.
CNN reported that “SOUTHCOM was concerned about operations [against the alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean] “It wasn’t legal,” and that there was tension between Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Holsey; and that Holsey had offered an immediate resignation on October 6, which was ultimately postponed until October 16.
All of this may be important because it raises the political stakes for Trump and his party if a war of regime change goes badly for them. The majority of Americans are already opposed to U.S. military involvement in Venezuela.
Trump’s claim that this is a war on drugs is even less credible – and far less believable – than the fictitious “weapons of mass destruction” invoked by President George W. Bush to justify the war in Iraq. Very few illegal drugs consumed in the United States come from Venezuela. This is especially true for fentanyl, which Trump brings up when he talks about saving tens of thousands of U.S. lives by killing people on boats in the Caribbean.
His efforts to redefine war, to classify those killed by the U.S. military as enemy combatants, have even less credibility. The Trump administration doesn’t even bother to provide proof that the people it’s killing are drug dealers.
The lesson Trump learned from that first term was that he needed to appoint people whose sole allegiance was to him, to the most important positions in the “national security state.” But it is not so simple to establish total control over the State Department, the Pentagon, the 18 intelligence agencies and the National Security Council.
And then there’s Congress, which is the least irresponsible branch of our government. This is where we have our best hope of preventing another disastrous war.
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