First Thoughts on Trump’s Excellent Venezuela Adventure
Let me share some thoughts on the overnight U.S. action in Venezuela. I say “action” because it is not clear to me that the United States itself (as those calling the shots in Washington) knew what it was or had decided. I woke up in the middle of the night to news of a major American attack. This only registered a few WTFs in my mind. Then I woke up around maybe 4 a.m. and saw at least the claim that U.S. forces had captured and exfiltrated Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Then my WTFs went to 11.
When I woke up this morning, I had the feeling that it was essentially a raid, in the sense that we attacked and blew up a lot of things, but with the main objective of capturing the head of state. This is a raid that would keep the existing state in place, perhaps with the assumption that it would quickly collapse and be replaced by a friendlier government. But now the US president says the US will now “rule” Venezuela for an indefinite period of time. At least to my knowledge, it is unclear whether the United States has a military presence in Venezuela or whether there have been efforts to dismantle the current sovereign authorities beyond capturing the head of state. So back to WTF…
The United States pulled off what is, in purely tactical terms, a pretty impressive operation. (I mean, they broke into a country, captured the head of state seemingly with little resistance, and brought him back to the United States.) But my strong guess is that they now seem to totally get away with it. And flying it would largely fit my understanding of the entire series of events leading up to last night. I don’t think there is a single reason why we kidnapped the Venezuelan president, blew up the boats or placed naval assets in the region. I think there are a number of factions within the US government, each wanting something like this for different reasons. Trump himself mostly thought it would be cool. And many different factions wanted this for different reasons and the president thinking it was cool was enough to create the momentum needed to get there. But having arrived here, we have no clear idea of what we are doing. I will note that, so far, we accept the premise that Nicolas Maduro committed crimes under US law, capturing him in a quasi-police operation does not, to put it mildly, create a justification, much less a legal mandate to occupy the country, run its government, or reorganize its oil industry. I guess that goes without saying.
Some other thoughts.
I’ve heard a lot of people talk about not consulting Congress or not receiving authorization from Congress to use American force. I think this goes well beyond what are essentially sub-constitutional technicalities. The US President has just gone to war with another country and is now apparently going to occupy it for no reason, no warning, and with overwhelming public opinion against it all. Last night, someone joked on Bluesky that Trump didn’t even take the proper constitutional steps to drag the country into this war. It was more than just a funny line. Even involving the country in a war gives some sense of it, because the country is supposed to have some idea of what the president is doing, why, and some opportunity at least to express an opinion about it. Nor can any of this be separated from the broader national and global fabric of Trumpism, casual illegality, brashness, and, more than anything else, the simple but still visible premise that Trump owns the United States, its military, its people, its wealth, everything. Someone told me earlier that it’s like Trump is carrying out his ICE raids on a global scale. And yes, that’s pretty much the case. Trump does what he wants, as you do with the things you own. You don’t ask your table which room they want to be in and most employers don’t ask employees what tasks they want to do. In Trump’s mind, the country and the power belong to him. He won it fair and square in the 2024 election. Anything that stands in the way of this basic principle is an obstacle to be overthrown.
