Trump’s Venezuela Insanity
On a trip to Venezuela in the 1980s, I was at a dinner party where another guest was an engineer, perhaps in his 30d. I was in my late-teens and convinced my right-wing views demonstrated keen insight. There were sprawling hills around Caracas covered with “ranchos,” informal settlements of shacks. As the conversation turned to politics, the engineer said residents of the ranchos were increasingly embracing left-wing ideologies, and I dismissed such popular opinion as ignorant and, moreover, inconsequential.
Later that decade, a wave of protests and riots, called the Caracazo, emerged from the ranchos in response to austerity measures, a harbinger of the discontent that would bring Hugo Chavez to power. The Bolivarian Revolution, run by Chavez and his successor Nicolás Maduro, now jailed in Brooklyn, undermined Venezuela’s economy and democracy, but couldn’t have occurred if not for its ostensible championing of the poor, whom Venezuela’s elites, and I as a teenager, had seen as of low importance. Ignoring public opinion, in Venezuela or elsewhere, is an approach that works until it doesn’t.
I thought about this while listening to President Trump promise to “run” Venezuela in the aftermath of the U.S. attack on that country and capture of Maduro. Trump dismissed María Corina Machado, leader of the democratic opposition and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, as lacking the “respect” needed to govern, and didn’t mention her ally Edmundo González, widely recognized as winner of the 2024 presidential election stolen by Maduro. Trump showed interest in restoring Venezuela’s oil infrastructure, but not its democracy.
The attack was an impressive operational success, but its broader strategic, legal and political shortcomings are already evident. The administration appears intent on governing through remnants of the Maduro regime, using the threat of further attacks to keep them in line, while also threatening other countries such as Colombia and Cuba. This is to be done, apparently, without approval from Congress or collaboration with U.S. allies. It is predicated on public opinion in Venezuela and other target countries not mattering. It is also predicated on public opinion in the U.S. not mattering, including that of people who voted for Trump on the now-absurd perception of his anti-war stance. The administration’s rationales—about Venezuelan drugs, oil and immigrants—are a raft of distortions and lies.
I’m struck by Trump officials’ emphasis that no other nation could’ve achieved anything like what the U.S. just did militarily. Are they sure about that, or does the repetition reflect some dawning insecurity about the shifting balance of power? I wouldn’t bet that China couldn’t deploy similar forces to overwhelm another country and, if desired, capture its leader or otherwise take it over, sooner rather than later. To balance China’s power would require the U.S. to maintain strong alliances and credibility as a democratic nation committed to a rule-based international order, exactly the opposite of the administration’s approach.
As Andy Craig details in The UnPopulist, “Trump’s Bogus Rationale for Invading Venezuela Is an Impeachable Offense.” Craig notes the absurdity of the administration’s claim that an arrest warrant against Maduro constituted legal basis for the military action: “If taken seriously, this would mean that a simple vote by a grand jury can replace congressional power to declare war and regulate the use of military force. In other words, a secret process by randomly selected citizens—not elected representatives—and so deferential to prosecutors that it could supposedly ‘indict a ham sandwich,’ is sufficient to launch a war.”
Recently, Splice Today contributor Mark Ellis suggested that Venezuela, following U.S. military action, “could sooner rather than later be removed from the list” of countries on which the U.S. has imposed travel bans. I predict such a shift won’t happen, given repeated rhetoric as to who’s come from Venezuela. According to Trump, “they came from mental institutions and insane asylums. They came from prisons and jails. The reason I say both, they sound similar. Actually, prisons, uh, a little bit more, a little bit more hostile, a little bit tougher. A mental institution isn't as tough as an insane asylum, but we got them both.”
Listening to such gibberish from a man who’s arrogated an unchecked power to wage war underscores that the central problem of the Trump era is the inherent danger posed by one-man rule.