Now What?
What is Trump foreign policy: Whatever strikes his fancy
There are at least two obvious lessons in the wake of the U.S. military operation to arrest/kidnap/depose Venezuelan strongman Nichols Maduro.
The vastly uncertain aftermath of what appears to have been the wildly successful capture of Maduro will never be as easy or clear cut as the strike that apprehended him.
We never learn. U.S. meddling in the internal affairs of other nations, and perhaps particularly in the Latin Americas, never turns out well.
Well, there is a third certainty: whatever happens going forward in Venezuela, Trump and his very cocky minions own it - lock, stock and rusty drilling rig.
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Let’s state the obvious. This action was blatantly illegal and unconstitutional.
The fig leaf that Maduro’s capture and transport out of his country - as welcome as his departure is - was a law enforcement operation is as specious as Richard Nixon secretly bombing Cambodia in 1969, while saying it would not widen war in Southeast Asia.
What the Venezuelan mission constitutes is merely the latest example of Congress completely ceding foreign policy and war making to the president. Under Trump the law is a nuisance, the Congress an after thought (or no thought at all) and the Constitution just a musty old document without constraints, let alone consequences.
Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy said it best:
“Congress needs to own its own role in allowing a presidency to become this lawless. The fact of the matter is that the president's justification makes no sense here. He says that this was just a law enforcement operation. Well, there are people with warrants all over the world. That doesn't give the president of the United States the power to launch a billion-dollar invasion of those countries to bring a fugitive to justice.”
As I think and read about all this I really only have more questions:
What do the Russians and Chinese see now? Has a precedent been established that will be impossible to contain in eastern Europe and Taiwan, just to name two world flash points?
How does the U.S. “run” another country exactly, particularly when the basic governmental structure and personnel remain in place in Venezuela?
What happens to Venezuela’s oil industry? And who benefits from increasing production, if that is even possible? I think I know.
Why did Trump recently pardon the former Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted in a U.S. court of extensive involvement in drug trafficking. Trump claims the prosecution was tainted, but it almost certainly wasn’t, and as Bloomberg reported recently the pardon shocked most everyone who had been involved in the long investigation. The pardon, like so much of the Venezuelan story, smells to high heaven.
Will “running” the country involve a U.S. military presence? From early indications the administration hasn’t a clue as to what comes next in a very complex country.
Why has the administration made absolutely no effort to develop public support for taking down Maduro? Perhaps because the case for doing so is so incredibly weak? Or they know, as polling indicates, the idea of U.S. involvement in Venezuela is wildly unpopular. Trump has also said nothing at all about democracy in Venezuela. Because he doesn’t care, apparently. He does care about power and oil.
And what comes next for the Trump Doctrine of anything goes? Greenland? Mexico? Cuba?
The Canadian version of The Onion, a site called The Beaverton, joked yesterday:
… in an unscheduled press statement, the Prime Minister’s Office has said that Prime Minister Mark Carney has turned off geolocation services for all his electronic devices “for no particular reason whatsoever”.
You find your humor where you can these days.
Having said that - this is deadly serious business. It’s tempting to say we have entered unchartered territory, but that isn’t really true.
We have been here before with U.S. meddling (regime change) - Panama in the 1980’s, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chile in the 1970’s, on and on.
I’ll leave you with the thoughtful questions poised by Financial Times columnist Edward Luce:
Two questions leap out. The first is whether Trump’s appetite for military adventurism will continue to spread. He has advertised designs on Canada, Panama, Greenland and the Gaza Strip. On Saturday, he implied Mexico was also in his sights. “She’s a good woman,” Trump said of Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum. “But the cartels are running Mexico. She’s not running Mexico . . . Something is going to have to be done with Mexico.” Mexico, not Venezuela, supplies almost all of America’s fentanyl. Trump on Saturday also warned Gustavo Petro, Columbia’s leftwing president, to “watch his ass”. Colombia, not Venezuela, supplies most of America’s cocaine.
The second question is how Trump plans to govern Venezuela. Should he be serious about running the country, US boots on the ground will be essential. Even if Trump thinks he can run the place by remote control, reality will intervene. The country is awash with weapons, militias and supporters of “Chavismo”, the brand of thuggish Venezuelan socialism named after Maduro’s predecessor. Should Russia, China or another adversary wish to bog Trump down in his own quagmire, they have an opportunity.
Nobody knows what our seriously aging, physically and mentally challenged strongman will do and where all this leads.
The smart money would be on nothing good comes of this.
If Trump’s using the Monroe Doctrine to justify kidnapping Venezuela’s President, how does the US react when Putin kidnaps Zelenskyy on grounds that Ukraine used to be part of the Russian empire. Seems to me any objection we make will be a distinction without a difference.
Thank you, Marc, for this wonderful piece. Nothing good comes of this will be an understatement I fear.