U.S. Intervention in Venezuela: What Happens Next?

For those of us who were concerned about what foreign policy might look like in a second Trump term, there was always one aspect of his worldview that provided some modest reassurance: his relative reluctance regarding the use of force... it was a short-lived predisposition. On Saturday, Mr. Trump dispatched U.S. forces to bust into the compound of the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, capture him and his wife, and swiftly remove them to the United States.

The raid was the exclamation point on a year in which the self-proclaimed “president of peace” ordered military action against seven countries, some of which the United States had never before waged war against — Iran, Nigeria and Venezuela. It ended any pretense that he would wield responsibly the presidency’s most consequential prerogative.

We support the judicious use of force when it is necessary to keep the country safe, it has the informed consent of the American people and all other options have been exhausted. Mr. Trump is demonstrating a profoundly different and dangerous approach. He is willing to use force — and risk the lives of American soldiers — for increasingly flamboyant expressions of strength abroad.

These high-risk actions seem designed more for ephemeral gain than long-term strategic advantage. There is a real risk of more to come. Mr. Trump’s appetite for military action seems to grow with the eating. For a commander in chief with three years left in office, his newfound fondness for military force is ominous.

This quote is an excerpt from an opinion piece published by The New York Times, co-written with Jon Finer. Read the piece in full here. 

What this demonstrates is the U.S. has an extraordinary military stick—and that it’s willing to use it. That’s what many countries are thinking about today: Colombia, Cuba, Mexico; Denmark with Greenland; maybe even Canada. Any country that is not asking what capabilities it has to stand up to a bully is sleeping.

This quote is an excerpt from an interview conducted with CNBC. Watch here in full. 

Beijing will be torn between two readings of the Venezuela case.  One version will be that if  the US can act at will in its own sphere of influence, then so can Beijing. (Chinese thinkers have been writing about Xin Mengluozhuyi – “New Monroe-ism”  - for decades.) 

Yet some Chinese analysts will now have to rethink an idea long held in Beijing – the idea that the Trump administration is an isolationist one first and foremost. They will be particularly interested in the world-view of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is regarded as a more traditional Republican hawk in Beijing, and has recently praised American bonds with its Asian partners. The US is not just a Caribbean power, but a Pacific one too, and the latter definition means that Japan, Korea or Taiwan could yet be defined as part of a wider American “backyard" and that intervention there is by no means off the table.

The removal of Maduro and the attempt to coerce Venezuela into further concessions is another example of the Trump administration’s predatory approach to foreign policy. 

It was not about narcotics, because Venezuela is not a major source of drug shipments to the US and Trump has pardoned other convicted narcotics traffickers. It was not about security, because Venezuela was a weak state that posed no threat to US interests. It’s not even about oil: although President Trump may think there’s lots of money to be made there, Venezuelan oil is expensive to extract and refine and many billions of dollars of investment are needed to increase production. Instead, this act is really about signaling U.S. dominance in the Western hemisphere and coercing other states into doing Washington’s bidding. Trying to dominate the region via military force alone hasn’t worked in the past and is unlikely to work today. 

Instead of stable hegemony and regional prosperity, the more likely result is rising anti-Americanism and regional instability.

The U.S. attack on Venezuela has led some to speculate that China might feel emboldened to accelerate a Taiwan invasion, arguing that if the United States can sidestep international law, Beijing can too. However, this speculation misunderstands Chinese strategic thinking. Beijing frames Taiwan as a purely domestic issue, not an international dispute. In its conception, the Taiwan question is a decision for the Chinese people alone, an internal matter, not a matter of international law. Indeed, Beijing views Taiwan as a civil dispute over sovereignty, while it portrays the U.S. strike on Venezuela as external interference in another state’s internal affairs. [Interestingly, some Taiwanese officials have even suggested that Trump’s capture of Maduro could actually deter Beijing, because it demonstrates Washington’s willingness to use military force in defense of its own perceived interests even if the two situations differ considerably.] Looking at the overall picture, China probably does not see U.S. actions in Venezuela as a precedent that justifies accelerated action on Taiwan.