Julia Ioffe takes a look at Trump’s threats to launch a full fledged war on Venezuela:
Once again, all of Washington—and the country and the world—wait and speculate: Will he or won’t he? Over the summer, we wondered whether Donald Trump would strike Iran. (He did.) Four months later, we’re back waiting on this man, who ran as the “president of peace,” to decide whether he’ll strike Venezuela. Trump has already ordered alleged narcotrafficking boats to be blown out of the water. Now he has publicly authorized covert C.I.A. action inside Venezuela, deployed Reaper drones and F-35s to Puerto Rico, and moved a carrier strike group into the region.
In the cases of both Iran and Venezuela, regime change has not been an overt or even primary goal, at least for Trump. “I tried to get him to do it a lot, but he didn’t want to do it,” Trump’s erstwhile national security advisor and regime-change aficionado John Bolton told me. “He said earlier, with Iran, that he doesn’t seek regime change. But once he’s in it, it becomes about, what does he think he can get credit for?” Likewise in Venezuela, Bolton said, Trump is mostly focused on the appearance of strength. “I think he thinks about what will make him look tough, but he doesn’t think much beyond that,” Bolton went on. “He never does.”
This, of course, leaves Trump wide open to the influences of people who do think beyond political theater.
We already know about Rubio who has long wanted to overthrow Maduro. It’s his Castro fantasy. Miller’s happy to go along because it will inflict pain and suffering on Latinos. Hegseth would love to prove his manhood.
Trump loves to be a tough guy and sabre rattle. but he’s afraid to make the call. And the administration is struggling to find a rationale for doing it:
The messages coming out of the White House are a jumble: Officials say the point is to fight narcotrafficking, and also claim the regime itself is the main narcotrafficker via the “Cartel de los Soles.” But the Cartel de los Soles is not an actual cartel. Rather, it’s the derisive moniker that Venezuelan journalists have given the corrupt Maduro regime, whose security forces are indeed reportedly in bed with narcotraffickers. Trump says he’s open to talking to Maduro, but has also made clear that he wants him out—probably. The carrier strike group is in the region because, in the president’s words, “it’s gotta be somewhere, it’s a big one”—and it’s also there to pressure Maduro to leave power peacefully. And so on.
Bolton characterized the administration’s policy as a “muddle” of ideas. “It’s a little bit of an anti-narcotics strategy, a little bit of an anti-migration strategy. Rubio may have in his mind what he wants to do, but that’s not what’s happening.” As for what Trump could be contemplating? “I think he doesn’t know, either,” Bolton said. “If you look at different comments he’s made, I think it’s really swirling in his head and he doesn’t know what to do.
No doubt. He thought that killing a bunch of random people in boats and issuing threats would make Maduro cower and run away but it hasn’t worked so far:
But the pressure campaign on Maduro is, so far, not having the intended effect. “You haven’t seen any high-level defections or fracturing in the regime,” said one former senior defense official who specializes in the Western Hemisphere. “This has proven to be a pretty remarkably cohesive regime.” The Trump administration, this source explained, wants to display a credible military threat to force Maduro to leave peacefully, but they don’t want to have to actually make good on it. The result is “a game of chicken, because Maduro is unlikely to leave unless he’s somehow forced to do so, and then that puts the Trump administration in a position of either having to go ahead with further escalation or finding some other off-ramp.”
So, will he or won’t he? Military buildups are a little like Chekhov’s gun: If you bring it out in Act I, it has to go off before the end of the play. On the other hand, launching military action could be politically costly, especially if it leads to American casualties. Decapitating an autocratic regime also risks creating a failed state, à la Iraq or Libya—this time in America’s backyard. Experts believe the Venezuelan opposition, led by Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado, is strong enough to fill any power vacuum. But Venezuela itself lacks many of the democratic institutions it would need.
And Trump has MAGA to contend with:
On yet another hand, Trump’s base—and his vice president and many of his national security appointees—are vehemently against foreign adventures and especially regime change, scarred as they are by Iraq and Afghanistan. Trump campaigned as an isolationist, which should give him some leeway to take his finger off the trigger.
Trump can simply declare victory if he wants to. But he isn’t stable and he’s got a lot of people around him like Rubio, MIller and Hegseth who are itching for the fight. He’s tired and wants to spend his time picking out swatches for the Blue Room. He might just let them have their splendid little war.