“Hours after the Senate voted to advance the war powers resolution rebuking the White House’s current and future actions in Venezuela, President Donald Trump placed “angry” calls to each of the five Republicans who crossed the aisle, according to people with knowledge of the calls.
Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.; Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska; Rand Paul, R-Ky.; Susan Collins, R-Maine; and Todd Young, R-Ind., voted with Democrats to require the administration to get congressional approval for future military action in Venezuela.
Thursday’s vote was a procedural motion, and it advances the legislation to a full Senate vote that will require a simple majority.
Soon after the vote, Trump threatened each senator with primary challenges, vowing to unseat them, the people said.”
The first action in Venezuela already required Congressional authorization and was unconstitutional!
“here’s the most important thing about free trade that Trump fails to grasp: It is voluntary and consensual.
Rolling into Greenland with guns blazing—or making enough threats that Denmark eventually hands the island over to avoid that possibility—is the exact opposite of that. Trump’s centralized, nationalistic view of the world has no room for individuals or their consent. What do the people of Greenland want? What do the people of Denmark want? Heck, most Americans are not very keen on the idea of their government seizing Greenland. It’s not quite accurate to say that no one wants this—some very powerful people unfortunately do—but this would be something that the U.S. government would be doing against the will of most of the individuals involved in the transaction. That should matter—a lot.
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it is encouraging to see that the Trump administration is putting together an offer that will reportedly be presented directly to the semiautonomous government of Greenland. The Economist reports that the deal includes giving Greenland the same status as the Marshall Islands and some other small Pacific islands.
The people of Greenland have the right to vote on their own future. If Trump’s deal is accepted, then Denmark (and others) should stand aside. But it certainly seems like that deal would have had a better chance of being accepted without all the bellicosity that has gone along with it.
Again, one of the glorious things about free trade is that no one points a gun (or the whole U.S. military’s terrifying arsenal) at you to make a deal happen. Individuals buy and sell things when and how it makes sense for them to do it. Yes, it is impossible to apply that logic to every aspect of international geopolitics, but presidents ought to nudge the world toward more trade and less war whenever possible. Trump is doing the opposite.”
It’s not clear how long Venezuela will remain stable. There is a careful political balance to maintain stability. It’s also not clear how long the powers in Venezuela will put up with the US domineering over them. The US can destroy shit, but the Venezuelans can release chaos within Venezuela. Gangs in Venezuela are very powerful. The Venezuelan military doesn’t fully control the country.
Oil companies don’t want to invest in a country that requires huge investment and may not be stable, so their investment will likely need to be subsidized by the taxpayer.
“I think we’re in a situation where we have not gotten regime change. The same group, minus only Maduro, is still in power, and it’s not at all clear just how much intimidating force that we’ve really got.
There are pressure points. I think they’re in trouble on oil exports and so on. But what are China and Russia and Iran and Cuba going to do in the face of that, just sit back and watch it happen? So, I’m not at all sure what day-after planning there was, because I’m not sure we’re finished with the day yet.
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Trump talked about getting the oil, and I think there would have been a legitimate argument that U.S. oil companies kind of get first dibs to come in — not that we would take it, but that we would get some preference in terms of the ability to present proposals — and we should, at a minimum, get some of that production and maybe a lot of it.
But that’s not how Trump looks at it. He just wants to take control of it, and that’s how he’s going to pay for the military force and sort of everything else he’s been promising.
I just think that’s the kind of limited vision he has. He focuses on what he thinks he understands, the tangible economic asset.
The idea that American oil companies are just lining up to go invest in Venezuela is just flatly wrong, and the idea that somehow there will be a quick transformation of the incredibly dilapidated Venezuelan oil infrastructure that’s going to suddenly turn the production back online is fantasy, too.
It’s going to take tens of billions of dollars over a sustained period of time before they get this thing back up and running the way it used to be.
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I think we do have full authority under international law to go after Maduro because what we would consider the legitimate government today is the opposition, with Maduro having stolen both the 2018 and 2024 presidential elections.
When you basically go back to dealing with the old regime and undercut the legitimate government, you’re giving Russia and China the precedent that they don’t have.
There’s nobody in Ukraine calling for Russian intervention, and the government of Taiwan certainly isn’t calling for Chinese intervention.
So the Venezuelan case as it stands now is quite different from those, but that’s not the way Trump’s behaving, and it’s the mistakes he’s making today that lend greater credence to a Russian or a Chinese effort to say, well, we’re just doing what the U.S. did in Venezuela.
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what if they decide they’re not going to do what we want six months from now? Where are we going to be at that point? And I don’t think Trump has addressed that.”
“Internet tracking group NetBlocks reported a loss of internet connectivity in Caracas that occurred around the same time as power cuts in the country. Venezuela’s electric energy ministry said Monday that power cuts in some areas of the country were due to U.S. attacks.
Chinese-made radar systems and Russian-made air defense systems were also reportedly disrupted during the strikes, hampering the Venezuelan government’s ability to effectively respond.
In a statement, a Space Command spokesperson declined to comment on details of its operations, but noted that “space-based capabilities such as Positioning, Navigation and Timing and satellite communications are foundational to all modern military activities,” and that “U.S. Space Command possesses the means and willingness to employ combat-credible capabilities that deter and counter our opponents.”
These efforts point to a more aggressive use of U.S. military technology and cyber expertise in foreign operations — a shift that the administration has repeatedly touted since Trump’s first term. In 2018, a classified national security policy memorandum was signed, expanding the Pentagon’s authorities to conduct offensive cyber strikes. This policy was later refined under the Biden administration.
Joshua Steinman, who served as senior director for cyber on the National Security Council under the first Trump administration, said that the Venezuela strikes demonstrate that the U.S. “is finally in a place where we can use cyber as a tool of national power.””
“Industry analysts have warned that even in the best of circumstances, it would take tens of billions of dollars and more than a decade to completely rebuild Venezuela’s oil fields. Oil executives have told POLITICO that it would be a tough battle to convince their shareholders to make such an investment when other oil fields around the globe offer easier returns.”
Venezuela is a direct security threat to the United States because they cooperate militarily with countries like Iran who considered giving missiles to Venezuela that can hit the US.
Because the Maduro regime is still in charge in Venezuela, it seems likely that these military ties will continue, even if they take a temporary pause.
Venezuela isn’t simply ruled by a dictator or a military junta, but by criminals who are in criminal enterprises to get rich. That makes it harder to negotiate away the rulers because the government is actually run by criminals who want to maintain their criminal enterprises.
Venezuela is a more homogenous country than Iraq, and it has a history of democracy before the authoritarian socialists took over.
The US has never perfectly followed international law, but it did generally follow and enforce norms against overthrowing a leader or regime without assuming responsibility for the consequences. In Venezuela, Trump kidnapped the country’s leader and then took little to no responsibility to nation-build, just demanding oil from the new leader if she doesn’t want to meet a similar fate.
The Trump administration sometimes appeal to spheres of influence, saying they shouldn’t have to ignore a threat in this hemisphere. This is dangerous because it justifies other great powers doing the same thing and makes it harder for the US to rally a coalition against such actions because the US looks hypocritical. If the US can change Venezuela’s leader at will, why can’t China do it to South Korea?
The Trump administration wants to keep Venezuela orderly and get oil flowing. Machado, the democratic activist behind the person that beat Maduro in an election that Maduro stole, has been bending over backward to please Trump, but she has not maintained alliances with people in power in Venezuela. Trump wants someone within the current power structure who can bend to his will and maintain support of the powers in the country. That’s why he went with Maduro’s vice president over the more democratically popular figure.