Maybe it will come off, but the plan is far from clear.
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Нysteria is the enemy. The United States’ daring January 3 raid in Caracas to capture Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro was, to put it gently, a surprise to many (not least to Maduro). In the absence of much information, speculation and team sports rushed into the void.
The operation, as with the rest of the Venezuela pressure campaign, was premised on dubious legal and constitutional theory. The U.S. government declared that Maduro is not the “legitimate” president of Venezuela, connected him somewhat dubiously to Venezuelan drug-smuggling operations (and, even more dubiously, connected those operations to American drug fatalities), and decided that, consequently, the U.S. government can do whatever it wants to him without pesky nuisances like congressional approval for military action. For those who would like to see an American polity less oriented towards unaccountable war and executive imperialism, this is stuff for alarm, irrespective of the short-term success of the mission or the long-term prospects for American interests in Venezuela. As I wrote some months ago, “Whatever is going on with Venezuela is kicking up the same clouds of political dysfunction that have attended every such adventure since the Spanish–American War: public lies, legal improvisation, camarilla politics. The fear is less about what a quasi-war would do to Venezuela and its neighborhood, and more about what it will do to us.” These criticisms are ideological or theoretical; they stand or fall on the type of country you think America is and should be.
But the deed is done, so of necessity the focus will now swing towards whatever comes next in practical terms. There’s a fair amount of vagueness in the messages the administration is sending about this. Marco Rubio says we are using an oil blockade and the threat of further violence as leverage over the Venezuelan regime; President Donald Trump says we are “running” the country, and we “aren’t afraid of boots on the ground.” There is some reporting that suggests Stephen Miller will be the Venezuela czar or viceroy. It seems the best-case scenario is that the regime, not liking the looks of what happened to Maduro, will cut a deal with the administration, allow us whatever rights for mineral exploitation we’re asking for, agree to some sort of middle-term transition to a more amenable government, and everyone rides into the sunset.
Let’s hope that’s the case (although it is not entirely clear how this endstate is different from or more desirable than the offers of concessions Venezuela made before Maduro was ousted). There is nevertheless much that could go wrong, and the administration has not made a clear argument for why it won’t go wrong. One of the premises of this whole thing is the hopeless corruption of the Venezuelan military. If Delcy Rodriguez, the Bolivarian Republic’s acting president, tries to cut a deal with Washington (or if she has already done so), it does not seem a sure thing that some number of generals aren’t going to try their luck at maintaining their rackets. What then? A war on Colombian-style drug paramilitaries? That seems difficult and bad. Conversely, what if Rodriguez is pressured into resisting the administration’s demands? Are we just going to keep running raids until something changes? Do we think we can do this sort of thing indefinitely? That is far from clear. Or, if it all ends in pizza, what if the oil companies whom Trump seems to think are going to be responsible for rebuilding the country find the implementation of their plans for infrastructure hampered by any number of accidental factors—Venezuelan crime, unexpected expense, and so on? These are all contingencies that must be considered; they would all put a serious damper on all the triumphant hooting coming from the administration’s allies. Snap polling has suggested the American public is less excited by this escapade than the popular strikes on Iran last June. Are they going to tolerate an unexpectedly difficult project they didn’t ask for and didn’t find particularly stirring?
The administration has been (for now, more or less) committed to presenting this as a fundamentally different adventure than the Iraq War. It is true that Venezuela has far more to do with America than the Middle East does, and that a robust and occasionally aggressive policy in the Western Hemisphere has much to recommend it. And the administration and its allies insist there will be no equivalent of “debaathification,” which is something of a comfort—as is the fact that the “regime collapse” touted by some of its allies did not in fact occur. But everything coming off well seems to involve a lot of “ifs.” Maybe these guys know what they’re doing, and there’s a grand plan that has yet to be revealed. That isn’t this administration’s usual style, though; the burden of proof is with the administration to show that this dubiously legal, dubiously prudent course of action will work. We’ll find out soon enough.
Original article: theamericanconservative.com
