By Jim Phillips, Peace House Board Chair
In the early morning hours of Saturday, January 3, President Trump announced that U.S. military special forces had successfully captured the Venezuelan President, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, and that they were in U.S. custody on a plane to New York to face trial.
Later that morning, President Trump added that Venezuelan Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez had indicated that she was willing to work with a U.S. presence in running the country. That statement was challenged later Saturday when Rodriguez gave a televised address to the Venezuelan people. Surrounded by senior Venezuelan military and government personnel, Rodriguez condemned the U.S. kidnapping of President Maduro, and declared that Venezuela would never again be subjected to foreign control. Then President Trump declared that the U.S. would “run” Venezuela until a peaceful transition can occur.
As of Sunday afternoon, the United States was not in control of Venezuela. Special Forces had kidnapped the country’s president, but the U.S. military were not occupying the country. Trump indicated that if acting president Rodriguez submitted to U.S. plans for the country, there would be no need for direct U.S. military occupation. But, Trump said, he had no aversion to “boots on the ground.” Despite its limited targeting, this action did constitute an invasion into Venezuelan territory and its political order.
Peace House strongly condemns as illegal and dangerous the administration’s invasion of Venezuela and the removal of the country’s president. We are clear that this invasion by the U.S. of a sovereign Latin American country signals a much larger threat to the peace and security not only of Latin America but of the entire world. Whatever one thinks of Nicolás Maduro, his fate was for the Venezuelan people to decide, not the Trump administration.
A World of Might or Law?
An older world order was based on “spheres of influence” —the idea that the most powerful nations each had their own areas of control over smaller countries. The Monroe Doctrine became the basis of the United States’ claim to influence over Latin America, and the basis of U.S. interference in the region. That older order depended on the military and economic might of the great powers to maintain a precarious balance of power between these spheres of influence. Essentially, it was an order based on force, not law. The result was a history of conflicts and interventions, culminating in two world wars.
At the end of the Second World War, the major world powers agreed to a new framework of laws and agreements binding all nations. The new framework was based on a series of international and regional laws and treaties. The United Nations Charter, Article 2, paragraph 4 mandates that all nations refrain from threatening or attacking the territorial integrity or political independence of other nations. The charter of the Organization of American States prohibits the nations of the Western hemisphere from using coercive economic or political measures to undermine the sovereignty of other nations.
The U.S. Constitution itself grants the power to declare war solely to the Congress as a measure to limit the President’s ability arbitrarily to drag the country into foreign wars. But the Trump Administration apparently merely informed some Congressional Republicans and no Democratic member of Congress before attacking Venezuela. There is rumbling in Congress about that, and a few calls to enforce the War Powers Act.
In addition, there are international laws and agreements that heads of state enjoy immunity from criminal indictment. But apparently Maduro has been indicted and will stand trial in federal court in New York as a “narcoterrorist.” What “evidence” the Administration has for this charge remains to be seen. And whether the court will recognize Maduro’s claim to immunity from prosecution is uncertain, but not likely. Neither the first Trump Administration nor the Biden Administration recognized Maduro as a legitimate head of state.
Historically, the international framework of laws and treaties set up after World War II has often been ignored, but the aggressor nation has generally been held to account through the mechanisms of this global framework. For example, when the Reagan Administration waged war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, using the so-called Contras as proxies, the World Court ruled that the U.S. had violated international law and must pay reparations to Nicaragua (which Reagan ignored).
As weak as it was, that global order of laws and agreements worked with some success. The invasion of Venezuela now signals that illegal takeovers and “regime change” are the new normal. Imagine what this tells Russia about eastern Europe and China about Taiwan. We seem to be back to the old spheres of influence order again, this time with added dangers.
The U.S. sinking of Venezuelan fishing boats and the killing of over one hundred people who were no immediate threat to the United States—actions that for several months preceded the invasion—were also manifestly illegal and violations of the international rules of war as embodied in the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. military’s own code.
Why Venezuela?
Targeting Venezuela as the administration has done for months is not incidental. Venezuela represents at least two things to the current U.S. administration: oil and the Bolivarian Alliance. The Trump administration clearly wants Venezuela’s large oil deposits, as Trump has said publicly various times. Venezuelan oil has been important in supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and other governments disliked by Washington. A U.S. takeover of Venezuelan oil strikes a blow to these governments.
Venezuela was also the anchor of the Bolivarian Alliance formed by Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez. The Bolivarian Alliance came to include other Latin American countries trying to defend a semblance of independence from the U.S., including Nicaragua. That Alliance represented an alternative to U.S. controlled free trade and other agreements in Latin America. It seemed to challenge Washington’s economic and political dominance over the entire hemisphere. When Honduran President Manuel Zelaya indicated that he might bring Honduras into the Bolivarian Alliance, he was deposed and exiled in a coup in 2009 that was ultimately supported and recognized by the Obama Administration.
There are things about this invasion of Venezuelan sovereignty that raise questions and expose the hypocrisy of the act. It was never about stopping Venezuelan drugs from entering the U.S. If it were, why did President Trump recently pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, one of the biggest drug traffickers in the hemisphere? Why are news reports indicating that Maduro has already been indicted in New York to stand trial? Was there ever a grand jury convened to hear evidence against him, as our legal system requires as the basis of an indictment?. Will this be a sham trial with a predetermined outcome?
It is unclear what will follow Maduro’s kidnapping. If the U.S. does try to take direct control of Venezuela with “boots on the ground,” that is very likely to result in much misery, loss of life, wasted resources, and the possibility of a long-term low-intensity conflict. Will Colombia, Brazil, Guyana, Mexico, or others be drawn into this disaster?
Our Work
The invasion of Venezuela must also be seen in the context of President Trump’s apparent weakening position at home. His initiatives blocked in the courts, his approval ratings dropping, the massive and ongoing popular protests against his policies, the ever-so-slight edging away of right-wing supporters, the Epstein files scandal, and his “lame duck” status must make him desperate to distract us. Few things are more effective in propping up an authoritarian administration than to declare a national threat and wage war against a weaker target.
We are called to make loud and clear our condemnation of this invasion and all of its negative implications for world peace and security. We can encourage our senators and representatives to support an enforcement of the War Powers Act that limits the President’s ability to make war without Congressional approval. And revealing the administration’s unpopularity at home, through demonstrations and in the courts, is a way of weakening its ability to engage in lawless, flagrant, and arbitrary exercises of power at home and abroad.
