Since coming down the escalator in 2015 to announce his first presidential run, Donald Trump has presented himself as a break from the traditional hawkish foreign policy in the United States.
The US president has even criticised some of his political rivals as “warmongers” and “war hawks”.
But Trump’s move to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and announce that the US will “run” the Latin American country has drawn comparisons with the regime change wars that he built a political career rejecting.
Some critics from Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, who backed his message of focusing on the country’s own issues instead of conflicts abroad, are criticising Washington’s march to war with Venezuela.
Still, Trump’s grip on Republican politics appears to remain firm, with most legislators from the party praising Trump’s actions.
“To President Trump and his team, you should take great pride in setting in motion the liberation of Venezuela,” Senator Lindsey Graham wrote in a social media post.
“As I have often said, it is in America’s national security interest to deal with the drug caliphate in our backyard, the centrepiece of which is Venezuela.”
Graham’s reference to a “drug caliphate” seems to play on Islamophobic tropes and promote the push to liken the US attacks on alleged drug traffickers in Latin America to the so-called “war on terror”.
The US senator heaped praise on the winner of the FIFA Peace Prize – handed to Trump by the association’s chief, Gianni Infantino, in December – and called him “the GOAT of the American presidency”, which stands for “the greatest of all time”.
Trump says US will ‘run’ Venezuela after Nicolas Maduro seized
Muted criticism
While it was expected that Graham and other foreign policy hawks in Trump’s orbit would back the moves against Venezuela, even some of the Republican sceptics of foreign interventions cheered the abduction of Maduro.
Former Congressman Matt Gaetz, one of the most vocal critics of hawkish foreign policy on the right, poked fun at the “capture” of the Venezuelan president.
“Maduro is gonna hate CECOT,” he wrote on X, referring to the notorious prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration sent hundreds of suspected gang members without due process.
Libertarian Senator Rand Paul, who has been a leading voice in decrying Congress’s war-making power, only expressed muted disapproval of Trump’s failure to seek lawmakers’ authorisation for military action in Venezuela.
“Time will tell if regime change in Venezuela is successful without significant monetary or human cost,” he wrote in a lengthy statement that mostly argued against bringing “socialism” to the US.
“Best though, not to forget, that our founders limited the executive’s power to go to war without Congressional authorisation for a reason – to limit the horror of war and limit war to acts of defence. Let’s hope those precepts of peace are not forgotten in our justified relief that Maduro is gone and the Venezuelan people will have a second chance.”
Early on Saturday morning, Republican Senator Mike Lee questioned the legality of the attack. “I look forward to learning what, if anything, might constitutionally justify this action in the absence of a declaration of war or authorisation for the use of military force,” he wrote on X.
Lee later said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio told him that US troops were executing a legal arrest warrant against Maduro.
“This action likely falls within the president’s inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to protect US personnel from an actual or imminent attack,” the senator said.
Dissent
Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was one of the few dissenting voices.
“Americans’ disgust with our own government’s never-ending military aggression and support of foreign wars is justified because we are forced to pay for it and both parties, Republicans and Democrats, always keep the Washington military machine funded and going,” Greene wrote on X.
Greene, a former Trump ally who fell out with the US president and is leaving Congress next week, rejected the argument that Trump ordered Maduro’s “capture” because of the Venezuelan president’s alleged involvement in the drug trade.
She noted that Venezuela is not a major exporter of fentanyl, the leading cause of overdose deaths in the US.
She also underscored that, last month, Trump pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, a convicted drug trafficker who was serving a 45-year sentence in a US jail.
“Regime change, funding foreign wars, and American’s [sic] tax dollars being consistently funneled to foreign causes, foreigners both home and abroad, and foreign governments while Americans are consistently facing increasing cost of living, housing, healthcare, and learn about scams and fraud of their tax dollars is what has most Americans enraged,” Greene said.
Congressman Tomas Massie, another Republican, shared a speech he delivered in the House of Representatives earlier this month, warning that attacking Venezuela is about “oil and regime change”.
“Are we prepared to receive swarms of the 25 million Venezuelans, who will likely become refugees, and billions in American treasure that will be used to destroy and inevitably rebuild that nation? Do we want a miniature Afghanistan in the Western Hemisphere?” Massie said in the remarks.
“If that cost is acceptable to this Congress, then we should vote on it as a voice of the people and in accordance with our Constitution.”
While Massie and Greene are outliers in their party, Trump’s risky moves in Venezuela were a success in the short term: Maduro is in US custody at a minimal cost to Washington.
Similarly, few Republicans opposed the US war in Iraq when then-President George W Bush stood under the “mission accomplished” sign on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln after toppling Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, in 2003.
But there is now a near consensus across the political spectrum that the Iraq invasion was a geopolitical disaster.
The fog of war continues to hang over Venezuela, and it is unclear who is in charge of the country, or how Trump will “run” it.
The US president has not ruled out deploying “boots on the ground” to Venezuela, raising the prospect of a US occupation and the possibility of another Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.
“Do we truly believe that Nicolas Maduro will be replaced by a modern-day George Washington? How did that work out in… Libya, Iraq or Syria?” Massie warned in his Congress speech.
“Previous presidents told us to go to war over WMDs, weapons of mass destruction, that did not exist. Now, it’s the same playbook, except we’re told that drugs are the WMDs.”