Having now listened to the latest episode of The Editors on President Trump’s invasion of Venezuela and extraction of Nicolás Maduro this weekend, I realize that I agree much more than I disagree with Noah Rothman on the attendant issues. Where I part company is on the question of whether “Operation Absolute Resolve” is a smashing strategic success. I see a lot of strategic downside and fear the operation, and especially the fallout, illustrates a lack of resolve: You can’t do regime change in Venezuela without military occupation, and the president has no intention of doing that (the fact that he’s got no authority to do it is also true, but apparently a trifling detail). Moreover, the invasion of a country with which we were at peace and the apprehension of its de facto leader for trial in our judicial system are likely to embolden the aggression of China, Russia, and other would-be imperialists.
Throughout the president’s lawless aggression in the Caribbean, beginning with the killings of suspected drug traffickers on the fiction that they are enemy combatants in an armed conflict, I’ve argued that the administration needs to seek congressional authorization. As a matter of constitutional law (and regardless of how the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has rationalized what I continue to believe were unlawful military strikes by Obama in Libya and Trump I in Syria), I believe the president is authorized to use force unilaterally only if our nation or its truly vital interests have been militarily attacked or truly threatened with military attack.
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