Will Trump Invade Venezuela?

No, but his parody cover-version of the Iraq WMD tune is designed to make Maduro think he will. Theatrical militarism and the new Monroe Doctrine

For “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, read “Narco-terrorism”. The Trump Administration certainly wants Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro to believe the U.S. military is coming for him. Under the bizarre rubric of a spurious claim that Venezuela is targeting the U.S. with weaponized narcotics, President Trump has begun ordering the U.S. military to illegally destroy boats whose crew are deemed to be transporting drugs. More than that, he has moved many, many tons of U.S. military hardware into the waters and skies around Venezuela, and announced that he has ordered the CIA to begin “covert” operations against the country’s regime. Yes, yes, we know, it’s not “covert” if you announce it, but the entire narrative is something of a (deadly) comedy sketch — Venezuela is known to be a transit route for cocaine manufactured in narco-guerilla controlled parts of neighboring Colombia; a minor part of the supply chain of that drug, and isn’t believed to even be a transit route for fentanyl (which Trump has told the U.S. public is what’s being stopped by destroying the boats); and the idea that the operations of drug gangs equate to a form of warfare by Venezuela against the U.S. is every bit as far-fetched as the Bush Administration’s claims that the American mainland faced a WMD threat from Iraq. It’s almost as if the Trump Administration were parodying the Bush Administration’s fallacious Iraq narrative to signal Maduro that the U.S. plans a military intervention to oust him.

So, if it’s not about drugs, what is it about?

Not to sound conspiratorial or anything (the reasons for the Iraq war were more complex and geostrategic) but oil is the big prize in Venezuela. The country holds the world’s largest known reserves, which not only give it tremendous economic value and significant potential influence over global energy markets which the U.S. would prize, but have also enabled a foreign policy independent of the 20^th century’s imperial hegemon in Latin America — it not only enabled former President Hugo Chavez to chart an economic course quite different from that imposed by Washington on many his neighbors, but it also enabled Chavez to ensure the survival of Cuba’s socialist system, much to U.S. chagrin.

Besides oil, Venezuela also holds large deposits of minerals such as Coltan, Bauxite, Lithium and others essential to high tech industries, even much prized Rare Earths.

And then, of course, there’s a geopolitical prize: The U.S. has significantly retrenched its ambitions of direct imperial control in the Middle East and other strategic theaters and its military commitments in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, but it has doubled down on efforts to restore its dominance in Latin America and beat back China’s growing trade-and-investment presence. This policy has been made explicit, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth describes it as “reviving the Monroe Doctrine for a new century” — i.e. viewing Latin America as an exclusive U.S. “sphere of influence”, a doctrine that had justified multiple direct military interventions and coups subverting Latin American democracy over more than a century.

Venezuela’s resources make it a valuable prize not only for narrow economic reasons, but also as a source of regional influence and power, and also as a counterweight to growing Chinese investment on the continent.

Clearly, those vying for power in Venezuela understand today’s U.S. priorities: Opposition leader Maria Machado, recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, has urged President Trump to go to war to topple Maduro, promising that the reward would be priority access for U.S. investors in the country’s oil, mineral and other sectors. And Trump has claimed that Maduro has offered the U.S. pretty much the same thing in exchange for coming to terms with his regime. They seem to know what the U.S. really wants, and it’s got little to do with narco trafficking.

So, will Trump do an Iraq on Venezuela?

Probably not, if by Iraq we means a mass invasion and occupation U.S. troops.

Putting “boots on the ground”, in U.S. parlance, has gone seriously out of fashion – the MAGA movement’s hostility to the “forever wars” of Trump’s predecessors reflected a revulsion at seeing American soldiers killed and maimed in distant military adventures like Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. Trump has surprised them by some of his moves, like bombing Iran on Israel’s behalf, but a closer look makes clear that Trump hasn’t taken a single military action over his two terms in office that put U.S. personnel in harm’s way: He makes war from the distance allowed by unchallenged air superiority, missiles and drones. He likes showing off videos of explosions and claiming easy victories (Iran’s nuclear program is clearly still intact despite him declaring it finished some months ago.) But the only place he’s put “boots on the ground” has been in U.S. cities opposed to his war on migrants.

The massive U.S. military capability being marshaled around Venezuela includes just 10,000 personnel – a tiny fraction of what would be needed to invade and occupy a country five times the size of Iraq. And the failure of previous U.S. efforts to depose Maduro are a reminder that, despite the widespread antagonism to his regime from millions of Venezuelans, he retains solid support in the country’s military, and has further armed around 1 million irregulars in loyalist militias. So, just as the U.S. has ruled out putting any of its soldiers in Gaza lest they get shot at, so too does Trump’s track record suggests it’s highly unlikely that he’d order a ground invasion.

Trump is, though, clearly seeking to pressure Maduro and his regime into some form of capitulation, or even collapse, though not necessarily an orderly transition to some form of democratic change. His efforts could potentially include some sort of “decapitation” strike to kill Maduro and his close associates, though many in Washington warn of a repeat of Obama’s Libya intervention and the many perils of a protracted civil war and violent chaos. Perhaps the goal would be to persuade other military chiefs to hand over Maduro, giving Trump the win but not necessarily giving up their own power over Venezuelan society.

Opinion polls have for years found that a majority of Venezuelans want to see the back of Maduro’s corrupt and authoritarian regime, which has presided over an era of chaos and economic misery that drove one fifth of the population into exile. But at the same time, those same polls find a majority of Venezuelans rejecting U.S. intervention. What’s clear is that despite its rejection by the majority of the population, the regime still retains the support of 20% - 30% of the population, and the military has rebuffed years of pressure to quit the regime, raising the prospect of of sustained war and chaos if the U.S. intervenes to oust the regime. Those dangers are the same even if U.S. intervention is “offshored”.

The wider strategic game

Whereas the 20^th Century saw the U.S. dominate Latin America as the unrivaled hegemon, sending in troops and spooks to topple regimes signaling any kind of independence from U.S. writ, and as a result also being the unchallenged master of the continent’s raw materials, the 21^st Century has been different: The previous era of lawless military interventions and coups has largely given way to a period of relatively stable democratic politics, while China’s emergence as the world’s leading manufacturing power has seen it supplant the U.S. as the continent’s leading trade partner, and the leading investor in renewable energy, digital infrastructure, electric vehicles and other key sectors of modernizing economies. The U.S. has been unable to compete on strictly trade-and-investment terms, and key Trump policies like the imposition of tariffs on partners have pushed potential partners closer to China.

Political interventions like using tariffs to punish Brazil for upholding the law against Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro, or releasing $20b to back the Argentine peso in the hope that it would save the political hide of his pal Javier Millei (even warning that the U.S. help would be withdrawn if Argentina’s voters nix Millei) aren’t likely to win the U.S. many friends in the continent.

Trump’s allies include Argentina, El Salvador, Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay and now Bolivia, but among the continent’s largest economies, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Chile, are not on board, and see in Trump’s Venezuela actions an echo of a dark past. Thus the sharp split in the Organization of American States on the issue of unilateral U.S. action against Venezuela. In general, also, Trump can rely on significant support from the continent’s economic elites, though their influence doesn’t necessarily prevail at the ballot box.

China may be the continent’s strongest economic partner, but it offers no military counter to a U.S. returning to Monroe Doctrine flexing and lawless interventions. Trump may, then, be tempted to make an example of Venezuela to send a message reminding the continent of Washington’s strong suit, i.e. coercion. Gunboat diplomacy optics, but with no boots on the ground. While the sorts of actions Trump is known for (briefly bombing Iran while its air defenses are down, assassinating Iranian Revoluionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani etc.) represent minimum threat to U.S. personnel, making a kinetic regime-change-from-safe-distance intervention more palatable to his public, but like Libya and Iraq, it’d be unlikely to win the U.S. many friends on the continent. Then again, nor did the Monroe Doctrine.