The War Against Venezuela

Back in the olden days of the first Donald Trump presidency, when competent people remained in the administration, a war was gamed out between the United States and Venezuela. Yes, Trump was agitating for a war back then.

We don’t know, of course, that Trump wants a war against Venezuela, because he hasn’t said that. All he’s done is position a naval fleet in the waters around Venezuela and has burned small boats and killed the occupants that he claims are carrying narcotics. He is also in contact with Venezuela’s president, Nicholás Maduro, apparently to try to make him resign. We know that Trump does not like Maduro because he has said so, but he has said little about the naval fleet. He has bragged about blowing up the small boats.

He has also bragged recently about a strike on shore. The New York Times has fleshed that out a bit, although it still seems vague. It was a CIA strike, but the target seems to have been a grass hut full of something that might have been cocaine. But the magic words, Tren de Aragua, have been spoken.

If there was a strike, and if it was the CIA, grandpa Motormouth let slip some very classified information. The CIA hasn’t confirmed it, and they likely won’t. Everyone else is being very quiet and hoping nobody asks them. It really is a problem to have one person read into the highly classified stuff who has no idea what that means and glories in personal aggrandisement by violence.

But Trump does know how to keep some secrets. He believes fully in the madman theory of foreign and every other kind of relations. The best strategy is to keep everyone ignorant of any plans you may have and of the fact that you may not have any plans at all. This allows reporters to make up things that a normal president might do and attribute them to you. It also allows you to pull the rug out from under everyone when you need some stimulation.

That’s where we’re at in understanding what Trump intends for Venezuela.

Oil, wanting Maduro out, drug traffic, throwing a little country against the wall, revenge for imagined interference in the 2020 election all may be motivations for Trump’s actions against Venezuela (gift link). Trump isn’t going to tell us. It’s not clear that his National Security Council or the Joint Chiefs of Staff have been told. Certainly not Congress. Here’s a gift link for a broad overview of what has happened so far.

Keeping others ignorant preserves Trump’s freedom of action. Judging from his actions in other places, he has no stomach for a real war – one that goes on for more than a week. What he likes to do is what he did in Iran. Step in with a coup de grâce and take the applause. Maduro, however, is not cooperating, and, in fact, there is no path to something like what he did in Iran. The wargaming showed that, while Maduro could be taken out, the result would be a mess, with subnational armed groups fighting and civil disorder. Much more like George W. Bush’s adventure in Iraq.

Maria Corina Machado, the most recent Nobel Peace laureate, believes that she could step into the leadership and hold things together.

Machado is encouraging  the Trump administration’s belief that Maduro is encouraging drug traffic to the US. She accuses Maduro of being the head of Tren de Aragua.

Here’s some broader context including Colombia, which once was a part of a larger country with Venezuela.