What Brought the Trump Administration to the Brink with the Venezuelan Regime
Originally published by the National Review
At this writing, the United States appears to be on the verge of military action against the Venezuelan regime. The president of the United States has de facto closed Venezuelan airspace — via Truth Social, of course — and the largest concentration of American military power in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility since the 1989 Christmas season is gathered across the Caribbean basin. Naval assets are afloat to the north of the Venezuelan littoral, and American bases and facilities have emerged (or been reactivated) not just in U.S.-controlled territories like Puerto Rico and Guantanamo Bay, but in sovereign allies such as Trinidad and Tobago and the Dominican Republic. All this raises obvious questions, foremost among them: Why now, and why Venezuela?
Anyone outside of the administration who offers definitive answers to either is misleading at worst and incomplete at best. The decision-makers know their full rationales and will share them when they wish. For now, even the legal memorandum justifying the strikes on maritime traffickers remains undisclosed. What we may do, in that absence, is offer a framework for understanding what might be driving events, without the pretense of speaking for the White House or claiming unique insight into its policymaking.
It is a truism that policy emerges not necessarily when one overriding interest compels it (although that does happen with relative frequency, especially under a vigorous, Federalist No. 70 type president like the one we have now), but when multiple interests overlap and amplify one another. These are not mutually exclusive phenomena, but for the Venezuelan case, we should examine the latter to illuminate our understanding. Venezuela and its regime find themselves at the intersection of administration priorities. Among them are the reassertion of American primacy in the Western Hemisphere; security of the Panama Canal; a revivified Monroe Doctrine, including the Roosevelt Corollary; suppression of human trafficking and remigration; dismantling of the narco-state archipelago across the Americas; and the demonstration of American military credibility after the Biden-era decline.
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