The Trump administration has captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife. What does this mean for U.S. foreign policy and international security? Here are a few thoughts.
1. This was shocking – if not surprising.
Confession: I didn’t think Trump would actually attack Venezuela, much less put boots on the ground to capture Maduro. I was also wrong in June when I thought Trump wouldn’t bomb Iran.
Why? It’s not because Trump claims to be the “president of peace.” Or because there weren’t signs – there were plenty, from the massive buildup of U.S. forces off Venezuela’s coast, the repeated strikes against alleged drug-running boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, and the long, infamous track record of U.S. interventions in Latin America.
Rather, Trump makes a lot of threats (remember “fire and fury” in North Korea?), but in his first administration, seemed to prefer pinpoint strikes that take out a single target. A good example is Trump’s authorization of the January 2020 strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, a top Iranian general.
And one of Trump’s most consistent policy statements has been his opposition to military interventions, especially those with boots on the ground. Which makes his statement at this morning’s press conference that the United States will “run the country” until a transition even more shocking. He even said “we’re not afraid of boots on the ground” and confirmed that there were boots on the ground in the overnight operation that captured Maduro.
2. There are no constraints on Trump’s foreign policy.
In his second administration, the few remaining constraints on Trump’s foreign policy – mainly his inner circle, which still constrained him in his first administration – are gone. As I wrote in June in Foreign Affairs, the United States now has the foreign policy of a personalist dictatorship.
A predictable result of unconstrained, personalist foreign policy: military misadventures.
Perhaps Trump’s views have done a 180. Another view is that the absence of constraints creates a permissive environment for his aggressive instincts and policy whims. It is not clear, for example, whether Trump’s statement about “running Venezuela” was news to the advisers standing behind him, who will, according to Trump, be doing the running.
3. Scholars agree: Regime change doesn’t work. Neither does occupation.
International relations scholars love to argue – primarily with each other. So it’s notable that the deluge of research after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq came to a clear conclusion: Regime change doesn’t work, and can unleash terrible consequences for both the target and intervener. That’s true of overt regime change, as Alexander Downes’ book Catastrophic Success demonstrates. It’s also true for secret efforts to topple governments, as Lindsey O’Rourke’s study Covert Regime Change shows. Little wonder, then, that Downes and O’Rourke wrote last year that a regime change operation in Venezuela was likely to go badly.
Scholars are equally skeptical about occupation and foreign rule – making Trump’s announcement in his Jan. 3 press conference that the U.S. is “going to run Venezuela” until the transition to a new government all the more concerning. David Edelstein’s study of military occupation shows that these occupations are highly likely to fail. Those that succeed usually have favorable conditions, like an external threat, that make occupation a more attractive option for the local population. No such threat exists in Venezuela.
Trump has apparently decided, like so many presidents before him, that This Time Is Different.
4. U.S. national security capabilities are not what they were a year ago.
So what happens next? If Trump’s press conference is any indication, there is no clear plan.
But even if the United States wanted to “run” Venezuela or facilitate a transition to a new government, it’s not clear it has the capacity to do so anymore. As I wrote last year about a potential Venezuela operation, the current Trump administration has highly inexperienced civilians running U.S. national security, adding another layer of risk to an already-risky operation.
Additionally, Trump has gutted the U.S. government’s foreign policy toolbox, particularly essential tools like diplomacy and foreign aid. U.S. allies have criticized the boat strikes–in November, even the U.K. suspended some intelligence sharing in the region–and some have already condemned the operation that captured Maduro. All of these tools would be critical if there is any hope for an operation like this to be successful.
Trump has also stretched the U.S. military in new ways, including the large-scale deployment of force in the Caribbean since August. Trump makes threats against countries on multiple continents on a weekly basis. And he has deployed the military on U.S. soil, stretching military resources even further while undermining morale and damaging civil-military relations.
Ironically, Trump’s expansionist version of an “America First” policy may end up constraining itself, if the U.S. ends up with what historian Paul Kennedy famously called “imperial overstretch,” when great powers collapse under the weight of their foreign commitments. This overstretch, however, would be far speedier and driven by its own self-undermining policies than other great power declines. Call it “Trump Overstretch.”
5. There’s a huge vacuum in the international order.
Almost every international relations course starts with the principle of anarchy, because there is no world government to keep order in the international system. But since the end of World War II, for better or (often) for worse, the U.S. has dominated the global order. To be sure, the rules the U.S. imposed were often self-serving, and the U.S. violated them many times. But the U.S.-led order was not a world of pure anarchy.
As Susan Hyde and I recently wrote, Trump didn’t start the attack on the U.S.-led order, but he dealt it mortal blows. Once countries feel there are few penalties for invading neighbors or seizing resources, all bets are off. As the IR scholar Paul Musgrave put it, “We are about to speedrun the rediscovery of why states stopped acting like this.” It is not so much falling dominoes, as the U.S. feared would happen during the Cold War if countries joined the communist camp, as smashing the domino table.
With the U.S. not just unwilling but unable to underwrite any order, it’s Trumpian anarchy. There is a sudden vacuum in the world order, while Trump wields diminished U.S. military and diplomatic power wildly, with no constraints.
Nobody knows what happens next. But Trump’s actions this weekend have made the range of outcomes huge. Regime change and occupation can unleash unpredictable and terrible consequences. The big question is whether any of this will make the United States more secure.
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