Donald Trump’s invasion of Venezuela has no lawful basis, no ethical basis, and will help fracture international alliances we depend on.
It broke international law. Trump hasn’t seriously tried to argue otherwise.
Starting a war without Congressional approval seems to violate US. law. Not only invading and kidnapping the country’s president, but seizing oil tankers and massacring fisherman amount to acts of war.
The administration claims this was lawful armed-forces assistance to a law-enforcement action, since Maduro had been indicted on drug charges. Trump’s regime-change rhetoric and talk of “running Venezuela” for its petroleum negate that excuse. (They’ve had to admit that Trump’s oft-repeated claim that Maduro ran a drug ring, Cartel de los Soles, is nonsense. That group doesn’t exist.)
This was never about saving US. lives: fentanyl doesn’t come here from Venezuela, cocaine doesn’t cause that many overdoses, and if Trump cared deeply about bringing drug-runners to justice he’d not have pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was tried and convicted of doing, as Honduran president, what Maduro is alleged to have done.
It’s not about human rights or Venezuelan democracy. Mr. Trump has clearly said that if Maduro’s vice-president will give the US. Venezuelan oil, she can stay in power. No freeing of political prisoners we supposedly cared deeply about.
It’s about the oil, to which we have no legal or moral right.
It will also have more negative consequences than Trump can imagine. First, “running Venezuela” might immerse us in just the sort of long-term struggles to run a divided country that Trump promised to extricate us from.
Combined with his bullying comments about taking Greenland, Cuba, Canada, and maybe Mexico, it changes the international scene in three important ways: it threatens further fracturing of international alliances; claiming this is our “sphere of influence,” essentially concedes Taiwan to China and Eastern Europe to Russia. Further, whatever vestigial shred of credibility “American exceptionalism” had, Trump tossed in into the ashcan. We are more blatantly than ever as selfish and unjust as any other empire, not some exceptional democracy seeking a better world. We won’t even keep our people healthy!
Trump’s bullying of allies, and his bizarre, possibly dementia-caused conduct and verbiage, has everyone worried. Europe has made noises toward an independence defense force, partly because Trump’s Putin-crush undermines US. support for Ukraine against Russian aggression, which endangers Europe too.
Garnering fewer headlines is Canada’s Trump-inspired declaration of independence from the US. NORAD and other common defense activities have been unusually close, cooperative, and efficient. Now, however, Canada has not only announced big-time defense-spending, it is dealing with European entities, and refusing to use US.-made systems the US. could help run. Canada will own the intellectual property. That is, in a pinch, while Canada may share information with us, we won’t be getting that information automatically and running the system. In a smaller and smaller world, with climate craziness melting northern ice, that’s a whole area of security we had a great handle on as long as Canada trusted us; but who would trust Trump? Even if one wanted to dismiss his “I’ll make Canada our 51st State” [presumably with two senators, like Wyoming] rhetoric as age-related and innocent, when he combines it with invading another nearby country, without lawful basis, and threatening others . . . man, I’d want my own defense system. I might need it against the US.!
None of this makes the US. “great.”
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[The above column appeared Sunday, 11 January 2026, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website and will presently appear on KRWG’s website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). ]
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