Political pundits love black-and-white answers, but a realistic assessment of President Trump’s actions in Venezuela is a shade of gray. How dark or light that gray becomes will depend on Mr. Trump’s future actions. He had good reason to capture Nicolás Maduro over the weekend, and the operation could be a geopolitical as well as a military success — if the president changes course.
Capturing Mr. Maduro stands to help Venezuela and its region. Mr. Maduro was a terrible dictator. He and his predecessor destroyed Venezuela’s democracy and economy, taking the country from the wealthiest in South America to the poorest. Many people are starving in that resource-rich nation. Mr. Maduro’s removal weakens Cuba, which relied on his economic generosity, and will probably undermine Russia’s and China’s influence within Venezuela.
Mr. Maduro also was indicted on charges relating to facilitating cocaine trafficking to the United States. Opioids such as fentanyl rightly get the most attention for their deadly effects, but cocaine overdoses have been rising. I’ve lost three brothers to drugs and alcohol, and I’ve seen the pain in my dad’s eyes. My dad is not alone; each year, too many moms and dads feel his pain.
Bringing Mr. Maduro to justice will not be enough to call his removal a success. The Trump administration still needs to show that the United States is acting in the interests of regional stability and of Venezuelans themselves. That starts with installing the country’s rightfully elected leaders.
Instead, Mr. Trump appears to favor working with Mr. Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez. She is an illegitimate leader. In the 2024 presidential election, an opposition candidate, Edmundo González, won by a landslide, a result Mr. Maduro rejected. Mr. González ran as a stand-in for the opposition leader and Nobel laureate María Corina Machado, who would also make a fine president.
I hope the reports that Mr. Trump is miffed about not getting the Nobel Peace Prize — the one that Ms. Machado received — are false. Such envy should have no bearing on Venezuela’s future.
Neither should any narrow American commercial interests. Mr. Trump has said he intends to “run” Venezuela for a while and to control its oil production. Many Americans do not support the United States running Venezuela and don’t want oil to drive decisions about regime change. We reject transactional foreign policy devoid of morality.
If the president fails to empower Venezuela’s rightfully elected leaders and continues to focus on controlling oil production, support for this operation will shrink in the United States and abroad. America needs to show that we have altruistic goals, not just a desire to grab oil resources by propping up illegitimate leaders. Otherwise, Mr. Trump’s decision to invade Venezuela will end in failure, with consequences for the United States and the world.
The international rules-based order would suffer another blow, emboldening Russia and China. Mr. Trump has already been weak on President Vladimir Putin of Russia, even after his country invaded Ukraine by claiming it was fighting Nazis and threats to Russian security. China wants to retake Taiwan, by force if required, arguing that the island is a renegade province. I fear that both Russia and China will use our actions in Venezuela to justify their regional hegemonic aspirations.
I know there’s a difference between the United States and Russia and China. We favor democracy, and Russia and China oppose it. But we have opened the door for Mr. Putin and President Xi Jinping of China to dominate their neighbors, using rationales that sound like the one we have cited to justify our activities in Venezuela.
Mr. Trump’s actions also threaten to further diminish Congress’s authority. The administration failed to prepare or even inform Congress before ordering operations inside Venezuela. If combat continues there, the law requires the administration to seek congressional authorization. Though I support removing Mr. Maduro, I voted for a resolution on Dec. 17 that would have reasserted Congress’s constitutional role in deciding matters of war and peace. A weakened legislative branch undermines our government’s checks and balances.
Mr. Trump has not helped his case at home nor the United States’ case abroad by sending contradictory messages. The administration has depicted the Venezuela operation as a law enforcement mission to punish Mr. Maduro for his role in the illegal drug trade. Yet Mr. Trump last month pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, who was found guilty in a U.S. court of conspiring to import some 400 tons of cocaine to the United States. It is impossible to reconcile these two actions.
Yet Mr. Trump can still claim a great victory for freedom, stability and international order if he backs Venezuela’s rightfully elected leaders and lets Venezuelans govern themselves. If not, he will undermine all of those things — and, ultimately, America’s place in the world.
Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska, serves on the House Armed Services Committee and is a retired Air Force brigadier general.
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