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- [00:00]
Michael O'Hanlon
I think we know enough here to say that it's already time for a congressional debate and vote. That would be my conclusion. When you get to the point where the president himself is using terms that are associated with international legal definitions of war and where you have the potential for an operation that grows in scale, I think that's the time when you've reached the threshold.
- [00:30]
Galen Drouke
Hello, and welcome to the GD Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Drouke. On Monday's podcast, we were talking about shifting political landscapes, and I quipped that perhaps by the midterms we'd be at war with Venezuela. If you keep up with the news coming out of the Caribbean, it seems like it could be a lot sooner than that. And if you're more of a betting markets person, according to the folks at Polymarket, there's a 56% chance Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro will be out of power by the end of next year. Things appear to be escalating quickly. The US has launched 25 strikes in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific since early September, killing 95 people per tracking at.
- [01:08]
Interviewer/Host
The New York Times.
- [01:09]
Galen Drouke
The stated goal of the strikes has been to stop drug traffickers that the Trump administration has labeled terrorist organizations. But there are questions about the legality of the strikes and questions about whether the goal is really to put pressure on Maduro with the hopes of ousting him. Speaking of pressure, last week the US Seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. And this week, President Trump announced a complete blockade on sanctioned oil tankers going to and from Venezuela. This comes closer to threatening the lifeblood of the Venezuelan economy. Venezuela holds the world's largest proven oil reserves, and oil makes up 90 to 95% of its export revenue. The US has also deployed military assets to the region capable of land strikes and disabling Venezuela's defensives. And Trump has said that he's authorized covert CIA operations in the country. I'll admit myself to being a little behind the curve on this story. So in an effort to get us up to speed, I've invited on Michael o'. Hanlon. He's the Phil Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy at the Brookings Institution and the author of the forthcoming book To Dare Mighty US Defense Strategy since the Revolution.
- [02:18]
Interviewer/Host
Michael, welcome to the podcast.
- [02:19]
Michael O'Hanlon
Thank you, Galen. And let me say, if you're behind the curve, then the rest of us need to do some better homework ourselves, because that was a pretty concise and effective introduction. So I look forward to discussing with you today.
- [02:30]
Interviewer/Host
Well, I very much appreciate that, and.
- [02:32]
Galen Drouke
I should also Say that we are speaking on Wednesday right after the Senate passed a $900 billion defense budget. And if we have time, I want to ask you about that and the.
- [02:42]
Interviewer/Host
Recent series from the New York Times.
- [02:44]
Galen Drouke
Editorial board arguing that the US Military is antiquated, slow, too often used as.
- [02:49]
Interviewer/Host
A local jobs program, and not prepared.
- [02:52]
Galen Drouke
For the threats of today, most particularly from China.
- [02:55]
Interviewer/Host
However, first things first. Let's start with the basics. Is the United States about to go to war with Venezuela?
- [03:02]
Michael O'Hanlon
Well, I think that there's a good chance we will use some kind of military force above and beyond what's already happened. Some people would say the very declaration of a blockade, therefore answers affirmatively your question that we are already at war, since a blockade historically and legally is considered a form of war and an instrument of war. And so maybe we're already there and maybe the question really is going to be what comes next? That is the question. I can imagine a number of things. I think an all out invasion remains a possibility, but an unlikely one. President Trump came to power really within the Republican Party before he even got elected nationally in 2016 by challenging the legacy of George W. Bush.
- [03:45]
Interviewer/Host
Bush.
- [03:45]
Michael O'Hanlon
And of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. And Trump said, no, you were wrong to want to invade these countries and essentially have the Pottery Barn rule. If you break it, you own it. So I don't know that Trump's gonna wanna put force on the ground in Venezuela. One more argument in support of that conclusion would be the recent National Security Strategy put out just last week by the Trump administration, in which they articulated this Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. And that's a very telling combination of terms, because of course, the Monroe Doctrine, as we all learned in school, was the 1823 edict more than two centuries ago by President Monroe telling European powers to keep their mitts off the entire Western Hemisphere. And this was a time when we barely had a navy and we were already advancing this audacious claim. That's the kind of thing I discuss in my book. And the assertiveness that we've displayed really from the get go. And then of course, Theodore Roosevelt, when he was president 80 years later, issued the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine that said, basically, the United States has a special interest in anything happening in the Mexico, Central America, Caribbean region. And we will reserve or arrogate to ourselves the right to determine events and to change politics within that sector of the Western Hemisphere in particular, if we don't like what's going on. And we actually implemented that policy a lot, we went back into Mexico with the military under Woodrow Wilson. We went into Nicaragua, El Salvador, Dominican Republic. A lot of small, limited operations, mostly maritime, and they did not do big invasions. Although, of course, McKinley did wind up owning the Philippines for a while after the Spanish American War. But that was something that didn't go very well, and we decided we didn't like it very well. What was much more telling and for Trump, more indicative of where he'd want to go, was the taking of Cuba, the taking of Puerto Rico, the taking of Guam, the consolidation of control over Hawaii, Hawaii, these were all under McKinley and then Roosevelt using limited power here in the hemisphere, close to shore, to do things that required local governments to either change their composition or change their behavior without putting major numbers of U.S. troops on the ground. I think that's what Trump wants to do. And one last point, and I promise all my answers will be a lot shorter from here. But if you look at more modern analogies, bear in mind, in his first term, he completed the defeat of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, an operation begun by President Obama. Using air power and special forces, he killed Qasem Soleimani in Iraq, the Iranian Mastermind terrorist, in 2020, using a drone. He dropped a big bomb on Afghanistan, but then decided overall he didn't like that kind of military presence or engagement. So he helped get us out. And then this term, he's dropped the bombs on Iran's nuclear facilities and watched his friend Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel use air power and special forces to kill key Hezbollah leaders, key Hamas leaders, key Iranian leaders. Obviously, the Israelis had a huge and more difficult and far more controversial operation on the ground in Gaza. But I think what Trump liked was the killing of Nasrallah in Lebanon with this deep, penetrating bomb, the killing of the Iranian scientists with this masterful intelligence work, and then limited assassination, assassinations and airstrikes. And I think that's where he wants to go as his general model in dealing with Venezuela. So I expect it to be air power, special forces, offshore blockade, but not the ground invasion. I think that's the range of tools we're talking about.
- [07:25]
Interviewer/Host
I mean, that's still a pretty striking development that we would be considering bombing Venezuela and using special forces or any number of the things that you've just mentioned. So let's begin with what the actual goal is here. Why would Trump want to topple Maduro?
- [07:45]
Michael O'Hanlon
Well, he doesn't like him. Part of it's personal in the sense that Maduro, of course, follows Chavez in Venezuela. They've both been extreme anti American populace. They both also decimated their country. So he's sort of like Trump's near, closer by version of Saddam Hussein. People who. These guys, Chavez and Maduro, may not be quite as brutal as Saddam in terms shooting people, but they've had many of the same effects on their country of leaving it in ruins. And now Maduro's been doing that for a very long time in the aftermath of Chavez's death over a decade ago. And then there's the whole Florida thing, Marco Rubio thing, the notion that Venezuela under Maduro has been closed to Cuba, that this is an axis of resistance against American influence within the Western Hemisphere, and that, of course, there are drugs smuggled through Venezuela, even if it's not. Not so much the fentanyl, not so much coming straight to the United States, but still is part of the broader problem of illegal narcotics. I think you put all that together and you also combine one last piece, which is that Trump has a feeling in his gut, I believe, that he can make big change happen with limited amounts of power. That's a scary thought when you hearken back to the days when George W. Bush had the same hope about overthrowing Saddam quickly and easily. War doesn't usually turn out that way, even if you think you have a clever plan to achieve that kind of a result. So I get worried about this notion of committing to push Maduro out with military power, and I still think there's a decent chance Trump will pull back from that ambition. We'll have to see. But, you know, he thinks that he has the toolkit to make this happen. He thinks Maduro's a bad guy, and he's right. He thinks Maduro's a big problem for drug trading, and he's right. He thinks Maduro's a big problem for the Venezuelan people, and he's right. And then there's this additional axis, as I say, with Secretary Rubio, the Florida contingent, and a lot of the special concerns that group has had with the Cuba, Venezuela nexus.
- [09:53]
Interviewer/Host
Yeah, I think there's little doubt that Nicolas Maduro has wreaked havoc on his country. You know, we've seen an 80% decline in GDP matched with millions fleeing the country. Killings, torture, political prisoners, you know, everything you can imagine an autocrat doing in a terrible fashion. You drew a parallel to Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and of course, in the end, there weren't weapons of mass destruction, but this was largely sold to the American public as a national security issue and a direct threat to the United States. Is there a sense here that Maduro is a direct threat to the United States.
- [10:30]
Michael O'Hanlon
You know, it's interesting. I don't want to make too much of this analogy, but, yeah, let's. Let's draw it out a little further. I know a lot of the Bush people. I don't know President Bush personally. I never met Vice President Cheney, but I know a lot of the others. And, you know, there was a sincerity about what they were trying to do. They were trying to get rid of a really bad dictator. They were trying to send a message that even if Saddam himself was not part of the 911 attacks, that the world shouldn't think of us as a paper tiger and we were capable of doing some big things in reply to that kind of a terrible threat to our own country and people. And by the way, most of us, including myself, thought that Saddam did have chemical and biological weapons. So in that Sen. WMD threat was not invented, it was wrongly believed to exist. Now, the Bush team did some things that I would say pushed the truth too far, including occasionally implying Saddam was thought to have some link to 911 and also thinking his nuclear weapons program was more advanced than it really was. But the basic notion of a threat was there. It was just amplified and exaggerated once they decided they wanted to get rid of this guy. So the parallel in that sense is meaningful because Maduro is at least a modest threat to the United States because we have Venezuelan Americans and so forth, because there are drugs that are contributing to the global illegal narcotics economy that do come out of Venezuela, because Venezuela's neighbor and therefore threat to our good partner, Colombia, even if US Colombia relations are a bit strained these days. So in that sense, there is a threat and Maduro is a problem. The question is, are we now amplifying him as a greater threat than he really is to justify an American military response? And in that sense, there could be a parallel to 2003 with Iraq.
- [12:12]
Interviewer/Host
Yeah. Which to me brings up the question of, you know, the situation in Venezuela has been a disaster under Maduro for over a decade, including during Trump's first term. So why now? You know, why this very moment, would the Trump administration decide to start amplifying the threat?
- [12:31]
Michael O'Hanlon
Well, since you're giving me a chance to promote my book, let me do it this way. By saying it's because Trump's an American and Americans are restless, and we have been since the founding of the republic. We like to be in motion. I'm not gonna say Trump's like most presidents in personality, and clearly this is a different kind of president. And by the way one that I've opposed pretty strongly in my writings and certainly in my campaign donations. And I wish that he were not president to me, you know, January 6th was invalidating of his fitness for this office. So this is not meant to be a defense of his presidency. But I should say, and I should.
- [13:07]
Interviewer/Host
Say you're somebody who's served under presidents of both parties.
- [13:10]
Michael O'Hanlon
Well, on advisory boards. I have not been a full time government employee except for the Congress. And I'm very proud to have worked for the people's branch because I think executives tend to take too much power of any party and of any personality as going back to the, the Iraq war conversation a minute ago. But I think that in this case what we see is President Trump even more restless, some would say neurotic, some would say always in need of more drama and another bit of news for the 24 hour news cycle that he's accelerated even beyond CNN and social media's previous accomplishments. And so this is a good target in the sense that Maduro's a bad guy. Venezuela is causing its own people problems. It's causing us problems. And the military options to Trump don't look that dangerous. That may be, however, the premise or the presumption that we go back to 10 years from now and say was the real mistake we made. We, as usual thought that the next military operation would be easier than it turned out to be. So I worry about this overconfidence, but I think it reflects an American restlessness that's sort of almost in our strategic DNA.
- [14:21]
Interviewer/Host
I want to ask you more specifically about some of that overconfidence. You've written about some of the challenges of a campaign that's based entirely on airstrikes. But to continue drawing the comparison to the Iraq war, there's some questions about oil and business interests for the United States in Venezuela. And I don't want to sound like, you know, one of those Iraq war truthers at the farmer's market in, you know, 2006 or whatever, saying it was all about oil, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't know if it was all about oil, but the opposition leader of Venezuela is making the explicit appeal to the United States and others saying, hey, if you oust Maduro and I'm in power, I am going to work with you to make sure that we can capitalize on Venezuela's oil reserves. So in some sense that carrot is already being waved towards American politicians interests, what have you. I mean, how much of this is, ooh, you know, there are some opportunities here for business.
- [15:25]
Michael O'Hanlon
Well, you know, as Ms. Machado pointed out, there is potential opportunity, and I have no problem making that part of the calculus. I'm not against Venezuela and the United States both doing well economically by collaborating in a future government. But I would never begin an argument about war and peace on those kinds of economic grounds, because again, that presupposes a clean victory, a rapid change and rapid improvement in the economic partnership. And again, there's nothing against wishing for prosperity that would help the Venezuelan people as well as the global economy. But I just worry about a lot of scenarios that could drive Maduro from power and not replace him with anything stable enough to actually allow this transformation in economic relations to occur. So rather than deny that there are economic incentives, rather than accuse people of having economic incentives, I would just want to cast a pragmatic and sobering argument that it usually doesn't turn out as well as you hope. The Iraq war, in my judgment, was not fundamentally about oil. But if it had been, we did a really bad job because we didn't wind up getting that many contracts for American firms. We spent a couple trillion dollars of taxpayer money on the effort. We lost 4,500American lives. We left Iraq's oil economy not much better than it had been for at least a couple of decades. So usually if we elevate economic incentives, again, I'm not saying we did in Iraq, but if you were to view that as a major reason for overthrowing Saddam, it didn't play out very well on economic grounds. And I'd be wary of making that a prominent argument here.
- [17:02]
Interviewer/Host
If we are going to pursue airstrikes or we're already pursuing a blockade, regime change, what have you, would Congress need to vote on that?
- [17:12]
Michael O'Hanlon
I think Congress should vote on that and should be asked to vote on that by the Trump White House. Although in this sense, Trump would also be continuing a tradition of post World War II American presidents and often not asking for authorization. And by the way, I'm a Democrat, but let me say Democrats have often been the main problem on this because President Truman did not ask Congress for authorization for the Korean War. President Johnson barely asked Congress for permission for Vietnam. He just asked for permission to enforce a maritime safety zone around the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964, when there had been some exchanges of fire there between the US And North Vietnamese ships. And that was the only authorizing debate or legislation we ever had on the Vietnam War. And I think since Vietnam, we've gotten a little better. And both President Bush's did go to Congress to ask for support for the Desert storm operation of 91, the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, the overthrow of Saddam in 2003. You could say Congress made a mistake in approving the latter in particular, but at least there was an effort not to declare war, but to have a full throated open congressional debate and vote on the subject. And I think when you're talking about overthrowing a leader, starting a conflict in a new place, that is appropriate. There are lots of debates about just where the line is over a limited use of force and something requiring congressional authorization. But I think when you talk about targeting a regime with the potential therefore to require follow on operations to help stabilize the country as the previous regime falls, that's exactly the kind of situation where Congress can and should be involved.
- [18:56]
Interviewer/Host
I'm mostly going to ask you this question so that I can ask the follow up question of what the worst case scenario is. But what's the best case scenario for a use of force in Venezuela?
- [19:05]
Michael O'Hanlon
That's a nice framing. I like that. Well, the best case, I suppose is that Maduro voluntarily steps down having secured a place to have asylum. Maybe in Russia, maybe in some other country. I don't really know the candidates. Most countries don't really like this guy too well. I guess he could go to Cuba, maybe Nicaragua, I don't know. But if he were to step down and then ask his military leadership to collaborate in the establishment of Ms. Machado as President, or at least a caretaker government, whether overseen by the United nations or the Organization of American States, leading up after a couple years, maybe two to five years, to an election. I don't believe in rapid elections in this kind of situation, by the way, because they become naked pursuits for zero sum power. And so that often produces more chaos and violence than you expect. But that kind of a scenario would be the best case where Maduro decides his time has come. Trump is committed to overthrowing him one way or another. Better to get out early, take an asylum rather than wind up like Saddam Hussein did. And then we Maduro trying to facilitate the gradual rebuilding of Venezuelan institutions under new leadership. That process would be ugly, but it might be peaceful under the scenario that I'm positing.
- [20:33]
Interviewer/Host
So I don't know if we had any public opinion polling of Iraqis in the lead up to the Iraq war, but there is public opinion polling conducted in Venezuela and so I'm just gonna cite some of it so we get a sense of what the people on the ground are thinking. A recent study by the Andres Bello Catholic University found nearly 8 out of 10 Venezuelans felt a change in government was necessary. In a poll conducted by the Caracas based firm Data analysis last month, 23% of Venezuelans said they supported a foreign military intervention. Some 55% opposed it. 70% said they had a negative impression of the country's circumstances. So actually, the impression, the negative impression of the country's circumstances is somewhat similar to how Americans feel right now. But you can also see a majority there saying that they don't want foreign military intervention. Also, interestingly enough, as we find in the United States, this political security concern didn't actually rank number one when it came to Venezuelan's top concerns, but rather the economy. Poor salaries and inflation were the number one concern. So even when there's a national security concern like this, the economy still ranks number one. So a lot of similarities in politics across countries. Okay, so now I've established how Venezuelans feel generally. What's the worst case scenario for this kind of pursuit?
- [21:57]
Michael O'Hanlon
Well, the worst case scenario is probably a little different than Iraq, since we've been using that as a reference point in this conversation, because of course.
- [22:03]
Galen Drouke
All right, that's the end of today's preview. Head over to GDPolitics.com to become a paid subscriber and listen to the full episode. Michael and I spoke for another half hour about potential pitfalls that could accompany military intervention in Venezuela, the legality of ongoing strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, and American defense strategy more broadly.
- [22:24]
Interviewer/Host
It's definitely worth a listen.
- [22:26]
Galen Drouke
So like I said, head over to GDPolitics.com to become a paid subscriber and catch the whole thing. Paid subscribers get about twice the number of episodes, can join the paid subscriber chat, and most importantly, keep this podcast going. When you become a subscriber, you can connect your account to wherever you listen to podcasts so you'll never miss an episode. There's a link in the show notes explaining how to do that. Again, head over to GDPolitics.com, see you there.