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Ep 358 | Military Intervention in Venezuela Would Be a Huge Mistake | Guest: Brandan Buck
00:47:13
U.S. intervention is what led to the rise of Chavez and Maduro.
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Kibbe on Liberty. Supposedly President Trump and regime changers like Marco Rubio are saber rattling for regime change in Venezuela. So I'm talking to my friend Brandon Buck now at the Cato Institute about why this is a really bad idea and could actually undermine serious efforts at democracy in Venezuela. Check it. Welcome to Kibby of Liberty. Brandon, good to see you again.
- [01:02]
B
It's a pleasure to be back.
- [01:03]
A
I was thinking about the last time about a year ago.
- [01:07]
B
You're on the show about a year ago.
- [01:08]
A
Yeah, yeah. And we were talking about the war propaganda machine. You had written a piece that went back quite, quite similar, amplifying a lot of the work that Chris Coyne has done in terms of government war propaganda. And it seems appropriate to touch back on that. You are now at Cato. What's your title at Cato?
- [01:34]
B
I'm a foreign policy research fellow.
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A
Okay. And so you actually have a legit job now?
- [01:39]
B
I do. I'm no longer a graduate student.
- [01:41]
A
Yeah. We can take you with more credibility. Maybe. I don't know.
- [01:45]
B
I don't know. Perhaps it just breaks even.
- [01:47]
A
Yeah. And you and your colleague at Cato just wrote a piece for the American Conservative. Don't do it, Mr. President. U. S Led regime change in Venezuela would worsen the problems Trump promised to fix. And I want to start, and I should give a shout out to Senator Rand Paul, who has been quite lonely on the Senate floor, pointing out that the ostensible rationale for the ramping up of the US Position vis a vis Venezuela and Maduro is that they're running fentanyl on these drug boats. And it's almost laughable propaganda because. Do you think it is laughable propaganda?
- [02:37]
B
Well, yeah, because for starters, by the government's own. Own admission, just from the dea, the amount of fentanyl that comes transited through Venezuela is minuscule. Right. Most of it comes from Mexico, precursors in China. Some of it's made domestically, also made in Canada, smuggled over land into the United States from Mexico. So the idea that there is some fentanyl pipeline running itself out of Venezuela that can be easily closed by interdiction, lethal interdiction, I might say. Legal interdiction by the US Navy is absurd. It's funny because now they've kind of mudded the waters, especially, you'll see people talking about cocaine. Okay, well, it's not fentanyl. It's just drugs. Okay, well, they've obviously, you know, shifted the goalposts there. And even in most of the. I mean, cocaine. Now the big Market is Europe. It's not even necessarily the United States. So they've muddied the waters with these categories in order to create some kind of casus. Bella.
- [03:32]
A
Yeah, And I'm old enough to remember when Barack Obama was doing these extrajudicial. Extrajudicial killings. That's a mouthful for me. That conservatives were the first to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, you don't have the authority to do that. Only Congress can declare war, particularly when it comes to droning American citizens. And we mostly agreed on that. Maybe Lindsey Graham and John McCain was on the other side, but now a lot of conservatives are like, america F. Yeah, let's get those guys. It seems like a dangerous precedent.
- [04:14]
B
Well, I mean, it certainly is, because if you just look at the path that got us here, right? This was the President earlier this year, designated a bunch of cartel organizations as terrorist groups, including one of them, TDA or Trendiagua out of Venezuela. And if you look back at the targeted strikes, kinetic action, whatever euphemism you want to use in the Middle east, at least those were conducted under authorizations for use of military force, often tenuously, sometimes very thinly. But at least there was something with. Here. Here there is no authorization for use of military force, at least not yet in Latin America. So this is just being done without any kind of top cover from Congress. And the President is saying that he has the power to do this because they are terrorist organizations. Of course he declared them as terrorist organizations. But legally speaking, this is a completely novel argument, one that has yet to be tested by the courts and honestly probably won't be, at least for some time. Right. I think this is to think the President realizes that he has some leeway here to do this so long as Congress is hesitant to stop him. And as far as precedents go, I mean, yeah, I mean, we've gotten here incrementally and I think this true. I hate the phrase Rubicon. Right. Because it gets used a lot. I think we truly have crossed one. And I think at best, and I use best in scare quotes here, this is going to be used as a pretext for some larger military action. Just called war. That's what it is in Venezuela.
- [05:47]
A
Yeah. By the way, we've probably crossed the Rubio. Rubicon. There's some sort of joke in that. And obviously, Marco Rubio is kind of the ringleader, former senator from Florida. He's been saber rattling about regime change in Venezuela as long as I can remember. But why like the idea that the Trump administration, the America first foreign policy Everything that Trump has represented and ran on successfully in 2024. Why such a radical shift? Do you have any understanding of the dynamics that would lead? Because to me, it looks like the neocon agenda has just run the boards within the Trump administration.
- [06:38]
B
Well, I think on this particular issue, you basically have three ways of thinking or three camps. One of them is the Marco Rubio, the neocon, particularly those in South Florida, who, as you say, have had, who have been hard up on doing this for at least 15 years now. But also you do have the drug issue, which the President has always been quite hawkish on. I think we, we need not forget that even going back to his first administration, he talked about doing this. And then I think there's also a third component, which is this kind of great power competition that still appeals to a president like Trump, who while, yes, he ran against endless wars, nevertheless still talks about American strength, American power, American greatness. So I think in Mexico, I think you had some forces in the administration working at odds with each other. Like there was reports that Sebastian Gorka wanted to go Connecticut, as they say in Mexico, against the cartel. But at the time, Stephen Miller, who was sort of running the President's immigration operations, was hesitant to do that because it would in theory and I would think almost certainly in practice, create migrant flows. That would make his job more difficult. But I think with Venezuela, I think that break on military action has been released because, I mean, this is, you know, Venezuela is diplomatically isolated from the United States in a way that Mexico is not. They can do this incrementally through naval operations in a way that doing so in Mexico with ground operations could create all kinds of contingencies like civilian casualties, nevermind the people actually on the boats being killed. But now with Venezuela, that roadblock has been lifted. And I think, you know, I hate to filibuster here, but wars always have like a collection of reasons to fight them, right? We often think back, look at World War II, think it was merely like a moral crusade, but it was a moral crusade, but also like a practical geopolitical one. I think here with the Venezuela thing, you have the same dynamic. You have members of the administration who really do want regime change to go all the way. You have people who might just be sort of old line hawks who feel like if they sort of take Venezuela off the board, this will somehow impact relations with China or Russia, that we can demonstrate American strength, right? We can get this burden of Afghanistan off of our backs. And I think, unfortunately, there are some parts of the base in which the spectacle of blowing people up in boats also kind of appeals to them, and this is the way to pull them into this consensus.
- [09:15]
A
Do we know who's actually on these boats?
- [09:17]
B
I mean, I don't have any inside information. I trust Massey. In my previous job, and much to my shame, I did these kind of targeted strikes against members of the Taliban and such, and you never really know who they are. You may have an alias, you may have some sort of pattern of life that you can develop, but I don't know what kind of intelligence packages they're using to develop these strikes, But, I mean, your guess is as good as mine. If they were so confident in the information that they had, they wouldn't have turned some of these survivors over to foreign authorities for prosecution as they did one guy.
- [09:55]
A
Yeah, explain that. That there were survivors. And, you know, we're. We're calling these guys terrorists worth killing. But they had an opportunity to prosecute.
- [10:06]
B
Right? There was at least one who was turned over to Ecuador, and they declined for lack of evidence. And I think there was also one to Colombia. I'm not quite sure on that. But, yeah, it just seems strange to me, like, if your case is so. Is so. So airtight that you can essentially, you know, execute these people, it's not so airtight that you can't gather them up and then charge them and throw them in prison. It's. It really strains credulity.
- [10:29]
A
Thank you for joining me today on Kibbe on Liberty and for being part of our fiercely independent audience. Every week, my organization, Free the People, partners with BlazeTV to bring you this show. My guests bring smart perspectives on everything from current events to timeless philosophical debates. If you like what you hear, go to freethepeople.org kol and support Kibbe on Liberty so we can continue to produce these honest conversations with interesting people. Now, let's get back to it. So you mentioned something, and I think it's worth reminding people of your backstory because you served in the military. And. And as I recall the story, serving in the military turned you into a skeptic of intervention as foreign policy.
- [11:19]
B
Yeah, well, it was first the military. I did four years, all in combat arms, two of them in the infantry, deployed to Afghanistan from 2004 to 2005. But really, my break was as a member of the intelligence community some years after it's been six years, did a bunch of more tours to Afghanistan and supported Joint Special Operations Command with intelligence for the targeted strikes, killing or capturing of members of the Taliban. So I got into this beat by way of Mexico, because the thinking was we were just going to leverage special operations power against the cartels, and this will somehow break up the networks, et cetera, et cetera. But having done this kind of work in the war on terrorists, me and a lot ofi'm not the only one other folks who've done the whole war on drug thing realize is that we've tried this for half century now through ancient mediaries, that it does not just carry over. That somehow American force will carry the day, whereas Mexican or Colombian hasn't.
- [12:20]
A
I'm sometimes hopeful that the Trump administration is of two very competing minds when it comes to drug policy, because there have been some positive noises coming out of the administration as well. But I wonder why it's so difficult for people to understand that the war on drugs, which has been going on now for a generation, has actually made for more dangerous drugs, more violent gangs, more chaos and violence at the border. And if we just took some more rational steps in terms of decriminalizing these drugs, we would save a lot of lives and also solve a lot of problems in our southern neighbors.
- [13:06]
B
Yeah, it's funny because especially. It's not funny, it's tragic. But on the Mexico front, people would talk about doing their. What they did against isis, right? Because as the story goes, the president came in, took the gloves off, the US Military just went in there and cleaned house and destroyed the ISIS caliphate, which is a gross simplification of what happened. So there's this notion that they can take that model and apply it here like this is fiction that somehow we just haven't tried hard enough. Right. Like the gloves have been on this entire time, and that if we, if we just kill these people rather than interdict them and arrest them, somehow this is going to create deterrence and they'll stop coming. Well, what are we in now? 12 boats in? I'm starting to lose count. Apparently deterrence is yet to be established. And I think there's just. There is. I think on the right, there is this. We typically think the American right as being kind of economically brained. Right. I think there are those who openly reject that, probably to a fault, and they feel if they can just throw enough force of will at this problem, they can somehow break the market logic that is serving these, that is facilitating this trade. And there's this argument that these are not ideological actors, therefore somehow they're going to be more prone to force. I don't see where they're getting that line of thinking. The drug trade has been dangerous for as long as it's existed. It's been incredibly dangerous in Mexico, including for the cartels. The Mexican government has killed thousands upon thousands of cartel members. Yet the flow of drugs has gotten worse into the United States as things break down. So there's this notion that if we just throw force at Venezuela, we can somehow break up these networks. I don't see where they're thinking that somehow these networks will not regenerate and still service a market so long as there's one to be served.
- [14:59]
A
I want to go back because I used my great research assistant, Grok, to study the history of US meddling in Venezuelan politics. And it obviously goes back quite some time. And there's, you know, we, we have backed really bad people. But I'm particularly interested in what we did to help a guy as bad as Hugo Chavez to take power. And then of course, Nicolas Maduro is a caricature of Hugo Chavez. And at Free the People, we've done a tremendous amount of work documenting the rise of Chavez and the destruction of the Venezuelan economy under Chavez. And then Maduro turning really bad socialist policies into deadly policies leading to the starvation of the Venezuelan people, which has created this migration problem. How much do you know about USAID and National Endowment for Democracy spending money under George W. Bush trying to stop Chavez?
- [16:16]
B
So if you look at the heyday of the Monroe Doctrine in the early 20th century, the so called banana wars, the United States occupied Nicaragua for 20 years, the island of Hispaniola for 20 years. And at the end of that, Uncle Sam got tired. They got tired of managing elections, they got tired of managing the foreign trade of these places. And there was a significant amount of buyer's remorse, starting with Coolidge, particularly with Hoover, and then through fdr, the United States decided to back out of the region to implement the Good Neighbor Policy to try to have softer relations with countries in the basin. And so I think a lot of this with Venezuela is motivated by this kind of nostalgia for this time that TR was wielding his big stick throughout Latin America. But they don't tell the end of that story. The end of that story is that the United States got tired of doing it and they tried to find a different way. And so thinking about some interventions closer to our own time, people will point to Grenada or Panama, but those models don't apply either. Grenada is an island of like 130 square miles. Panama already had several thousand troops on it. Again, a very small country. Venezuela is a whole different. It's a whole different animal. Twice the Size of a rock, a fairly large paramilitary force that's loyal, so far as we understand, to Maduro. So as awful as a leader as he is, the onus is on those who want to do this to tell us, the American people, why it will succeed. And so far it's just kind of wishcasting as far as I can see.
- [18:00]
A
Yeah, the interaction between Trump and Maria Machado. Machado, I think is how you pronounce it is concerning to me. I understand why she would very much give President Trump credit because she needs the United States as an ally. But you go back to, and this is my GROK research, so someone smarter than me can correct me in the comments. But it's ironic to me that Hugo Chavez is viewed as having successfully won despite US intervention in large part, not in large part, but in part running against the CIA and USAID interventions that were funding his opposition, National Endowment for Democracy. And supposedly the Trump administration is getting rid of these things. But he's also simultaneously out there saying, I've authorized the CIA to do covert operations. Aren't you hurting the good guys and helping the bad guys cling to power?
- [19:11]
B
You're certainly providing a narrative to keep those kind of folks in power. And this has been true throughout U.S. relations in Latin America. The more we intervene, the more the image of, of the Yankee invader feeds politics like Maduro. And I think particularly if the Trump administration is concerned about keeping actors like China out of the hemisphere, you got to think really hard about what this is going to do for the image of Americans in the hemisphere. And just if we just want to be just kind of have a hard nosed, realist angle about this, like if the United States wants the resources, it can bribe Maduro, it can work with him. Even the President admitted he gave him a great offer. Chevron is currently there right now working on oil leases. So if we just want to be cynical about it, say this is just about resources. You don't have to go in there and topple the regime to get some of these things. Like one of the frustrating and earlier we were talking about the neoconservative foreign policy. One thing we never get from them is costs. It's always benefits or supposed benefits. We do this and this will happen. They never tell you what is the thing that you're going to have to give up. Let's just say that this is all about resources and we just want to secure markets and such. What is the war going to cost in terms of blood and treasure and then measure that against what a Deal might cost and it might be unsavory to have to deal with bad actors in the world. And it is. But sometimes you got to do it right. I mean, one of some of, I think President Trump's greatest moments is him trying to get a deal done with Kim Jong Un. Do I like that as a libertarian or as a classical liberal? No, it kind of sucks. But what's the alternative? War? I would rather take diplomacy.
- [21:13]
A
If you've made it this far into the show, it means I must be doing something right. Key Beyond Liberty is just one of the amazing products we create at Free the People. We tell emotionally compelling stories and produce educational videos for the Liberty Curious. Our award winning documentaries personalize all things liberty, independence, creativity, hard work, integrity and perseverance. After the show, check out our work@freethepeople.org and if you like what you see, donate to support what we do. That's freethepeople.org now back to the show. Yeah, it strikes me that having again documented the suffering of the Venezuelan people, it strikes me that Maria Machado will someday become the leader. But I'm not sure that our intervention helps her accomplish what she needs to accomplish. And it also strikes me that we, you know, we're constantly getting into these regime change wars. I don't know if you saw Lindsey Graham on Base of Nation or whatever it was this weekend. Yeah, yeah, I saw the clip. Tucker Carlson ran the clip and he's sort of frothing at the mouth to take out Maduro. Lindsey Graham's never been in the military. He's never served in Afghanistan.
- [22:41]
B
Well, he's a lawyer, let's be very clear. He is an army reservist, he is a jag, but he's certainly not infantryman.
- [22:49]
A
And I want to talk a little bit about the libertarian philosophy of non intervention because there's this trend on social media now to blame us for everything. And it's sort of comical since we're not in charge of anything, that we would be responsible but the so called isolationists. And one observation I would make is that the advocates of war never pay the price for war. And that that could be Nicolas Maduro if he doubles down and he says, okay, bring it on. But it could be American advocates of invading Venezuela. The people that die and the people that pay either financially or with their lives are not the people that make the decisions. And this is true every time we go to war.
- [23:43]
B
Yeah, it's certainly been true for a very long time. I mean, I think as a libertarian, one of the great achievements of of the movement has been eliminating the draft. But you know, again, everything has a cost. One of the things that did was create a kind of martial caste in the United States, which there's a growing divide between those who serve and those who send us off to war. And even those that do, like, you know, like the good senator for South Carolina, he serves in Jag. So did you know DeSantis, Governor of Florida? Now there are a few bona fide door kickers who are on Capitol Hill. Tim Waltz, the former now exiled national security advisor. So there are some, but certainly not many. And I think that the system selects for those who didn't get disillusioned, like myself, and leave. But also there's the financial cost which has been deferred because we just print the money. The they can keep kicking the can down the road. No one sees a war tax and gets upset about it. I'm increasingly convinced that this is the crux of the problem with American empire, if you want to be so bold as call it that. If you look back again, I'm a historian, sorry for going on a historical rant, but if you go back before the New Deal, you had progressives who were very concerned about inflation because they didn't want it to hurt their constituents. They wanted redistribution, which we, we don't like us libertarians. But nevertheless. But that paradigm has completely changed and we just print the money so Americans don't really see the costs as much. You have to really tell them the inflation that you're feeling, part of that is because of the maintenance costs on this vast overseas enterprise that we're running.
- [25:26]
A
I decided it took me a while to get there. I've always been either a non interventionist or a realist. And practical terms, when it comes to foreign policy, going all the way back to our intervention in Kuwait, because I'm that old. But during the Tea Party days, I realized that the entire Achilles heel of the Republican party, and conservatives in particular Tea Party conservatives, was their unwillingness to stop the forever wars. And if you're fully funding the war on terror, that's a black hole. You can't pour enough money into that hole. If you're doing regime change wars all over the world, that is a black hole of cash. So if you're talking about reforming entitlements, you're talking about cutting domestic discretionary spending, but you're not willing to take on the war state. You can't be a fiscal conservative. Like you got to choose that. And that was the Achilles heel ultimately of the Tea Party movement. And fast forward to today. Marco Rubio, of course, was a product of the Tea Party movement, but his first, second and third issues have always been war.
- [26:42]
B
Yeah. And this was my concern as the Trump movement started in the foreign policy space is, I think, yes, the base certainly didn't want to do any more Iraqs, didn't want to do any more Afghanistan. But there was still this kind of strain of a kind of Jacksonian militarism, this appreciation of strength and strength in action. And there's been a deep disillusionment about the fentanyl crisis in the United States. And I think, to be fair, the closer you get to the United States, the wider the aperture for what constitutes a America first foreign policy is. I mean, historically, that's been the case. So it seems like the administration, again, with this confluence of forces, is able to kind of tickle the limbic system of people who might otherwise be hesitant to use military force. They see this as justified, like America, finally, America's military is defending America's borders because they have found a way to reactivate the war on drugs. And I think, unfortunately, it's looking like here in the next week or so, we're going to see if they're able to move that into a larger war in Venezuela.
- [27:53]
A
If, in fact, you're worried about illegal migration from Latin America to the United States, pressure on the southern border, there's two things you shouldn't do. One is continue to prosecution prosecute a war on drugs that has created a completely chaotic, dangerous place where families can't survive in places like Honduras. So they're making that long march with their families out of desperation, in large part because of drug gangs and the lawlessness in those countries. Combine that with a regime change. Change war in Venezuela. It seems completely contrary to someone like Stephen Miller, who's sort of rabidly wanting to go after Venezuelan immigrants in this country.
- [28:51]
B
Yeah, well, there's one theory about that, and that's the administration has used the Enemy Aliens Act, Right. To ramp up deportation in the United States. But they're running into certain problems here domestically with that because we're not technically at war. Well, what if we are at war? And if we are in a shooting war with Venezuela, they can somehow jury rig that with duct tape and make it work legally. Again, historically speaking, unfortunately, the Supreme Court has been rather hesitant to step on the president's war powers. So there is this theory that there is a domestic angle here that, that they can use, or at least for now, folks, Like Stephen Miller, think that will actually work towards their. Towards their. Towards their benefit. So.
- [29:39]
A
So eliminating illegal immigration by creating more pressure on the border. I guess so, man, make it make sense.
- [29:47]
B
You know, I would. I would love it if I could, but it seems that also. And there was a thought on my head and I lost it, but now it's back and it's. Occasionally I like to tweet. I still say tweet. I don't say post that we have, like a midwit air power fetish in this country. There's this notion if we can just drop enough bombs, we can solve problems. And I think that was supposedly boosted when the president totally obliterated the Iranian nuclear program. And so I think that the president has made a. He may very well have made a calculation, ironically enough, the same one that President Obama made and Clinton made before him in the 90s, that if they can just use air power, keep costs low as far as American blood goes, kind of hide the costs fiscally, they can do whatever they want. And I think there was, unfortunately, MAGA was kind of, at least as far as I see it, kind of split on what happened in Iran. But I think there is still. There's this notion that if they just throw enough air power at the problem, they can solve it. We'll just ignore that. The Yemen thing didn't go all that well from that perspective. So.
- [30:59]
A
At Kibbe on liberty, Freedom is a lifestyle24.7, something you live and breathe and wear every day. If that describes you, you need the very best liberty swag in the market today, just like this shirt I happen to be wearing. Wearing. Go to freethepeople.org kol and check out our exciting merch. You too can love liberty and look cool. There does seem to be this contradiction in public opinion where many Americans, many conservatives, are all for the war at the beginning. And by the time the receipts and the body bags start coming home, then people realize, oh, this, this was a really stupid idea. We need to get out of it. Many such cases, yeah, certainly Afghanistan, Afghanistan.
- [31:46]
B
Iraq, and as I talked about earlier, the far less bloody but nevertheless still tragic occupations the United States had earlier in the 20th century. Eventually the costs get up, Uncle Sam gets tired, and he just kind of wants to go home. It's like, well, let's just skip to that part and not go to begin with.
- [32:07]
A
I believe in your piece you point out that there's a big difference between invading Grenada and invading Venezuela.
- [32:15]
B
Right.
- [32:16]
A
Talk about that.
- [32:17]
B
Well, I mean, the Venezuelan military is not that impressive. By most standards they have fairly old Russian equipment. But nevertheless, it's still a large country, a very large country with a sizable enough population with large cities that would be kind of a nightmare to fight in. You look like a city like Caracas. It has skyscrapers and pretty difficult terrain. The country has large porous borders. It would not be easy. I think that there are enough people at the White House who realize this. If you look at the actual footprint in the Caribbean now, it's about 10,000 or so troops, depending upon whose press releases you believe. Not all of them are actual door kickers, which is why I think, you know, one of two things is going on. They believe they can just rattle enough sabers. They're bringing a rather big one now out of the Mediterranean in the carrier strike group, that they can somehow force Maduro to leave. And the other is they will just step up some kind of bombing campaign until they can create the conditions for that to happen. The question is, what comes next? What happens when that doesn't work or if they do in fact create some kind of regime collapse? And you know, it's chaos, right? It's not. We just shuffle in a new administration and everything's fine.
- [33:35]
A
Yeah, it's not clear. Again, Grok is my research assistant. There's a guy, Gonzalez, who is viewed as having won, right? Because Maria, what's her name, I want to butcher this. They'll never edit out my screw ups because they think Maria Karina Machado, I hate to butcher names. So I like to read it. And so, see, she was arguably illegally banned from running because of Maduro's packed courts, went after her. She's basically in hiding now. And, and because if she would surely be in jail. And then there's this Edmundo Gonzalez Yurita, who a lot of people argue actually won if it was a free and fair election. But what happens? And again, I'm not an expert on Venezuelan politics, but if in fact you force out Maduro by just saber rattling and there's these aircraft carriers on the shores off the shores of Venezuela, does she have the moral credibility to lead or is she viewed as a US puppet?
- [34:59]
B
Right? And going back to the regime changes in Latin America from the Cold War, the usual instrument was, is you create some kind of wedge between the leader and the military and the military overthrows them and then they install a new leader. And at least as far as now, as I understand it, the there's still not much daylight between Maduro and the military. I mean, there's now a 50, 50 million dollar bounty on his head hasn't happened yet. It's a lot of money. So. Yes. Like, just because, again, it's difficult to say this as a person who is a, you know, who is a liberal. Just because there is a democratic will, it doesn't necessarily mean there is an actual material ability to get. To get a person into power. And Maduro is, you know, in the. The, you know, the larger regime has been a power for so long now that, you know, both. Both him and also his foot soldiers and his various militias and stuff have a pretty vested interest in keeping him in power. Right. So it's not just as easy as someone just sort of like. Like stepping down and then bringing someone else in. There's like an entire apparatus there that's going to be bullshit. Beholden to him and his power.
- [36:06]
A
Yeah, yeah. I mean, and I. We always have to say this, apparently, but obviously Nicolas Maduro is the bad guy.
- [36:14]
B
Yes.
- [36:14]
A
He's an evil guy. He's led to the starvation and murder of many Venezuelan citizens. And I would love for the Venezuelan people to rise up and replace him with someone that's going to allow for a modicum of freedom. I just, I think every time we try to do it, we make things worse. Right. And there's. There's a lot of other reasons not to do it, but just in terms of being pro Venezuelan freedom, I don't think. I don't think US Intervention is the right way to go.
- [36:47]
B
Yeah. And it's funny because. Well, it's not funny. Again, it's kind of tragic. You know, just since Justin and I wrote this article, I've discovered the power of the. The Venezuelan expat community and accusing you of being, you know, pro narco or pro Maduro. I'm not pro Maduro. I'm not pro cartel. I'm not pro Putin. I'm not pro Hamas. I'm not pro xi. I'm pro America. And if my nation is being hoodwinked into a war for the redemption of another, I'm gonna need a pretty good story on why that serves my interests. And so far, the story that's been given to us is narcotics and keeping the Chinese out. And I think both of those fail upon even the slightest scrutiny.
- [37:35]
A
Yeah, you're pro Hamas. That talking point gets pretty tiresome after a while. And it's like Groundhog Day where we make the same arguments, we make the same predictions. We look like Nostradamus because precisely what we said was going to happen happens. And then you're in a war for 20 years. And by the time you sort of extract yourself from it, they've moved on to starting the next forever war, right?
- [38:01]
B
Yeah, it's funny. Again, it's not funny, it's tragic. In the foreign policy space, there's just kind of debate about over who's realistic. I think folks on the restraint side, non interventionists, whatever you want to call them, we'll call ourselves the realists, right? Because, you know, we live in a world of resources that are scarce. We need to husband them in a certain way. We in the United States, we have been blessed with the greatest position on the globe. We have two oceans. You know, we don't really face any serious threats, at least threats that can be classified as existential. So we'll say we need to think in that terms. But if you look on the other side of the aisle, be they neocons or liberal hawks or kind of anyone in between, that they'll say, I'm the realist, because the world is a dangerous place and we need to be active in the world. And if not, we're going to get another Pearl harbor or another 9 11. But that story always kind of fails to tell you the run up, right? The run up was the United States was not a disinterested actor in the Middle east before 9 11. It was not a disinterested actor in the world or even in the Pacific before Pearl Harbor. Like the United States has always been active and a lot of these things happen because of blowback. It's not that the United States is the root of all problems in the world, but we are an actor who makes decisions. I think at some point we need to, dare I say, even put America first. And we need to make, we need to think about our role in the world from the confines that we have the luxury of space. And I think Venezuela or certainly Russia, any place on the map. The trick that the hawks do is they try to collapse that space. They try to say, well, this problem is our problem because of Russian meddling in our elections or cyber attacks or Chinese pumping fentanyl through Mexico into the United States. You're seeing us again trying to present narcotics as the arm of, of the Maduro regime. I saw something on Twitter the other day that Maduro is responsible for the killing of like hundreds of thousands of Americans. Okay, well that's like World War II numbers. Let's be a little bit less hyperbolic. So it's difficult to argue in this when you constantly have this drumbeat of fear which is turned up by the other side.
- [40:16]
A
Yeah. The irony of conservatives being a against socialism, being against central planning and thinking that somehow you can strategically meddle in the operations of another country. It is fundamentally. Regime change is fundamentally a form of central planning. We're going to turn Afghanistan into this beautiful democracy. It's going to look just like our system and people are going to vote for their leaders and everything's going to be fine. It was a silly and naive narrative. If you have at least enough understanding about what you don't understand about Afghanistan, you couldn't possibly know enough to centrally reorganize a society that has a whole set of traditions and problems and history that it's impossible even for our smartest central planners to comprehend.
- [41:12]
B
Yeah. I mean, and even at the level of relations between states. So we just take nation boarding off the board here. There's just this notion that somehow American action in any of these spheres, this is the thing that's going to tip the scales in our favor. And there's never this notion that being reactive is okay. There is this do something bias. It's funny because again, it's not funny, it's tragic. In the domestic space, conservatives will make fun of we got to do something, there's a problem, we got to do something. But in the international space, we got to do something. And sometimes you don't have to. And again, that's tragic. But the world is a dark place. It's full of tragedy, it's full of trade offs. And every so now, often I will post that most conservatives are just conserving what is fundamentally a liberal foreign policy. And that is this notion that there's this wiggish story about America's role in the world. We were once a colony and then this sort of infant state and we sort of rise to power and we redeem the world. And that is a fundamentally, well, progressive story. You could say liberal in some respects. It is. But the conservatives story I think is far more compelling. And it brings into this notion that there's some things that you cannot do and that there are some costs that you probably shouldn't pay. And I think whether it's Europe, it's the Middle east, and we might find also in Latin America that some things aren't possible, and certainly not possible without incurring costs that some people don't want to bear.
- [42:54]
A
I know this upsets some of you intellectual types, but I, I'm an historian.
- [42:59]
B
I wouldn't call myself an intellectual.
- [43:00]
A
I specifically blur the line between non interventionism and realism because I think non Interventionism in practice is the realistic perspective that looks at unintended consequences, that looks at the limits to our ability to anticipate how you would actually reorganize somebody else's society. So it's not isolationist, it's realist.
- [43:27]
B
Yeah. Well, again, the I word. I mean, right. Again, the United States has never been an isolated power, and anyone who says that is just, I don't know, thoroughly propagandized, I think, at this point. But, yeah, but, you know, coming back again to the Western Hemisphere, I think this is a fight that's going to be difficult because there's going to be enough people who can be brought on side because they can be given a story about narcotics or about geopolitical competition in our sphere, in our sphere of influence. Right. Then, unfortunately, it's going to work to persuade some people.
- [44:03]
A
So make some bold predictions. Your plea to the president was, Mr. President, please don't do this. Is he going to do it?
- [44:15]
B
I made some predictions in the Iran crisis. I probably shouldn't have. I was a little more pessimistic, honestly. I don't know. There are forces stacked up on either side. I think that the moving of the carrier strike group into the Caribbean is kind of a bad omen for that, because as far as I can tell, my scrub of not grok history, but the Internet nevertheless says kind of last time we did that, the United States invaded Grenada. So that's kind of a bad sign. I don't know, man. I certainly hope not.
- [44:52]
A
Yeah, yeah. Trump can obviously be a bundle of contradictions, but he does seem to appreciate the practical and political costs of getting in a war with Iran.
- [45:08]
B
Yeah.
- [45:08]
A
Like, he ultimately was the one that held us back.
- [45:11]
B
Right. And maybe something like that will happen here. You know, we'll drop a few bombs. We'll, you know, you know, the government will declare that, you know, we've broken up these cells or whatever, and they'll just kind of walk away. I mean, he was. During the height of the Iran crisis, he was tweeting about unconditional surrender, which just as a. As a historian of the 20th century, my head exploded, so. But he walked away from that. But then again, there's a different set of interests there. The President was constrained in the Middle east by his relationships with Turkey and with the Gulf states. He doesn't quite have those constraints in Latin America as he did there. I mean, the one thing constraining on him would be just like realizing that the midterms are right around the corner. If this goes sideways, which it almost assuredly will. There could be a serious domestic cost to his presidency.
- [46:08]
A
All right, so tell us where we can find your work at Cato and other things that the Foreign Policy Shop is working on right now.
- [46:17]
B
So if you want to follow me on X, I'm at brandonbuck. It's Brandon with two A's. You can also follow my Scholars page on Cato. I don't have the the link, but I can get it so you can put it in the show notes.
- [46:30]
A
Okay, cool. Thank you.
- [46:31]
B
Thank you.
- [46:33]
A
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