Even After Some Time, the Trump Administration’s Venezuela Strategy Leaves Questions and Concerns

Yesterday, Venezuela's main opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, gifted her Nobel Peace Prize medal to President Trump. Her motivations were clear, seeking to win over the President who had previously expressed doubt that she had the support base within Venezuela to consolidate power in lieu of the Chavista regime.

After the Trump Administration's shocking operation within Venezuela earlier this month that captured Nicolas Maduro and his wife, the dust has somewhat settled. Some continue to celebrate the departure of a head of state who was largely understood to be illegitimate. Stolen elections, suppression of freedoms, and economic mismanagement means that Maduro will certainly not be missed by many; we can certainly be happy that he is no longer in power. In foreign affairs, however, things are rarely black and white. Certain important questions have yet to be answered. From the narco-terrorism narrative, to oil, to strategic paradigms, here are some of the questions and concerns I still have.

What happened to the Narco-Terrorism narrative?

The Justice Department does indeed pursue and prosecute narcotrafficking networks that fund designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs). In the months preceding Operation Absolute Resolve, the administration gradually upped the ante on the Maduro regime by claiming that he was the mastermind behind a trafficking operation that was exporting drugs to US shores through "Cartel de los Soles." Except, a few days after the operation, the Justice Department stopped claiming that the Cartel, which had been designated as an FTO in December, was an actual unified group. It's also worth emphasizing the widely reported fact that Venezuela is far from the centerpiece of drug trafficking from Latin America into the United States. Cocaine and Fentanyl flow primarily from Colombia and Mexico, respectively. Even before the operation, the narcoterrorism justification appeared somewhat weak.

The Daily Show did a segment some days before the operation that compared the media-narrative choices administration officials and allies were making with those that had been made in the time preceding the invasion of Iraq. Yes, it is a comedy show, but this segment consisted almost entirely of newsclips, and ranged from the familiar claim of fentanyl as a "chemical weapon," to describing Venezuelan drug trafficking as the "al-Qaeda of the hemisphere," to that infamously familiar phrase, "shock and awe." Indeed, Venezuela and Iraq are very much different, but the lead-up to both operations showed many resemblances in the media that now begs the question, "how strong is this narrative?" There is no question that Maduro was a repressive and illegitimate leader who committed all sorts of crimes. But since his departure, we have seen the Trump Administration begin to work with the new interim President, Delcy Rodriguez, whom he has called “terrific,” despite previous federal interest in Rodriguez due to her potential connections to narcotics trafficking. The administration no longer seems to be prioritizing concessions (at least publicly) to combat drug trafficking. The administration is more interested in oil, and is willing to push Venezuela's government in that direction.

And what of the oil and the state?

Many have speculated that the real reason the administration became so interested in Venezuela was its massive oil reserves, and for good reason. Not only has the administration emphasized the importance of "energy dominance" more generally, but the President and his allies have often mentioned wanting to reclaim the oil that had been "stolen" from American companies in the 1970s. During the Press conference following the operation, the President made the bold proclamation that the United States would "run" the country. He even went so far as to post an apparent screenshot of his portrait on Wikipedia with the title of "Acting President of Venezuela." This foreign policy rhetoric, communicated so suddenly, is sure to receive praise from the President's base. But for those who the President has expected to invest in Venezuela's oil infrastructure, these bold claims do not create an environment that invites secure investment.

Venezuela's oil infrastructure has been pillaged and ruined. Costs to rebuild the infrastructure for extraction and refining are huge. In addition, while the remaining regime is in relatively good grace with the administration now, foreign policy that can be changed in a tweet relating to a country in which the rule of law is weak, invites reluctance from would-be investors. For major oil companies in particular, that can leave apprehension. When the Exxon head expressed his reservations about the feasibility of the operation, Trump proclaimed that Exxon would then be left out of Venezuela. Oil appears to have been a major factor for the administration to go into Venezuela and extract concessions from the regime, but it is unclear whether the administration planned ahead for resistance from what should in principle be their own camp.

Is this really how the world ought to be?

This administration has long accepted the return of great-power competition. It has also been argued that in this competition, the administration has decided that projecting force will deter rivals like China from meddling with U.S. interests. Venezuela's chummy ties with China and Russia certainly created real concern among Washington policymakers given regional proximity.

Nonetheless, Venezuela's sovereignty was violated. In having conducted this operation, President Trump and his advisors sent the message that it will not hesitate to use force when a country in the Hemisphere will not align with Washington. Colombia's Gustavo Petro has drawn the ire of the President for a similar alignment problem.

On Greenland, this sentiment was clearly verbalized by Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff and Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller, who argued on live TV that the world must be governed by "force," as if to invoke an element of Morgenthau's "Classical Realism." In a world that is facing ever growing threats from autocrats, I fear that rhetoric and foreign policy without nuance will create a Western Hemisphere full of animosity towards the United States, and a sentiment in the rest of the world that American foreign policy is drawing closer to that of China and Russia. That will not secure American interests, it will endanger them. In a more competitive age, diplomacy is key to advancing American interests, but interventions in Venezuela de-legitimize what could be a very useful tool for Washington. Now is not the time to conduct improvised foreign policy, recall the days of Iraq, or leverage fiery rhetoric against our hemisphere. Now is the time to consolidate allied support, promote stability, and ensure long-term U.S. trust and influence in the face of surging autocratic competitiveness.