“Only time will tell,” mused U.S. President Donald Trump when asked how long Washington would run Venezuela and manage its oil during a New York Times interview in the Oval Office on January 7. That statement came just days after the shock U.S. assault on Caracas that resulted in the kidnapping of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro to the United States. The act marks yet another unrestrained and ill-devised act of extraterritorial overreach ordered by the Trump administration.
The buildup to the operation that captured the leader in Venezuela was equally illogical as it was illegal. For months, Washington attempted to build a case against Maduro and his government, tying him and other senior leaders to supposed gangs and cartels—later walking this back—as well as drug smuggling in the Caribbean. Military operations targeted supposed drug boats and oil tankers in international waters, slowly manufacturing consent within the U.S. public for the eventual special forces raid in Venezuela.
That attack, like the previous actions before it, was illegal under U.S. domestic law and international law. The Trump administration has hardly bothered to garner Congressional authorizations for military action, largely thumbing its nose at the checks and balances long under stress in the post-9/11 era while falsely claiming such operations constituted law enforcement efforts. Washington dismissed international law even further, rejecting basic conceptualizations of state sovereignty, sovereign immunity, and the laws of the sea. As senior Trump aide Stephen Miller articulated, “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world…that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”
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