Opinion | ‘This Is Purely a War of Choice’

You know, upon waking up this morning and seeing that the United States had attacked Venezuela and detained the president of Venezuela Maduro and his wife, which — talk about a way to wake up — but the first thing you read we’re in a war — but upon reading that, my immediate thought was, well, what was the legal authorization here? I don’t recall any kind of public campaign reminiscent to, say, the 2002 to early 2003 effort on the part of the Bush administration to build public support for a war in Iraq. I don’t recall anything like that from the Trump administration. I don’t recall any congressional debate. There were no resolutions put to the floor in the House or the Senate. There was no debate whatsoever about the prospect of a ground war in Venezuela and the arrest of Maduro. The 2001 authorization for the use of military force doesn’t apply here because that was limited to Al Qaeda. And all though that A.U.M.F. has been stretched to its limits in the years since, it is beyond absurd to suggest that Venezuela had anything to do with the 2001 Sept. 11 attack. So there’s no legal authorization there, even in the most expansive definition of the terms used in that resolution. On X, Senator Mike Lee suggests that this falls on the president’s inherent powers because the U.S. military was executing an arrest warrant and to protect the soldiers, we had to use military force on the ground. But this runs into the little problem of first, that the United States has no jurisdiction over Venezuela when it comes to criminal enforcement. Maduro may have been indicted on charges in the United States, but that does not authorize the U.S. military to essentially perform renditions in foreign territory. And then there’s this notion of inherent authority, inherent power, inherent war-making powers at that. And the notion of inherent powers is itself debatable. Right? This is not a thing that one should take for granted. The notion that the president had inherent war-making powers separate from the enumerated powers of the presidency, a little controversial. But even if you grant the idea that there are these inherent powers, they seem more appropriate to, say, repelling an imminent invasion. I mean, you see the Japanese fleet off the coast in 1941 and you’re like, we can attack that because they’re about to attack us, right? You’re mobilizing soldiers to respond to confederate arms without Congress being in session. Right? That, that checks out, right? Truly imminent, immediate circumstances, action must be taken and Congress can’t act. Then, then you can support the idea of, like, an inherent power to just defend the nation. But this is purely a war of choice. There’s no imminent threat in Venezuela. I know the administration has adopted this term narcoterrorist to suggest that the Venezuelan government is an imminent threat on account of drug trafficking and that, I’m sorry, is just ridiculous. In which case any drug-producing nation becomes an imminent threat to the United States. And while that might pass muster in a Tom Clancy thriller, it’s not a real basis for actual policymaking and certainly not the use of military force. And so I think when you actually step back real quick and ignore the administration’s triumphant rhetoric, what you have is a plainly illegal war, a plainly illegal action, is a plainly illegal war, a plainly illegal action, one that violates international law, one that is plainly unconstitutional, even anti-constitutional, given the administration’s, just, contempt for the idea that Congress has any say in the use of military force. And Maduro wasn’t arrested, as the White House was saying. Maduro in this formulation, because again, this is all illegal, was kidnapped and renditioned. And one doesn’t have to think Maduro is a great guy, have to like that regime to see that this sets a dangerous precedent. This will almost certainly lead to instability in the region. You know, the purpose of international law in circumstances like this is to restrain the powerful, to put limits on the ability of the powerful to act in the knowledge that that kind of action can be incredibly destructive to the global order. This administration, which very much takes a might makes right approach to the world, laughs and scoffs at all of that and has declared, in essence, that they can do whatever they want and no one can say otherwise. I would like to say that they’re wrong about this, but so far they haven’t really been proven wrong.