The Trump administration’s illegal military assault on Venezuela and its violation of Venezuela’s national sovereignty should be widely condemned, Center for Economic and Policy Research directors said today. US military strikes on Venezuelan territory early this morning, and the reported abduction by US forces of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores, are illegal under international law, were conducted without congressional authorization or ― reportedly ― notification, and set a dangerous precedent, they warned.
While US administration officials initially described this morning’s attack as a law enforcement operation, President Trump’s remarks earlier today ― where he stated that the US would be “running Venezuela” and that US companies would be managing the oil infrastructure ― suggest that the goal is regime change and a long-term US occupation, much like the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq. If Trump’s assertions reflect a concrete plan, then the US is now embarked on an unauthorized and unprovoked open-ended war against a country that poses no believable threat to US national security.
“This is an illegal assault on a country that poses no security threat to the United States, and Trump himself has repeatedly said that he is going after the country’s oil, the largest proven reserves in the world,” CEPR Co-Director Mark Weisbrot said. “Only one in five Americans in the most recent poll said they supported such military intervention. Most people don’t like our government putting forth plans and threats, and taking actions that make it look like a criminal enterprise. Trump has repeatedly shown that he has no regard for international law.”
According to media reports, the US military attack on Caracas was conducted without first notifying Congress, including members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Trump administration has not made a case for war against Venezuela to the US Congress, and “top Trump officials previously testified to Congress that the U.S. was not seeking to oust Maduro, and would seek congressional authorization for any ground operations in Venezuela,” as Axios notes. Various members of Congress are calling for a new War Powers Resolution vote.
The Trump administration has offered a shifting pretext for its aggression toward Venezuela, focused on alleged drug trafficking by Maduro. But the administration has presented no evidence for its allegations, which have been widely debunked and dismissed by current and former US officials and experts.
It is unclear what the next steps in the US’s attack on Venezuela might be, and the possible consequences are even more uncertain. Venezuelan officials have reported civilian and military killings, though the scale of human casualties remains unclear. President Trump today said that “we’re going to run” Venezuela, and suggested that he may order more military strikes inside Venezuela. He also threatened possible US action inside Mexico, and warned Colombian President Gustavo Petro to “watch his ass.” Currently, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and other top Maduro administration officials remain in office.
Heads of state and other world leaders have condemned the US actions in Venezuela, including Brazil’s Lula da Silva, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, and the government of South Africa, among others. Many others, including Spanish President Pedro Sánchez, are calling for deescalation. Prominent figures from across the political spectrum, such as Germany’s Roderich Kiesewetter on the right, the UK’s Jeremy Corbyn on the left, and France’s Marine Le Pen on the far right, have condemned the US’s violation of Venezuela’s national sovereignty.
The United Nations issued a statement saying that UN Secretary-General António Guterres is “deeply concerned that the rules of international law have not been respected” and “call[ed] on all actors in Venezuela to engage in inclusive dialogue, in full respect of human rights and the rule of law.” As CEPR Senior Research Fellow Guillaume Long, formerly the foreign minister for Ecuador and a former ambassador to the UN, has noted, the US’s actions violate Article 2(4) and the integrity of Chapter VII of the UN Charter.
Today’s attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of President Maduro and First Lady Flores is the latest in a series of US regime change efforts in Venezuela over more than 20 years. State Department and CIA documents revealed the US role in the short-lived 2002 coup d’etat against then-President Hugo Chávez. That overturned coup was followed by an oil industry lockout that devastated Venezuela’s economy, and then a 2004 US-backed recall referendum that voters overwhelmingly defeated. The first Trump administration openly attempted to remove Maduro by recognizing as president a right-wing politician, Juan Guaidó, who openly called for a military ouster of Maduro.
Starting in 2017, the first Trump administration imposed increasingly damaging economic sanctions against Venezuela that were largely maintained during the Biden administration. These have been a major driver of the country’s economic collapse and subsequent mass out-migration, as CEPR Senior Research Fellow Francisco Rodríguez has shown in multiple peer-reviewed studies. A 2019 CEPR report by Mark Weisbrot and Columbia economist Jeffrey Sachs found that the US economic sanctions led to more than tens of thousands of deaths in Venezuela in 2017–2018 alone. Rodríguez estimates that US sanctions fueled an economic collapse equivalent to three Great Depressions.
“President Trump’s actions are shocking and dangerous and a complete betrayal of his campaign promise to keep the US out of unnecessary wars. If, as his most recent remarks suggest, Trump continues to intervene militarily in Venezuela the consequences could be disastrous for Venezuelans and potentially for US service members, who risk being dragged into a deadly, protracted war. Other countries in the region should also be deeply concerned as it becomes clear that the so-called Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine involves asserting US domination throughout Latin America by deploying murky claims of ‘narco-terrorism’ as a fig leaf for constant aggression,” CEPR Director of International Policy Alexander Main said.
CEPR has been tracking developments in the Trump administration’s aggression toward Venezuela and other countries in the region, and its illegal extrajudicial killings of people in the Caribbean and Pacific, and will continue to do so, here.
