An Aggressive, Dangerous Overreach of Presidential Power: Reasons to Oppose the US Intervention in Venezuela

by John Whitehead

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The new year of 2026 has brought a dramatic escalation in the conflict between the United States and Venezuela. The US military attacked Venezuela on January 3, capturing the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife.

This US military intervention comes after months of growing American pressure on Venezuela. The US military has greatly increased its presence in the region around Venezuela and has imposed a blockade on the passage of sanctioned oil tankers in and out of the country. 

Since September, the United States has been attacking boats in the Caribbean allegedly involved in drug smuggling. More than 100 people have been killed in these strikes. At the end of December, the United States attacked a docking area in Venezuela allegedly used by drug cartels. 

The January 3 operation to capture Maduro involved attacks on the capital of Caracas, including one of the country’s largest military bases, and other parts of the country. According to an anonymous Venezuelan official, the operation killed at least 40 people, both military personnel and civilians. One 80-year-old woman was killed when an airstrike hit her apartment complex. Anonymous US officials say some US military personnel were wounded in the operation.

What happens next between the United States and Venezuela is unclear. Maduro, his wife, and other Venezuelan officials not in US custody have been indicted by the United States for involvement in drug trafficking and for “narco-terrorism conspiracy.” 

In a press conference on the Maduros’ capture, US President Donald Trump implied that the United States might pursue further military operations against Venezuela with the goal of overthrowing the country’s current government. Trump stated, “We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition… We are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so…[W]e're not afraid of boots on the ground if we have to.” 

Any plans for the United States to “run” Venezuela would encounter opposition from Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, who is now head of state in Maduro’s absence. Rodriguez has stated, “We will never return to being a colony of any empire…. What is happening to Venezuela is barbarity…There is only one president of this country, and his name is Nicolas Maduro Moro.”

Reasons Why the US Intervention Is Wrong

The US military intervention aimed at the Venezuelan regime is both unjust and unwise. Any further attacks on Venezuela must be prevented and the Maduros returned to their home country. 

To be clear, supporting Maduro’s return does not imply an unqualified endorsement of his regime, which certainly is guilty of repression against Venezuelans. Rather, restoring Maduro simply reflects a recognition that the way in which he was removed was unjust and unwise and returning to the status quo ante is the best way of undoing the recent intervention.

The reasons for opposing the American intervention in Venezuela are easy to identify.

1. The attack is an act of aggressive war. 

A military attack on a sovereign nation that kills its people and kidnaps its head of state is a blatant act of aggression. Although defenders of the recent intervention can doubtless contrive arguments for why the Maduro regime somehow provoked the attack or the United States was acting in self-defense, common sense tells a different story.

Venezuela has not invaded or attacked the United States. The imbalance in military strength between the two nations is so great—as demonstrated by the recent intervention—that the notion of Venezuela posing a serious threat to the United States strains credulity. 

Whatever truth there might be to US claims of Maduro or other officials’ involvement in the drug trade, selling or smuggling drugs into the United States is hardly an offense so severe as to warrant crossing the threshold of waging a war of regime change against another country. 

Granting the harm done by drug abuse and related criminal activity, unleashing all the death and devastation of war in response to drug trafficking is such a disproportionate response that it cannot plausibly be considered self-defense. Rather, the United States has engaged in an act of aggressive war against Venezuela.

2. Attempting to overthrow Venezuela’s government by force will probably lead to disaster. 

Even if one sets aside the ethics of aggression versus self-defense, current US policy toward Venezuela will likely have dangerous and costly results. If the Trump administration’s goal is to replace Maduro’s regime with a new, supposedly better government, history suggests this policy will not be successful.

Changing a country’s government through extra-legal means, particularly violent extra-legal means, is not a practice with an encouraging history. Even when a government is authoritarian and unjust, overthrowing it frequently results only in an equivalent or even worse regime or simply a descent into political chaos. The various revolutionary upheavals in France or Russia, for example, offer cautionary tales here. 

Still less encouraging is the history of regime change when it is brought about by military intervention from another country. The last 25 years have shown us the disastrous results of such interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.

If the United States continues to wage a war of regime change in Venezuela so that the United States can, in Trump’s words, “run the country,” the result will likely be a debacle.

Open civil war might break out between old regime forces and their US-backed opponents in Venezuela. The probability of such a conflict would increase if the Trump administration tries to prosecute more regime officials for drug trafficking: faced with a choice between prison and fighting to hold on to power, current officials are likely to choose the latter. Further, if US troops are directly involved in a war in Venezuela, we may see a repeat of the Iraq War’s long, bloody counterinsurgency. 

In a measured article that expresses some sympathy for the administration’s Venezuela policy, the journalist Joseph Addington nevertheless acknowledges the grim prospects for regime change:

[T]he U.S. has no institution well-suited for occupying, administering, and reconstructing nations…

The collapse of the regime opens a power vacuum into which [drug cartels] can expand at will, and an American occupying force even of significant size will have trouble projecting power beyond the cities and into the scrub and jungle where the narcos thrive… 

Add in the potential for cartels to swell their ranks and strength by absorbing elements of the Maduro regime… and you have all the elements of a significant guerilla conflict that could cost the U.S. no small amount of time, money, and blood.

The result would be costly in Venezuelan and American lives and would probably not leave Venezuela better off than under the present regime. 

Such a costly war would also be unwise for Trump even from a purely self-interested standpoint. Americans dying in war is among the most politically damaging situations a president can face. Destabilizing Venezuela could also aggravate the current refugee crisis, a result that would run exactly contrary to the concerns of so many Trump supporters about illegal immigration.

3. The current policy expands already-expansive presidential power. 

The recent attack on Venezuela is the latest episode in a long history of US presidents arrogating to themselves the right to wage war without congressional authorization. The Obama administration’s 2011 war against Libya was one sorry example. The Obama and first Trump administration’s military interventions in Syria were additional examples. Also, while falling short of outright war, the recent US strikes against mariners allegedly smuggling drugs are consistent with the long-running bipartisan practice of American presidents claiming the right to order extrajudicial killings. 

The US Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to “declare War…and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water” (Article I, Section 8). Further, the 1973 War Powers Act states that the president can use military force without congressional approval only in case of “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” The case of Venezuela hardly qualifies.

Presidential authority, like all constitutional questions, is open to endless debate and interpretation. The War Powers Act in particular is controversial and has long been a point of contention between Congress and the executive branch. 

Granting these points, though, some common sense again seems necessary. If a president can, purely on his own authority and without congressional authorization, order a military operation that effectively decapitates the government of a country that has not attacked the United States and is not at war with the United States, then Congress’ constitutional power over warmaking is clearly not being respected.

Concern about presidential power is not and should not be regarded as a strictly partisan issue. The implications of a president being able to attack another country and capture its leader without any outside check on his power should be disturbing to all Americans. 

Even Americans who support President Trump or the current Venezuela policy should consider what other presidents, whom they do not support, have done or could do with this kind of unchecked power. They should remember the Libya war and imagine what some future Democratic president might do.

For Americans across the political spectrum, unchecked presidential power to wage war should be recognized as a grave danger that needs to be ended.

To oppose aggression, prevent a disastrous war of regime change, and put much-needed limits on presidential power, the current use of American military force against Venezuela must end. Congress should block any further US military operations against Venezuela and should take action to ensure President Maduro and his wife are returned to their country. 

US citizens should contact their representatives and senators to urge them to take these steps, whether through a War Powers resolution or equivalent measure.

They should also contact the Trump administration (https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ or 202-456-1111) to advocate an end to military action against Venezuela and the release of the Maduros.

The Venezuelan people need to work out the future of their country on their own, without foreign interference.