Three Key Lessons from the US’s Venezuela Intervention

01/06/2026•Mises Wire•Ryan McMaken

https://mises.org/mises-wire/three-key-lessons-uss-venezuela-intervention

On Saturday morning, the US military attacked Venezuela. After bombings of Venezuelan infrastructure, a small US force landed in Caracas and abducted Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife. Trump has characterized the attack as a “law enforcement” action although Secretary of State Marco Rubio has not been able to state what legal authority has authorized the invasion, or how the United States government has jurisdiction to do so. 

Although the claim of “law enforcement” may be the official position, the administration and its supporters have employed a wide variety of justifications for the bombing and invasion, ranging from democratization to human rights. 

This latest military operation by the US regime serves as a reminder that very little has changed in American foreign policy since 1989 when George H. W. Bush set the stage for today’s policy of endless intervention. The only change, perhaps, is that the Trump’s MAGA coalition—after denouncing regime change and nation-building for years—has now embraced the policy wholeheartedly. 

Regardless of who is supporting it, however, the US’s bombing of Caracas reiterates three key foundations of American foreign policy. We might say that the Venezuela operation “exposed” the true nature of US foreign policy, but none of this is anything new for anyone who has been paying attention. 

One: The US Constitution Means Nothing 

As with all military operations since 1945, the Venezuela bombing—a clear act of war to anyone who isn’t an apologist for the regime—occurred without any Congressional declaration of war. In this case—as with Obama’s Libya War—there was not even so much as a Congressional debate. Trump now says he informed oil companies of the operation before he informed Congress. 

Countless conservatives who have long pretended to care about “the rule of law” or a “strict constructionist” view of the US constitution are now splitting hairs about whether or not the bombing of a foreign country and the kidnapping of its head of state counts as “war.” They’re pretending to be confused as to why anyone would think a mere bombing operation constitutes warfare. This is the same tactic employed by the Left: pretend to be confused by simple English words that are clear to honest people, but which are repeatedly redefined to fit a political agenda. 

The result of their manufactured confusion is this claim: Because we can never be sure of what the word “war” actually means, bombing foreign countries—at taxpayers’ expense, by the way—doesn’t require even the smallest amount of Congressional action. 

Or so we are told. 

So much for Article I of the US Constitution which put the legislature in place as a veto on military action. This veto, by the way, was not something invented by Americans, but was a principle formed out of centuries of resistance against absolutism in Europe when the Stuart kings and other despots sought to foist wars upon the taxpayers without so much as a vote in parliament. Unfortunately, thanks to decades of disregard for the rule of law in modern times—something now embraced by MAGA—this essential pillar of limiting state power has been utterly abandoned. 

Two: International Law Applies only to Other Countries (But Not Israel)

Just as the negation of the Constitution demonstrates that the rule of law is meaningless in domestic American politics, we also know that law means nothing at all for American policy in the international realm. After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the US regime spent years lecturing Americans on the so-called “rules-based international order.” In spite of the fact that the US regime had spent years occupying Afghanistan, Iraq, and parts of Syria, the US regime then attempted to claim that the Russians must respect the sovereignty of other states because of an alleged rules-based order. 

This only applies to other countries not named “the United States” or “Israel.” For example, the Russian state claims the right to intervene in its “near abroad” or sphere of influence. Many US foreign policy “experts” deny that any such concept exists. Many even mocked the idea of a sphere of influence. Yet the United States routinely invokes a nearly identical claim over Latin America. The “Monroe Doctrine” is little more than a declaration that Latin America is within the US’s sphere of influence. 

The reality is that US policy is nothing more than an exercise in raw power, and any appeal to international law is used only to justify US intervention. The US regime—and its parasite state, the State of Israel—simply do what each regime’s ruling oligarchs determine to be in the best interests of the ruling class. International law or “court orders” may be used to provide some pretense for policy, but neither the Constitution nor any principle of sovereignty or law means anything in the context of American politics. 

Three: Democracy Doesn’t Matter 

Some defenders of the Venezuela intervention continue to claim that the US action is justified because Maduro was not “duly elected.” The rather fanciful assumption here is that the United States is in the business of spreading democracy. In this way of thinking, the abduction of Maduro means a “duly elected” politician—supposedly María Corina Machado or Edmundo Gonzalez—will become president with the acclamation of the majority. 

First, it is important to remember that US policy has never prioritized the “democratization” of foreign regimes. What really matters is that foreign regimes act as puppet states, compliant with US policy. Whether or not these regimes are democratic is immaterial. For examples of this, we need look no further than the fact that the US is a close ally with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a blood-soaked dictatorship where women have effectively no legal rights and Christianity is illegal. Similarly, the US regime has now allied itself with the ISIS and Al-Qaeda militants who now rule over Syria where religious minorities are routinely targeted and churches are bombed. 

And then there is the current president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose term expired in 2024, and who now rules as the unelected strongman of Ukraine with American approval. Historically, the list of dictators supported by the US is very long, indeed. 

Similarly, it is already clear that free elections are hardly a priority for the US regime in Venezuela. For example, Donald Trump has already ruled out the idea of a Machado presidency, even though the US has for years claimed her opposition party has enjoyed immense support in Venezuela. Similarly, Washington claims that Gonzalez won two-thirds of the vote in the 2024 Venezuela election. Yet, Trump has not even hinted at a Gonzalez presidency. Rather, he has declared that a Machado presidency is out of the question since she lacks the necessary “respect” in her country.  

If there is so much public demand for Machado and her party, why not let her take power? Perhaps sensing that the popularity of the opposition party in Venezuela has been long inflated by the US propaganda machine, Trump has stated that the United States government will “run” Venezuela indefinitely. In other words, the de facto government of Venezuela is in Washington, DC where, needless to say, no one has been elected by Venezuelan voters. 

Moreover, the US’s de facto puppet regime in Venezuela is now the same socialist party that Maduro headed. Maduro has simply been replaced by another socialist, Delcy Rodriguez, who was sworn in on Monday. Past experience suggests why the socialist ruling party is likely to stay in place: the US regime’s problem with Maduro’s regime was never its socialism. The only problem was Maduro’s anti-Washington bravado. This is no surprise if we consider the many collectivist despots who have been close US allies throughout history. The American regime loves socialist dictators so long as they are our socialist dictators. 

If Rodriguez agrees to take orders from Washington, she may very well be kept in power, in spite of years of Washington propaganda telling us that the current ruling party lost the election. 

But, if new elections do go forward, and a “duly elected” new president takes over, we can be 100% sure that the new president has received the approval of Washington. No “democratically” elected president in Venezuela will be allowed to take office without the approval of the American regime. In other words, the decision of “the people” is subject to decisions made in Washington. That’s what America calls “democracy.” Elections are only permitted when they produce an outcome acceptable to American politicians. If a majority of Venezuelans elect a president who is deemed unfit by Washington’s viceroys, that candidate will be declared illegitimate, exiled, imprisoned, or assassinated. 

This is a well established model in American history, and, as John Mearsheimer notes, “The United States has a rich history of overthrowing democracies around the world, and we have a rich history of siding with some of the world’s biggest dictators. So this idea that we’re out there protecting freedom & democracy, doesn’t mesh with reality.”