Harry Litman - The Administration Plays Whack-a-Mole in Venezuela
Barely three days after U.S. forces seized Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, the operation already looks like a geopolitical game of whack-a-mole—one improvised move after another, each raising new problems rather than resolving old ones. What we know, almost certainly, is that it was illegal. What we do not yet know is whether it will also prove to be a full-blown policy debacle. But the early signs are not good.
The administration’s explanations for its campaign of hostilities toward Venezuela have gone through a series of revisions. First, it was about narcotics—fentanyl, even though Venezuela is not a meaningful source of fentanyl. Then it was cocaine. Then it became regime change. Then, and at least in part still, oil—“American assets” supposedly stolen decades ago.
But the final justification for seizing Maduro that the government appears to have settled on is “none of the above.” The argument is no longer about narco-terrorism or acts of war perpetrated by cocaine boats off the Caribbean shore. Instead, the legal claim now rests entirely on domestic law enforcement: the extraterritorial arrest of an indicted criminal who also happens to be a head of state.
Recasting the operation as law enforcement allows the administration to sidestep many of the law-of-war hurdles that plagued its earlier justifications. There is no need for tortured reasoning about “narco-terrorists” or cocaine as a weapon of war, no need for congressional authorization, and no need to explain how invading another sovereign state complies with the U.N. Charter. Instead, we are invited to think of this as a SWAT-style arrest, transposed onto foreign soil.
https://harrylitman.substack.com/p/the-administration-plays-whack-a