Posted on 11/12/2025 8:47:34 PM PST by SeekAndFind
President Trump is being misled into a regime-change war close to home. Few Americans nowadays find much to celebrate in the Iraq War or the intervention that overthrew Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. Regimes were successfully changed both times, but what came after the dictators’ downfall was civil war, regional instability and mass-migration flows that exported many of those nations’ troubles to their neighbors.
Now the Trump administration wants to do to Venezuela’s despot, Nicolás Maduro, what George W. Bush did to Saddam Hussein and Barack Obama did to Gaddafi. That will predictably do to the Americas – including the US – what the War on Terror did to the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.
Why would Donald Trump make such a mistake? Bush and Obama’s foreign-policy blunders gave the President one of his strongest campaign themes in 2016, and his first term was distinguished by his success at keeping America out of new wars. His use of force abroad has typically been selective – why depart from what’s worked?
If the examples of Bush II and Obama aren’t enough, the Trump administration should consider what happened when Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter intervened in places such as El Salvador. The US-backed civil war in El Salvador sent waves of refugees and immigrants northward, including to the US, where some of the new Salvadoran communities formed gangs – notably MS-13.
The tension in the Trump coalition isn’t just between foreign-policy hawks and doves – it’s between hawks and immigration restrictionists. Refugees and mass migration are inevitable consequences of today’s wars. And the Trump administration’s policy does not make sense as a tactic to stop illegal drugs, especially fentanyl, from reaching our border: the chaos and population flows that regime change triggers are a boon to drug networks and human traffickers.
It’s true that Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez have also caused some migration by remaining in power, but the people fleeing because of socialism are often middle-class and freedom-loving; war uproots everyone, especially the poor.
Despite claiming in 2016 that George W. Bush should simply have taken Iraq’s oil, Trump is probably not contemplating an invasion to seize Venezuela’s petroleum resources. He’s conducting a “maximum pressure” campaign to make an example out of Maduro, regardless of whether or not the socialist dictator can be forced out of power.
Trump wants to show that there are rewards for America’s friends and painful punishments for her enemies, and he takes the Western Hemisphere particularly seriously. Maduro’s agony will be a lesson to anyone else in Latin America who thinks of making a foe out of Washington. At least, that’s the theory – but the US has a long history of throwing its weight around in Latin America and only making enemies in the process.
The model Trump should adopt isn’t Reagan’s strategy in Latin America but rather the one that won the Cold War in Europe: stabilizing America’s friends and helping them prosper, thereby heightening the contrast between life under freedom and life under socialism.
Seeing that contrast inspired Europeans to liberate themselves, tearing down the Berlin Wall and replacing communist governments with democratic ones. If Latin Americans want freedom – and they do, as Argentina’s election of Javier Milei indicates – they can achieve it just as Eastern Europeans did.
The examples of those places where the US relied most on force during the Cold War are overwhelmingly negative. Even the great triumph of Reagan-era political warfare in Afghanistan defeated a Soviet puppet only to create conditions that brought the Taliban to power and provided al-Qaeda a haven from which to attack the US. That’s a Pyrrhic victory if ever there was one.
The Trump administration’s interest in toppling Maduro preceded Marco Rubio’s tenure as secretary of state, and sources with ties to the administration say it’s unfair to blame Rubio for the neocon tilt of Venezuela policy. But if there’s a war, it will be Rubio’s at least as much as Trump’s, and if it goes badly, Rubio will get the blame – not least from the President himself.
Rubio has earned a great deal of respect from many in the MAGA movement who once thought of him as a Bush Republican – weak on immigration, neocon in foreign policy. He risks proving his detractors right if he embraces a regime-change program left over from the days of Mike Pompeo.
As for Trump himself, he sees force as another form of leverage in negotiations. He won’t bomb allies in trade talks, but he will use America’s military might to change the way adversaries think. And if he’s not about to start a war with China, he’s fully prepared to demonstrate what he can do on Maduro.
Making an educational point, rather than actually changing the regime in Caracas, may be his objective. But there’s a constituency in the Republican party that wants more than that, and Trump likes to give everyone in his coalition something they have their hearts set on.
In this case, however, he can’t please neocons or hawks without harming immigration restrictionists as well as doves. Obama, Bush II, Reagan and Carter have shown that when America tries to change other regimes, the result is mass migration that changes Europe and the US. Regime change abroad leads to regime change at home, and right now Trump is the regime.
“President Trump is being misled...”
I don’t think so. He’s doing what he wants to do. I don’t think it’s a necessary war though.
No one cares about Libya except for the bit about Obama feeding an ambassador to al Qaeda. Gaddafi took down Pan Am 103, probably sent the airline to the glue factory. He had it coming.
The average American is fine with basket case countries getting their furniture rearranged. It’s the expensive multi-year occupations and steady trickle of GI dead that gets people cranked up. Odds are Trump will, at worst, rerun the toppling of the Taliban/Gaddafi - coordinate with locals to deliver ordnance smack on top of Maduro and his minions.
Life isn’t a hysterical Hollywood script. It’s possible to smack the other guy and then just back off. Trump ran a minimalistic campaign against the Houthis for a few months at the same sleepy tempo that the Saudis maintained for 7 years. When the Houthis resumed attacking area shipping, Trump shrugged, did nothing further about it. Because you can just decide it’s not worth the bother of even continuing, let alone escalating.
Bombing Iran didn't get him into an "unpopular foreign war," so claiming that taking out narco boats leaving Venezuela, a country half the size of Iran will lead to an "unpopular foreign war" is horse doo-doo.
Stopping the drug flow from Venezuela to the cartels in this country isn't necessary? And it's not a war. The other side hasn't fired a shot.
The action around Venezuela is a negotiation tactic. The CIA thought it would be great to have haves in power and ended up with a communist dictatorship that was not friendly to our interests. They couldn’t fix it so they let it be. Several presidents have ignored the situation. China is the main beneficiary of having Chavez and then Maduro in charge. We can’t afford to let China own so much real estate. Trump is now going to fix it.
Really? Obama invaded them when they were out ally. Yes, Libya surrendered to us after what happened in New York.
Trump does not start wars
That’s projection form the CNNs
Foreign war? Venezuela wouldn’t last a week.
who is this retarded author. Trump being misled?? It’s his own damn idea.
Is Cucker Tarlson’s pen name Daniel McCarthy?
the whole article is either misleading or misinformed.
the goal isn’t exactly ‘regime change’... it’s about removing the cartels off the continent.
if it doesn’t happen, the next democrat to take the Whitehouse will flood the country with cartel guys (dems like their bribe money)
That's funny. I thought he was dumping his prisoners and mental hospital patients on us. I guess that tells us what he thinks of his middle class. /s
Doesnt seem that way to me , but I guess a few folks agree with these ideas. Certainly all the folks who were waiting for those boats agree with this .
I agree...
DJT is putting pressure on Maduro and other Narco heads countries to stop sending drugs into the U.S. a show of strength in the Caribbean.
Pres. Trump has already said that he has had CIA assets inside Venezuela.
“ Trump confirms he has authorized CIA covert operations in Venezuela”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-confirms-he-authorized-cia-covert-operations-in-venezuela/
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he authorized strikes against drug labs and warehouses. I’m also sure he’ll give Maduro a public heads up within minutes after he sends the go codes.
That will hurt Maduro thrice. He will be seen as weak and unable to stop the US military, it will expose how large the drug operation and cartel presence in Venezuela is, and it will cut down a big source of money for him and his Cuban, Iranian, and Russian buddies.
It might also make the other South and Central American leaders (here’s looking at you, Sheinbaum and Petro) rethink their policies.
“It’s true that Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez have also caused some migration by remaining in power, but the people fleeing because of socialism are often middle-class and freedom-loving; war uproots everyone, especially the poor.”
So it was the good productive middle class Venezuelan gangs taking over apartment buildings and selling drugs.
There is no war planned for Venezuela. Blowing a few narco boats up, and maybe forcing the president to flee is pretty low impact (except for the guys on the boats).
May not be stupid but lets his ego get the better of him as he is a prideful man which is the one of the greatest sins...
I bet Trump has FAR MORE information than the author does.
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