Aspects of this story were reported last year, but a new Associated Press piece reveals more starkly President’s Trump’s interest in invading the sovereign nation of Venezuela in response to its turmoil under President Nicolas Maduro. It turns out that Trump directly asked advisors why the United States couldn’t invade the South American country; his advisors, to their credit, tried to re-direct him:
In an exchange that lasted around five minutes, [national security advisor H.R.] McMaster and others took turns explaining to Trump how military action could backfire and risk losing hard-won support among Latin American governments to punish President Nicolas Maduro for taking Venezuela down the path of dictatorship, according to the official. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussions.
But Trump pushed back. Although he gave no indication he was about to order up military plans, he pointed to what he considered past cases of successful gunboat diplomacy in the region, according to the official, like the invasions of Panama and Grenada in the 1980s.
It’s telling that the two previous U.S. military interventions in Latin American countries that Trump referenced were from the recent-ish past, as this scarily shows the limits of his basic historical knowledge. It’s also notable that he harkened back to the precedents set by fellow Republican presidents whose actions, in retrospect, had far more to do with boosting their approval ratings than protecting national security.
But even if Trump is shockingly unaware of the longer, shameful U.S. history of intervention in Latin American affairs that predates those two invasions, his remarks put him squarely in this discredited tradition of seeing Latin America sovereignty as subordinate to the whims of American power — a tradition that ranges from a U.S.-backed coup in Chile to the abetting of genocide in Guatemala, crimes that only appear more sordid and unforgivable with the passage of time.
Apart from inevitably setting back relations with our neighbors in the Western Hemisphere —some of whose leaders learned of Trump’s thinking when he told them himself — and putting aside questions of morality, Trump’s reckless consideration of invading Venezuela reveals a disturbing ignorance as to the limits and costs of war. For any American politician to have witnessed the debacles of Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade and a half, only to consider invasion a tool of U.S. foreign policy, should immediately raise questions as to his or her basic fitness for office.
Of course, since we’re talking about Donald Trump, the supply of such questions has begun to approach the infinite — so why, you might ask, is this latest revelation worth a second glance?
Well, for anyone opposed to the presidency of Donald Trump and the return of progressive, pro-democracy governance in the United States, any revelations of Donald Trump’s belligerence in matters of war and peace are important because they undercut the “America First” message that was key to his electoral appeal. During the 2016 campaign, it was startling to hear Donald Trump repudiate the Iraq invasion as a massive waste of money that would have been better spent at home — partly because he had previously supported the war, but mostly because this critique had seemed off-limits to any major Republican presidential candidate. Equally startling, his line of attack seems to have found a receptive audience in his voting base.
Rather than just one more scandalous incident among many, Trump’s repeated interest in military intervention in Venezuela gives the lie to his “America First” rhetoric. His inquiries to his advisors on this matter give the impression of an ignoramus who has just been given the world’s biggest hammer (in the form of the U.S. military) and is disposed to see every challenge he faces as a nail; it is as if he bears no relationship to the man on the campaign trail who decried our wasteful wars in the Middle East. It is, in a nutshell, awfully nutty.
One of the most important things opponents of Trump can be doing is peeling off members of his base into neutrality or opposition to the president, highlighting the fact that he’s saying one thing to supporters in public and another thing to advisors in private — this is just politics 101. Trump interrogating his team about invasion isn’t just Trump being Trump; it’s Trump being someone quite different than what he’d have his base believe. We’re not talking one-day missile strikes against Syria that make everyone feel like America is powerful; we’re talking about the president considering actions that would result in the loss of American life for no reason but the man's ignorance.
It’s significant, then, that in the midst of the Associated Press piece, the reporter observes of Trump’s invasion fixation that, “[C]ritics say it also underscores how his “America First” foreign policy at times can seem outright reckless, providing ammunition to America’s adversaries.” It’s telling that no actual critics are quoted to this effect; while critics may indeed say that Trump's “America First” foreign policy is reckless, what’s remarkable about these Venezuela revelations is that they fall outside our previous understanding of his “America First” policy.
Thus far, when applied to foreign affairs, “America First” has primarily had an economic meaning, such as imposing tariffs on allies in order to correct alleged trade abuses. In a non-economic arena, such as the effort to check North Korea’s nuclear program, there is at least some relation to U.S. security; for example, in the rational fear that North Korean nuclear weapons might be targeted against the United States. No such “America First” connection exists in the case of Venezuela; to use that term means to make it indistinguishable from the worst strains of traditional American interventionist policy. Trying to fit these latest revelations in a familiar box, the author inadvertently ends up highlighting the degree to which Trump has departed from his public emphasis on prioritizing U.S. interests at home.
It’s clear that making a big deal out of this Venezuela news alone won’t be enough to change perceptions of the Trump presidency. But this information, contradicting Trump’s claims to prioritize the economy and to shun foreign entanglements, seems like a wedge worth considering to help peel away those of Trump’s supporters who already have their doubts. It’s also an opening for progressives to articulate a foreign policy that takes militarism off the table as an acceptable tool, while using an unpopular and ignorant president as their foil.
