VENEZUELA: IT ALL DEPENDS ON THE MEANING OF THE WORD ‘RUN.’ There have been two parts to the political world’s reaction to the American operation that deposed and captured Nicolas Maduro. The first part was to marvel at what Brit Hume called the “extraordinary level of skill, technology and daring” on the part of American forces and leadership. Hume noted that the U.S. performance, when considered alongside the flawless attack on Iran’s nuclear program, sent to the world “precisely the opposite signal from that sent by the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.”
The second reaction emerged after President Donald Trump’s news conference. “We’re going to run [Venezuela] until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition,” Trump said. “So we don’t want to be involved with having somebody else get in and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years. So we are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.”
With that, much of the attention to the Venezuela matter turned away from the military and intelligence aspects of the operation to a simple and absolutely vital question: What did Trump mean by “run”?
The president explained to some degree but still left a lot of questions. A reporter asked, “What is the mechanism by which you’re going to run the country? Are you going to designate U.S. officials to coordinate?” “Yes,” answered Trump. “It’s all being done right now. We’re designating people. We’re talking to people. … We’re going to let you know who those people are.” When asked who would take part, Trump said, “It’s largely going to be, for a period of time, the people that are standing behind me.” Behind Trump at that moment were Secretary of State Marco Rubio, War Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan “Razin” Caine.
Trump was also asked if “running the country means that U.S. troops will be on the ground.” He appeared a little impatient with the question. After all, the operation was proof that American forces were already on the ground in Venezuela. “You know, they always say ‘boots on the ground,’” Trump said. “So we’re not afraid of boots on the ground if we have to have. We had boots on the ground last night at a very high level, actually. We’re not afraid of it. We don’t mind saying it, but we’re going to make sure that that country is run properly. We’re not doing this in vain.”
The next morning, Rubio hit the morning shows to flesh out the administration’s position. He explained that the United States will not be “running” Venezuela in the sense of appointing its officials, rewriting its laws, and manning its offices. Instead, the U.S. aims to steer Venezuelan officials away from corruption in the nation’s oil business, away from narcotics trafficking, away from mass migration, and toward better relations with the U.S.
“Right now we have to take the first steps, and the first steps are securing what’s in the national interest of the United States and also beneficial to the people of Venezuela,” Rubio told NBC’s Meet the Press. “And those are the things that we’re focused on right now: No more drug trafficking, no more Iran/Hezbollah presence there, and no more using the oil industry to enrich all of our adversaries around the world and not benefiting the people of Venezuela or, frankly, benefiting the United States and the region.”
Rubio stressed that the key to the plan is the oil that supports the country’s entire economy. “We don’t need Venezuela’s oil,” he said. “We have plenty of oil in the United States. What we’re not going to allow is for the oil industry in Venezuela to be controlled by adversaries of the United States. Why does China need their oil? Why does Russia need their oil? Why does Iran need their oil? They’re not even in this continent. This is the Western Hemisphere. This is where we live, and we’re not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operation for adversaries, competitors, and rivals of the United States. It’s as simple as that.”
The U.S. has tremendous “leverage” over Venezuela, Rubio said, because the U.S. can block the country’s oil transactions. “We have a quarantine on their oil,” he told ABC’s This Week. “That means their economy will not be able to move forward until the conditions that are in the national interest of the United States and the interests of the Venezuelan people are met.”
Will the plan work? The early statements about it, both from Trump and Rubio, are at such a level of generalization that it is hard to visualize what the proposal will really involve. But the key to things, at least from the perspective of U.S. politics, is how much, and for how long, Venezuela will require intense U.S. effort and attention.
The important thing is for Trump to stabilize the situation in Venezuela quickly. If the U.S. intervention leads to chaos and disorder, requiring increasing amounts of American involvement, Trump will face accusations that he has gotten the U.S. into a morass in South America. There will be accusations he has gotten involved in the kind of nation building he promised never to pursue. So the sooner Trump can accomplish a “safe, proper, and judicious transition,” the better. If Trump can pull that off, the critics will in retrospect seem alarmist, Trump’s opponents will be wrong again, and Trump will have a success, even as he focuses on domestic issues in midterm campaigning. If he can’t pull it off, he’ll have big trouble.