Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio both justified the United States’s overnight invasion of Venezuela and capture of its president, Nicolas Maduro, as a law-enforcement action, rather than an act of war. Thus, they argued, Trump didn’t need congressional authorization.
But Trump’s own words — his description of the attack, his justification for the attack, and his plans for Venezuela’s future — make it clear this was in fact an act of war. Presidents are not allowed to wage war without authorization from Congress.
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Here’s Vance citing “indictments” to legally justify the military action:
Rubio, in the mid-day Saturday press conference, likewise framed the attack as basically a joint action between the Departments of War and Justice. In other words, this was basically an arrest, where the Delta Force took the place of the FBI.
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This is a plausible claim, and it’s an argument Vance and Rubio need to make, because they know that the president isn’t allowed to unilaterally go to war.
Congress, and only Congress, has the authority to declare war under the Constitution. The president’s authority to send U.S. troops into combat is limited to repelling imminent threats or responding to sudden attacks. Flying into Caracas, guns blazing, and capturing a foreign dictator who was indicted five years ago is obviously not a defensive action.
(White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said as much to Vanity Fair: “If he were to authorize some activity on land, then it’s war, then [we’d need] Congress.”)
So what about the Vance-Rubio defense, that this was basically an arrest?
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Again, this doesn’t square with Trump’s own words.
Trump called it a “military operation,” as Eric Boehm at Reason pointed out.
Trump, in his many minutes of speaking Saturday, primarily spoke about Maduro stealing oil infrastructure from U.S. companies, which was not something in any of the federal charges against Maduro.
Trump also stated that the U.S. would “run” Venezuela until we could install a new government. This is the description of a regime change, not an arrest. If we were really arresting Maduro on drug charges, we would let Venezuela deal with succession matters. Trump made it clear we’re not doing that.
Like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, this was a regime-change war. Like Libya, the president failed to get congressional authorization for this war.