Chhabed Sathee: Republicans are worried that President Trump may embrace a new round of nation-building in Venezuela, something he renounced earlier in his political career.
The prospect of the United States taking over Venezuela is sparking a backlash from MAGA allies, and lawmakers in both parties have many questions about the level of U.S. military involvement and whether billions of taxpayer dollars will be needed to rebuild Venezuela’s infrastructure, something Trump says needs a major upgrade.
“I certainly am not — I don’t think our nation wants to be into nation-building and to be trying to create a government for another country, especially after the Afghanistan situation,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), a member of the Senate GOP leadership team.
Trump’s declaration at a press conference Saturday that “we’re going to run” Venezuela and that “we’re not afraid of boots on the ground if we have to” is unsettling some Republicans.
“The American First MAGA movement is looking at what Trump said and hoping it’s just bluster and hoping that we’re not actually going to go down the road that we went in Iraq and Afghanistan where we’re putting troops in and trying to use our military as armed diplomats and policemen in Venezuela,” said Brian Darling, a Republican strategist and former Senate aide.
“The bottom line is I don’t think anybody is going to want a long, drawn-out occupation of Venezuela,” he added.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said he would be “100 percent” opposed to deploying a large contingent of U.S. armed forces to Venezuela to run the country. “A part of this is problematic because the president said we’ll be running the country until the transition, but that’s factually incorrect. We don’t have boots on the ground. There’s no method for us asserting that other than telephone diplomacy, so let’s see what plays out this week,” Tillis said Monday.
Asked if he would oppose a large U.S. military presence in Venezuela to maintain order, Tillis said “100 percent.”
“The Venezuelan people deserve a duly elected democratic leader,” he said. “Maybe we need to support special elections, be observers, but let the Venezuelan people have self-determination.
“They’ve had a thug in power for a few years now, and it’s time for them to have a break,” he added. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said he’s “afraid” that Trump’s pledge to run Venezuela and give American companies access to its oil reserves will “spoil” popular Venezuelan sentiment toward the United States.
“I’m afraid that expression will probably spoil or sour good feelings toward America. There are people there that are very happy that Maduro is gone, but I think telling them that we’re coming — we’re bringing our oil companies, we’re going to take over — sounds a bit like the 19th century or something, and I don’t think it will have the effect they intend,” he told reporters Monday.
Most Republicans have cheered the daring dark-of-night raid to seize Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from a military complex in Caracas and bring him to trial in New York, but they have questions about what happens next and the extent of U.S. military involvement and economic aid.
Capito, the chair of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, said she thinks Trump is looking to guide Venezuela’s transition to a new government without a major infusion of American troops and military and economic aid, but she said the president’s goals need to be clarified.
“These are people that have resources. They’ve been living under oppression. I think what he’s saying is it’s transitional — we’ll have our hand on the tiller, so it doesn’t fall back into the same hands,” she said.
“I think there are a lot of questions and it needs clarifying,” she added.
Asked about concerns among GOP lawmakers over nation-building in Venezuela, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said he wants to learn more about the president’s plans.
“We’re going to try to figure out what that means, and we’re going to have some briefings and ask those questions,” Thune said about Trump’s vow to run Venezuela.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has tried to walk back the president’s declaration that the United States will run Venezuela and isn’t afraid of putting boots on the ground if necessary.
Rubio suggested Sunday that the United States would not take a day-to-day role in governing Venezuela but would instead exert pressure on its new government by controlling its export of oil.
“That’s the sort of control the president is pointing to when he says that,” Rubio told CBS’s “Face the Nation” over the weekend, referring to the U.S. blockade of sanctioned oil tankers.
“We continue with that quarantine, and we expect to see that there will be changes, not just the way the oil industry is run for the benefit of the people but also so that they stop the drug trafficking,” he said.
Republican senators warned before the Jan. 3 capturing of Maduro that regime change or putting U.S. boots on the ground in Venezuela could backfire.
“I think we just have to be very careful when we’re dealing with regime change. It seems to backfire a lot,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) warned last month.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) said there’s widespread public support for striking Venezuelan boats suspected of smuggling drugs but warned that putting American troops on the ground in Venezuela is an entirely different matter.
Lummis told The Hill last month that she hoped Maduro would leave power but warned, “I don’t know that I would support U.S. boots on the ground.”
A Reuters/Ipsos poll of 1,248 adults nationwide conducted Sunday and Monday found that 72 percent of Americans said they worry the U.S. will become too involved in Venezuela.
The survey also found that only 33 percent of respondents approved of the strike against Maduro.
Trump swore off nation-building when he first ran for president in 2016.
In a major foreign policy address in April of that year, he pledged to defeat radical Islam in the Middle East to stabilize the region but not to engage in nation-building.
“My goal is to establish a foreign policy that will endure for several generations centered on prioritizing America first,” he pledged. “Under a Trump administration, no American citizen will ever again feel that their needs come second to the citizens of foreign countries.”
Democrats on Capitol Hill, however, say Trump is now putting the interests of major U.S. oil companies ahead of ordinary Americans.
“We also need to look at lowering grocery costs. We need to end Donald Trump’s destructive tariffs. We need to help families afford day care. These are the things that Americans care about, not invading Venezuela, not attacking Colombia, or dreaming of invading Greenland,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) said on the Senate floor Monday.
Some Republicans are drawing a direct comparison to the ill-fated U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq more than two decades ago.
“Regime change and nation-building are back!” former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) declared Monday.
He drew a comparison to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, when U.S. troops cruised to a quick victory but then became bogged down in fighting a bloody insurgency that took months to ramp up.
Paul said the Trump administration’s rhetoric bears eerie similarity to what the Bush administration told Washington in the early 2000s.
He noted the Bush administration assured allies on Capitol Hill that it was conducting a surgical operation to remove a criminal dictator and that American soldiers would be embraced as liberators.
“Venezuela was just another neocon operation. First comes propaganda demonizing the country and its leadership. Then comes saber-rattling and threats of war. The operation is launched and the ‘objectives’ are quickly reached. Or so they claim. But then it all falls apart,” Paul wrote on his website, RonPaulInstitute.org.
“We become poorer as the special interests get richer. And those we claim to be liberating suffer worse than under the previous regime”.
“Will we ever learn?” he warned.
So far, critics of Trump within the GOP such as Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.) and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) have offered warnings to the president about Venezuela, while most of the party has offered support.
Greene during an interview on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday said the operation to capture Maduro was part “of the same Washington playbook that we are so sick and tired of that doesn’t serve the American people.”
She said Trump “campaigned on Make American Great Again” and his supporters “thought [he] was putting America first.”
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