Trump's Jeffersonian Foreign Policy

A President orders American forces to attack a hostile foreign regime without prior congressional authorization. He authorizes covert action to overthrow the regime’s ruler. He funds these operations in secret and notifies Congress only after the mission succeeds. When the smoke clears, Congress does not challenge the intervention either by cutting off funds, passing a statute, or impeaching the President. This scenario describes the Trump administration’s ongoing conflict with Venezuela. The United States is fighting a war in all but name against the regime in Caracas. The United States has imposed a blockade on Venezuela’s oil exports, closed its airspace, sunk alleged drug-running boats leaving its ports, and, of course, launched a snatch-and-grab operation of its head of state, Nicolas Maduro. Not only did the American armed forces capture Maduro and return him to the United States for trial, but it also destroyed Venezuela’s air defenses and killed the security detail guarding him. The Trump administration is now engaged in a slow campaign of regime change that has it negotiating with Maduro’s successor, Delcy Rodriguez, but also hosting the leader of the opposition, Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado.

But this scenario also describes President Thomas Jefferson’s campaign against the Barbary States. In that operation, President Jefferson ordered the U.S. Navy to attack principalities of the Ottoman Empire and then launched our nation’s first significant covert action to overthrow their leaders – all without explicit congressional approval. Two centuries later, President Trump has followed the same playbook in Operation Absolute Resolve to capture Maduro. But while Jefferson’s actions prompted only constitutional silence and congressional acquiescence, Trump’s have encountered accusations that he has violated both the Constitution and international law. Trump’s critics today would do well to learn from the example of Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, founder of the Democratic Party, and leading critic of government power. Indeed, Jefferson might well have applauded Trump’s campaign in Venezuela.

Critics of the Venezuela operation argue that the president violated the Constitution by launching a military attack without a congressional declaration of war. They claim that the President can only resort to war unilaterally when acting in national self-defense, but that he needs congressional consent to launch an offensive attack. It is not obvious that this is a meaningful distinction. The United States can often claim a self-defense rationale, as it did not only in the Afghanistan war (legitimately after the 9/11 attacks), but also in the 2003 Iraq invasion, as well as the closest parallel to the Venezuela attack: the 1989 invasion of Panama to topple the dictatorship of Manuel Noriega. In its litigation justifying the expulsion of Venezuelan nationals under the Alien Enemies Act, the Trump Justice Department argues that the United States is acting in self-defense against Venezuelan drug cartels that are harming Americans. Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Cartel del los Soles, allegedly headed by Maduro, “flooded the United States with drugs” and “turned [Venezuela] into a base for an international criminal enterprise.”