The Case for Trump’s Venezuela Plan

On the latest episode of FP Live, I turned to a commentator who has been defending Trump’s actions. FP columnist Matthew Kroenig, who served in the Department of Defense in Trump’s first term and who advised presidential candidate Marco Rubio in 2016, has written that the White House “is clearly prioritizing hard national security and economic interests and is reluctant to over-promise on democracy promotion.” Kroenig is the vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

The argument against the White House’s actions in Venezuela has been aired out extensively in these pages. Critics contend that the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro broke international law and that U.S. President Donald Trump snubbed Venezuela’s democratic opposition in favor of a regime crony, among several other arguments.

The argument against the White House’s actions in Venezuela has been aired out extensively in these pages. Critics contend that the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro broke international law and that U.S. President Donald Trump snubbed Venezuela’s democratic opposition in favor of a regime crony, among several other arguments.

On the latest episode of FP Live, I turned to a commentator who has been defending Trump’s actions. FP columnist Matthew Kroenig, who served in the Department of Defense in Trump’s first term and who advised presidential candidate Marco Rubio in 2016, has written that the White House “is clearly prioritizing hard national security and economic interests and is reluctant to over-promise on democracy promotion.” Kroenig is the vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page. What follows here is a lightly edited transcript.

RA: Let’s start with Venezuela. You have argued that U.S. President Donald Trump was right to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Why?

MK: Yes. Maduro was a bad guy, and it’s good that he’s gone. He provided an outpost to the axis of aggressors—Russia, China, and Iran—in the Western Hemisphere. He’s a narco-trafficker, and he so badly mismanaged his country that roughly one-quarter of the population fled, contributing to a refugee crisis and pressure on the U.S. southern border. It’s good that he’s gone, for U.S. security and also for the welfare of the Venezuelan people. There are a lot of questions about what comes next, but it’s hard to imagine that whoever comes next will be worse than Maduro.

RA: I want to push back on a few things you’ve just said there. First, there are many bad leaders around the world, and it’s not like the United States should be deposing all of them. Second, most people are not seeing anything changing in Caracas so far, other than the fact that Maduro is gone. Delcy Rodríguez was his longtime deputy, not an opposition leader, and by all accounts, government repression and the silencing of journalists have grown after Maduro’s fall in the last few days.

Third, there’s the question of international law. While the White House has been framing this move as righteous, any leader of any country in the future can run a similar operation and fram