Venezuela and our new era

 I thought about 25 hours ago when I first learned about the armed seizure of Venezuelan president Francisco Maduro that the Trump administration might have pulled off a political coup, in two senses of the word.  Having argued without much evidence that Maduro was waging war on the United States by sending lethal drugs into the country and flooding the US with dangerous immigrants, President Trump had now apprehended the criminal and would put him on trial.  The operation reminded me of the first President Bush's invasion of Panama in 1990 to depose and arrest Manuel Noriega--an important analogy, as we shall see in a moment--but it had gone much more smoothly.  And few people, it seemed to me, would be very disturbed by Maduro's deposition, since Venezuela had descended into economic chaos under him and his predecessor Hugo Chavez and he had recently retained power only by stealing an election.  The Nobel Committee had just awarded the peace prize to his leading political opponent.  Then came the press conference at Mara Lago, in which the president announced much bigger plans.  The US, he said, would "run" Venezuela until a transition to a new regime could be arranged, and it would secure the return of oil properties which, he claimed, had been unfairly seized by the Venezuelan government to US oil companies. They in turn would revive oil production in Venezuela, with great economic benefits for all.  In addition, he seemed to say, the refugees from Venezuela--who are estimated at 8 million since 2014--would be able to return to that country.  

Let me begin with two pieces of history.  As so often happens, the Trump Administration has found a precedent for what initially looks like an unprecedented step.  In 1989, just before the invasion of Panama, future attorney general William Barr, then of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Council, wrote a memo arguing that the president had the inherent right to order the FBI to make an arrest outside the territorial limits of the United States, and to back up that power with military force.  That memo legitimized the invasion of Panama and the detention and eventual trial and conviction of Manuel Noriega.  This is what is known in some legal circles as a "bootstrap precedent," in which one party to a case--in this instance, the US government--simply repeats a claim that it has made in the past, whether higher authority has ever approved the claim or not.  It also illustrates the two roles that the Office of Legal Counsel can play and has played.  On the one hand, it can tell the Attorney General and the President what the law governing a particular case appears to be, based on the Constitution, statutes, treaties, and court decisions.  On the other, it can put forward its own view of what the law should be,  based on its own sometimes tendentious reading of the Constitution.  That is what it did in this case and what it also did in the notorious torture memorandum under George W. Bush, one of whose authors once confirmed to me that it reflected the view that the executive branch was the proper judge of its own powers.

The second piece of history relates to the nationalization of Venezuelan oil properties, which was mostly carried out by a non-socialist Venezuelan government in 1976.  According to Google AI, the oil companies received some compensation. In 2007 the leftist Hugo Chavez completed the seizure of foreign oil assets, and two US companies sought compensation via international arbitration. They won an award, but Venezuela has been unwilling or unable to pay it, thanks at least in part to sanctions.  International law does require compensation in exchange for nationalization of natural resources, but it does not appear to support President Trump's claim that the United States can simply take back ownership of the properties that US companies surrendered fifty years ago.

I think the president's claims reflect his view of the world and his place of it. He is now the CEO of the United States of America, which he, like Gordon Gecko in Wall Street, thinks can be saved by greed.  He is handling that role in the same way that he did his business enterprises, setting grandiose goals and using every possible means of pressure at his disposal to get his way.  Presidential means include the use of the US military to detain hostile foreign leaders and, in this case, to replace their governments with cooperative ones.  The serious complicating factor is President Trump's chronic inability, both in business and as president, to reconcile his vision with reality.  He spent much of his business career decreeing that massive losses had magically turned to profits, and he now demands the Nobel Prize for ending wars that are still going on and claims in the face of the facts that no one has been murdered in Washington, D.C. for months.  He declared during the press conference that the Venezuelan vice president had told Secretary of State Rubio over the telephone that she would do whatever was necessary, but she is actually demanding that he release and return President Maduro.  And it would appear that there are no US forces left in Venezuela right now either to subdue the country or to "run" it.  Venezuela is larger in area than Texas and has a nearly equal population of about 30 million people.  As I write, Secretary Rubio has just announced that we will keep naval and military forces offshore in the Caribbean and continue to blockade oil exports as "leverage" against Venezuela.  Trump has just hinted that we might take direct, personal action against the vice president as well, if she doesn't cooperate.  This sounds like a new case of assuming that we can have whatever we want by wishing for it.  Rubio also made clear during yesterday's press conference that he would be glad to turn the nation's attention to regime change in Cuba, the home of his forbears.  

The abduction of Maduro has created a new media frenzy that will at least temporarily reduce attention to the Epstein documents.  It is the latest act in the long-running movie serial, Donald Trump, Superhero.  I would not dare guess what the ultimate result of all this will be.