|
|
|
January 8, 2026 Bulletin 371b: Some background and talking points in support of no further illegal military action in Venezuela and beyond Contribute if you can! Our work depends on you!
Dear friends and colleagues -- This is a long Bulletin. Even so it omits crucial aspects of the present situation. We had to cut it off. You will have your own sources. First, this morning's vote advanced S.J.Res. 98 out of committee by a vote of 52 to 47, which was somewhat unexpected. As the Associated Press reports, the resolution still has little chance of becoming law (because of an expected Trump veto, should it pass), but could be an important marker of congressional discontent regarding solely-presidential commitments of military force going forward. Voting in favor of bringing the measure to the floor (where I thought it was already) were Josh Hawley of Missouri, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Todd Young of Indiana. According to AP, Tim Kaine, the main sponsor of this legislation said Wednesday that a resolution addressing the same issues as regards Greenland, Cuba, Mexico, Colombia and Nigeria would soon be filed. Politico has a summary of why these 5 Republicans voted as they did. Back in December, there were related measures in the House (here, here) which failed along party lines. We aren't sure when S.J. Res. 98 will be debated and voted on again but believe it will be next week. Yesterday, Rep. Jim McGovern and Rep. Thomas Massie introduced H.Con.Res. 64 ("To direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against Venezuela that have not been authorized by Congress"), which was referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. We urge people everywhere to call or write their representatives to support this resolution. Since writing the above, the libertarian/right news blog ZeroHedge has weighed in, calling this morning's Senate vote a "harsh rebuke" of Trump's Venezuela actions, past and proposed (in Venezuela and elsewhere). ******* Second, as you will have read, yesterday President Trump said he was going to ask for a mind-blowing 50% increase in military spending, to $1.5 trillion. The President is required by law to submit his proposed budget by the first Monday in February, although this rarely seems to happen. We will see then whether Mr. Trump follows through on this (irrational) commitment. That much money would be necessary to build "Trump-class" nuclear-armed battleships, the "Golden Dome", and so on, but money can't buy you love, as expressed in willing skilled workers. Or at least it cannot do so that fast. Needless to say, an extra $500 billion in defense would drain workers and potential workers from the civilian industrial economy, or what would be left of it. Should such a budget be enacted, military spending (not counting nuclear weapons in NNSA, foreign military assistance, military programs in NASA, and other military-related expenses) would come to more than $11,100 per U.S. household per year. In addition to these current national defense costs (in the "050" budget account), there is also spending for veterans affairs. And then there is the cost of interest on all this borrowed money. Current military spending (using $1 trillion, again an undercount), comes to $7,600 per U.S. household, already a heavy burden on current and future citizens. We believe this is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, peace and disarmament organizing opportunities in recent decades. ******* Third, I said we would provide some background on the use of military force in Venezuela. I understand that probably you are by now replete with such resources. We apologize for sending that last Bulletin without much in the way of background or talking points. We are still sorting out what we can do about this latest "turn of the screw" of U.S. lawlessness abroad. It is a non-trivial strategic problem, with both immediate and long-term aspects. Our primary work here has been and remains nuclear disarmament and arms control, but those efforts require respectful international relationships, respect for treaties including the U.N. Charter, and respect for international law in general. These foundational aspects are now largely missing in the U.S., which is now openly adopting a "might makes right" approach to international relations. Or as the Athenians put it on Melos, "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." The Russians call us "non-agreement-capable." In the absence of respected legal norms and national integrity, "[m]ere anarchy is loosed upon the world." The new operative word here is "mere." There was plenty of lawlessness in the three decades preceding the military action in Venezuela, and more before that, but this time around the thin veneer of justice, legality, and morality is almost gone. Nearly gone, but not entirely. There is a glimmer of resistance, and there we must start. Our institutions are corrupt but not entirely so. Most people, on the other hand, aren't individually corrupt and don't want to be. The human conscience has not gone away, and won't. The coup d'etat, kidnapping, show trial, and potential occupation of Venezuela is a political test, and a test of character, for all of us -- liberals, progressives, socialists, and MAGA factions alike. However difficult it may be to restrain an empire run amok, we all know that our democracy deficit, and its effects, will only get worse if we do not find ways to effectively act, and sustainably so, sooner rather than later. ******* Trump's action was illegal under international law One hardly knows where to start, it is so obvious. How about with Marjorie Cohn, who explains the applicable law in the simplest terms ("White House Can’t Make Venezuela Attack Legal"). In passing we should note that the invasion of Venezuela, which caused mass casualties, the kidnapping and coup d'etat, any continuing military occupation, and any seizure of resources or forced sale, are all separately illegal. Not being an expert, I don't know all the laws involved, but violation of the U.N. Charter at Article 2 Section 4 is just the beginning of the illegalities. Further, illegal actions are still happening and are still being planned. Some, perhaps the worst if they come to pass, can be stopped. S. J. Res. 98 and H.Con.Res. 64 could help do that. We are not just analyzing or opposing crimes in the recent past, but also crimes still underway and yet to come. Passage of these resolutions, even with a Trump veto, would show the world, our own citizens, and Congress itself that democracy and rule of law are not entirely dead in the U.S. This would be very much in the U.S. interest. All forms of nonviolent protest would contribute to that end. In passing we have to acknowledge that many past military attacks, wars, regime changes, and occupations over recent decades have had far worse humanitarian impacts than this one has, so far. No doubt "humanitarian" concerns will be used to justify continued occupation -- which would nonetheless be illegal. *** Jeffrey Sachs January 5 testimony before the U.N. Security Council is outstanding. Sachs begins by distinguishing the issue at hand from any judgment that might be made about the government of Venezuela, which is NOT the issue at hand. The issue is whether the U.N. Charter, specifically Article 2(4), was and is being violated, and whether the Trump Administration is making a direct assault on the entire purpose of the U.N. We know the U.S. has waged wars of aggression, staged interventions, and otherwise violated fundamental international law literally hundreds of times since World War II. Sachs touches upon that history, and then proceeds to summarize what he accurately describes as "a continuous United States regime-change effort" in Venezuela spanning more than two decades. Sachs notes that in the past year, the U.S. has bombed seven countries (Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and Venezuela), none with authorization from the Security Council and none in lawful self-defense under the Charter. In the past month alone, President Trump has issued direct threats against "at least six U.N. member states, including Colombia, Denmark, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria and of course Venezuela." (I am not sure why Cuba was not on Sachs' list. It should be. The threat may not have been explicit enough to meet Sachs' definition of a "direct" threat. And then there is the proxy war in Ukraine, which many times has involved bombing Russia, and Russian civilians, and the Russian nuclear deterrent.) Sachs concludes with suggested Security Council actions. I am tempted to say that with the U.S. having veto power there, no significant Security Council action will be taken, but the debate itself may help restrain or temper U.S. aggression. *** Craig Murray takes a well-informed, strong line we also urge you to read ("Venezuela & Truth," Jan. 5). He writes of the wider bankruptcy of international law in the West today, reminding us of the genocide in Gaza in that connection.
We would add that the illegal U.S.-sponsored coup in Ukraine, widely supported in Europe, which also featured mass casualties right from the beginning in the Maidan, was the proximate cause of the war there, which has raged in various forms and intensities since 2014. This a war which the U.S. and its allies wanted and planned, for the express and sometimes explicit purpose of destroying Russia once and for all. That war, born from a U.S.-led coup d' etat, has since claimed a million lives and nearly destroyed Ukraine. The ongoing "defeat of the West" (Emmanuel Todd) in moral, military, and economic terms, has led directly to Trump's new National Security Strategy and the so-called "Donroe Doctrine" (which has nothing to do with the original Monroe Doctrine and is illegal in its essence). Overextending and defeating Russia was central to the old imperial "Plan A." That didn't work. Acquiring and controlling Venezuela's resources was always central to U.S. plans, but in Trump's National Security Strategy ("Plan B") the timetable shortened and its forcefulness increased. ******* Trump's action was illegal under domestic law Yesterday, a good review at Just Security ("Congress, the President, and the Use of Military Force in Venezuela") examines the legality of Trump's invasion, kidnapping, and coup under domestic law. One of the authors involved in that piece (Ryan Goodman) also produced a timely and interesting analysis of the relation of domestic law binding on the President to the U.N. Charter ("Maduro Capture Operation and the President’s Duty to Faithfully Execute U.N. Charter," Jan. 3, 2026). I am in no position to fully evaluate these memos against the case the Justice Department will present in New York, but will note that as is often the case, common sense shines through. And facts matter. When the President and his senior officials say, for example, that they want to "run" Venezuela, this stated intent has legal import, undercutting the notion that this was purely a "law enforcement" action. Arguments about U.S. precedent and the likely legal outcome alone (e.g. from Jonathan Turley here) do not look just to my eye, however accurate or predictive they may be as regards what a U.S. court will do. We should remind ourselves that all three "Madisonian" (aka constitutional) branches of government have been largely overwhelmed by the "Trumanite" national security institutions, values, and precedents of the Pentagon, CIA, and National Security Council, as Michael Glennon convincingly argues (National Security and Double Government). That includes the federal court system. More than a decade ago, three well-known attorneys here in New Mexico told us, in so many words, "No combination of facts and law could ever convince a federal judge to pause a large national security project in New Mexico." The old Roman saying, "inter arma, silent leges" (in war the laws are silent) apparently now also applies in "peacetime." In the present case, we might predict that no combination of facts and law could ever bring a U.S. federal judge to risk denying to the United States effective ownership, via theft, of the largest oil reserves on the planet. ******* The significance of law, treaties, and national honor, even in the breach The anonymous Bernhard, or "b", a German in Hamburg who writes at the highly-recommended Moon of Alabama blog, provided an excellent short essay on "Why ‘Might Makes Right’ Is Dangerous For All of Us" (Jan. 6). We urge you to read it and if you have time, its main references, especially Arnaud Bertrand. Scott Ritter, who wrote about the legality of Trump's Venezuela action prior to the appearance of the above legal analyses from Just Security, and he is not a lawyer. Nonetheless does get to something near the political and moral heart of the matter when he plucks the notion of "honor" from a 1884 ruling written by Justice Samuel Freeman Miller, which states in part,
Ritter, the Marine veteran, then has a lot to say about "honor." It is a politically-significant concept domestically as well as internationally. Nations which behave shamelessly, without honor, do so to their own great peril. ******* The significance of U.S. public debt in the Venezuela action and beyond Trump's action in Venezuela cannot be understood without taking into account the enormous debt of the United States, the interest on which must be serviced to the tune of more than $1 trillion per year, and the principle variously rolled over into new debt instruments sold to willing buyers as the old instruments mature. Samir Saul and Michel Seymour lay out the implications of this for U.S. imperialism in a very fine essay sent to us by Bob Anderson of Albuquerque ("Year-end review: US imperialism at a crossroads, requiem for Europe"). We find this essay largely harmonious with our own views and urge everyone to read it. This really serious financial problem is what will propel the U.S. to take dramatic action elsewhere, e.g. in Greenland. The resources are not needed right now, but the money is. To quote Pete Hegseth, "We spent decades and decades, and spent purchased [sic] in blood and got nothing economically in return....[T]hrough strategic action, we can ensure we can have access to additional wealth and resources, enabling a country to unleash that, without having to spend American blood." Wealth, he said, not just resources. That was correct. Larry Johnson, whose blog we also highly recommend, rightly calls Trump a "robber baron:"
To quote the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., "You cannot continue to have the largest energy reserves in the world under the control of adversaries of the United States..." As you probably know, the Department of Energy is moving quickly to reassure U.S. oil companies, urging them to invest in Venezuela, no doubt with U.S. government guarantees and help. This is a rapidly-moving story which we aren't tracking day by day. As far as can be ascertained, a lot of "nation-building" and "boots on the ground" will be required to stabilize the situation, for a long time. Most Venezuelan crude is very heavy, and expensive to produce. It is possible -- though we have not looked into the matter closely -- that Venezuelan heavy oil is too expensive to produce at prevailing oil prices. ******* We are going to have to leave out the topic of the extensive prior drug trafficking by the U.S. government in Central and South America, including pre-Chavez Venezuela, and Marco Rubio's own personal history. We have to end this long Bulletin without any discussion of what can be done, beyond the obvious and increasing centrality of militarism already mentioned and its relevance to lives and careers across the U.S. As Emmanuel Todd recently put it, I can sketch out here a model of the dislocation of the West, despite the inconsistencies of the policies of Donald Trump, the defeated American president. These inconsistencies do not result, I believe, from an unstable and undoubtedly perverse personality, but from an insoluble dilemma for the United States. On the one hand, their leaders, both in the Pentagon and the White House, know that the war is lost and that Ukraine will have to be abandoned. Common sense therefore leads them to want to get out of the war. But on the other hand, the same common sense makes them realise that the withdrawal from Ukraine will have dramatic consequences for the Empire that those from Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan did not have. This is indeed the first American strategic defeat on a global scale, in a context of massive deindustrialisation in the United States and difficult reindustrialisation....Imperial dynamics, or rather imperial inertia, continue to undermine the dream of a return to the productive nation state. (emphasis by b at Moon of Alabama) The implications for outreach to MAGA and MAGA-adjacent factions are obvious. Thank you, Greg Mello, for the Study Group |
|||
|
|
|||
|