‘Jackassery’: Former Senior National Security Officials Rip Trump’s Attack On Venezuela

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s military action in Venezuela is further isolating the United States from the rest of the world, was carried out with no strategy on next steps, threatens to destabilize Latin America and raises concerns about the president’s mental decline, warned a group of former senior national security officials.

In a Tuesday call with reporters, veteran former CIA and foreign policy officials struggled to convey the level of ineptitude and recklessness they see in Trump’s decision last week to send U.S. forces into Venezuela in the middle of the night to capture President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. Both are now in New York City, facing charges brought by the U.S. government.

“There’s no process in our foreign policy anymore,” said Luis Moreno, a former ambassador to Jamaica and former foreign policy official with years of experience in the Caribbean. “We’re doing foreign policy, and defense policy to a certain extent, via tweet at 3 o’clock in the morning, and everyone has to respond to that.”

Because Trump didn’t seek congressional authorization ahead of the military attack, which is required by the Constitution, Republican and Democratic foreign policy leaders on Capitol Hill are in the dark on what the U.S. is doing in Venezuela, a country of 28 million people who have already endured decades of political repression and corruption.

The Trump administration has yet to lay out a coherent plan for what happens now. Trump has claimed the U.S. will now ”run” Venezuela and be “very much involved” in taking the country’s oil. Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried to walk that back, saying the U.S. is overseeing the “direction” of the country. Vice President JD Vance said the raid was about “narcoterrorists,” while Rubio linked it to Iran and Hezbollah.

But Trump has also suggested the surprise raid was in part an economic decision, referring to Venezuela’s oil as “stolen American oil” and saying he consulted with U.S. oil companies before and after the raid, something they’ve disputed. This framing comes at a time when Trump’s economic approval hit a new low last month, at 36%.

The decision to remove Maduro by force is particularly “disturbing” because it underscores how Trump is shifting the U.S. away from the goal of supporting democracy and human rights globally, and toward something dark, said Brian Naranjo, a former senior foreign service officer who spent more than 30 years serving primarily in the Western Hemisphere.

“This is an effort, quite frankly, that looks very neo-imperialist to me, and neo-colonial,” Naranjo said. Other countries in the Western Hemisphere are now reorganizing themselves to better prepare to push back against the United States, he said, which is eroding decades of work by U.S. diplomats to build stronger relations with these nations.

“This jackassery that is being inflicted by the White House is being taken quite seriously downrange in the hemisphere,” he said. “For all intents and purposes, the United States is going alone on this, but for the absence of a plan, resources and manpower.”

Democrats in Congress have been demanding that lawmakers immediately pass legislation reining in Trump’s war powers on Venezuela, which is precisely the role that Congress is supposed to fulfill under the Constitution. They’ve emphasized that while Maduro is a corrupt dictator, his regime didn’t pose the kind of immediate threat to the U.S. that justifies bypassing congressional approval.

“It is simply unacceptable that Donald Trump continues ignoring that constitutional requirement,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), an Iraq War combat veteran and co-sponsor of a war powers resolution on Venezuela, said in a statement.

Trump’s comments suggesting an open-ended military presence in Venezuela have already brought comparisons to the Iraq War disaster.

“While Donald Trump may never understand that the true costs of war are measured not only in dollars and cents, but in the blood, sweat and sacrifices of our troops and our military families, our servicemembers know all too well just how costly it can be when our nation engages in a war for oil without a plan for what comes next,” Duckworth said.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is the only Republican who signed on to the Venezuela war resolution. Most other GOP senators have shrugged, saying they think Trump already has the authority to unilaterally carry out military raids like the kind he ordered in Venezuela. The line for them, it seems, is when it could involve sending U.S. ground troops into the country.

To be sure, past U.S. presidents have taken direct military action against foreign leaders. Former President George H. W. Bush, for one, ordered the 1989 invasion of Panama that led to the detention of dictator Manuel Noriega, who surrendered and faced drug trafficking charges in the United States.

But Steven Nash, a former CIA official and specialist in intelligence operations, said the “constellation of events” surrounding Trump’s military raid in Venezuela makes this incident stand apart from others.

“The lack of any briefing of Congress, the lack of any authorization or even discussion of this, and in fact, multiple reports of affirmative misinformation put into Congress by, among others, Secretary Rubio, I do think is certainly, in the 20th and 21st century, unprecedented,” said Nash, who is currently the executive director of The Steady State, a network of former senior national security officials and the group that organized Tuesday’s press call.

Republicans on Capitol Hill need to wake up to their role in overseeing the president’s military actions, he said, offering pointed questions for them.

“Are you really giving up the foreign affairs power that is entrusted to Congress under the Constitution? Are you giving up your appropriation powers entrusted in the Constitution?” Nash asked. “Are you concerned that you have a leader now who seems to be acting much more in the mold of authoritarians … than any previous president?”

Trump, of course, ultimately decides the path ahead for the U.S. and Venezuela, and that’s precisely what worries longtime national security experts. He is erratic and impulsive, and at 79, critics are increasingly concerned about his mental state.

“The worry that we all have … is the president, the man himself, who is sinking deeper into a dementia of some sort,” said Bill Piekney, a former CIA executive who served the intelligence agency for 30 years.

“He can’t speak. He can’t think,” Piekney said. “The absence of any Kissingerian-like figure who can sit down and do long-term, strategic planning is absolutely staggering.”

And unlike in his first term, Trump has now surrounded himself completely with advisers too afraid to stand up to him. With congressional leaders showing little appetite for reining in his military plans and Trump’s inner circle simply following orders, it’s hard to see what guardrails are even left.

“There is absolutely no one around him who can lasso him and bring him back down from whatever dangerous positions he has chosen,” Piekney added. “In fact, they enable and embolden and empower him.”