Interventionism Comes Out of Retirement
Trump's regime change in Venezuela brings America back to the depths of the 2000s, but with much worse intentions.
Well, that escalated quickly.
President Trump’s brazen invasion and self-described “kidnapping” of Venezuela’s dictator is one thing I didn’t have on my bingo card for 2026, I’ll admit. Gone, apparently, are the months of persuading the public before a major military offensive. Dick Cheney must be looking up at us, pissed: he didn’t even need to lie about their evidence of weapons of mass destruction. You can just do what you want, apparently. He may as well have sold naming rights: called it Operation Iraqi Freedom brought to you by Halliburton.
I’m not an expert on Venezuelan politics, and I won’t pretend to even begin to guess what comes next. What I can say is that whatever comes next, we now own it. If we end up backing the remaining Maduro regime in exchange for oil rights, we own the absolute and devastating betrayal of the Venezuelan pro-democracy opposition. Apparently all because of the Nobel Peace Prize - literally. If we commit troops on the ground to keep order, keep a favored regime in power, or defend the oil rights we somehow believe we have, we will unbelievably, after just four years since leaving Afghanistan, be back in an occupation and land war. And if we do nothing, bury our heads in the sand, and Venezuela falls apart, we will own that too.
This is the crime that happened, from the American legal and democratic perspective. The oft-maligned statements by Democratic leaders about not being notified sound like whining to both defenders of Trump and those who want to call for his ouster. And that’s because Jeffries and Schumer can’t message to save their lives. But the Founders designated Congress in Article I to declare war for a reason. The War Powers Resolution strengthened, not weakened, Congress’ role after decades of it being eroded after World War II. These laws exist precisely to prevent a president from single-handedly committing the United States to a massive, region-changing conflict without so much as a debate.
We can’t take back what Trump decided to do on Friday. We can’t hand Maduro back and say “oopsies.” If Congress decided today to impeach and convict Trump and Vance and end this mess, we’d still have to figure out how to handle Venezuela moving forward because it already happened. Without a debate, without popular support, just one man deciding for us all. That’s exactly what is not supposed to happen here. When opposition figures appear on media this week, they should not be talking about “notifying Congress” or the War Powers Resolution. Low information voters will simply roll their eyes, that’s just bureaucracy. What they should be talking about is that Donald Trump promised no new wars, no nation building, and instead he committed American troops to a new occupation without asking the public - which he is constitutionally required to do. He violated the constitution, and he did it because he knew it would be unpopular to break campaign promises to his own voters.
There are videos of Venezuelan people both in the country and in the U.S., ecstatic that Maduro is gone. I certainly can’t blame them. Maduro and Chavez before him were totalitarian dictators that exploited genuine economic and political concerns in the country to enrich themselves and create a totalitarian police state. Trump has made clear concern about democracy and civil liberties played no part in his decision to remove Maduro - he has said it’s about revenge for their nationalization of American-owned oil assets, and I suspect also because he believes it will allow him to more easily deport Venezuelans who are in America. His shoving aside of the pro-democracy opposition in favor of Maduro’s deputy leader and existing government, at least for now, is another sign of how little he values or cares about democracy in Venezuela.
The likely opening of an ongoing conflict or occupation in Venezuela, and potential expansion of American troops across the hemisphere, opens up another question I often get about non-interventionism. I became a libertarian during the height of the Iraq war. Anti-interventionism has been a key foreign policy component of most of the candidates I’ve worked for. And yet I’ve also been critical of some “anti-interventionist” libertarians for their blind spot towards Russia and China.
“But Kevin,” I have literally been asked this week, “how can you oppose ‘freeing’ Venezuela if you support arming and supporting Ukraine?”
I do not support direct ground and air involvement in Ukraine, generally speaking, but I do support material and military support for the besieged country. It is becoming clearer and clearer that China and Russia see a world in which they control their regions either directly or through military and economic blackmail. This would result in an expansion of illiberal authoritarianism that poses the biggest threat to human liberty since the forced expansion of communism. Too many libertarians are afraid to admit or say that, either because they harbor pro-Russian sympathies through “alt-media” depictions of the country as anti-American imperialist or anti-“left”, or because they are too afraid of what that would commit America (and Europe) to militarily.
And I understand the latter. Deeply. I advocated for the significant shrinking of the DOD budget back in my younger years, when our wars were the main disrupting events on the world stage. Unfortunately those disastrous wars on our part helped set the stage for Russia and China’s parallel playbook. Russia is not only a threat to Ukraine remaining free and democratic, but is flexing their (limited) military muscle against the democratic nations in eastern Europe as well. China is a clear and present danger to free Taiwan, and has been a malevolent force in Asia and Africa for decades now.
As we used to say, non-interventionist is not isolationist. It is in fact the interventionists that have isolated us. Our proactive military and intelligence intervention in foreign countries throughout the Cold War had the effect of propping up dictators, driving much of Asia and Africa into the hands of Russia and China’s influence. And can you blame them? In the context of 2026 it might seem crazy that the ruling party of Africa’s most important and liberal democracy defends Russia, but given that the Soviets supported them in their fight against Apartheid rulers financed and backed by the West until it became clear their government wouldn’t survive, it makes much more sense.
Non-interventionism shouldn’t mean eschewing alliances, when they are defensive and pro-democracy and human freedom in nature. This is controversial in non-interventionist circles, in which many historically are anti-NATO. Yet an alliance which projects defensive strength and reduces the chances of an invasion of a democratic nation by another shouldn’t be controversial. But again, interventionism has led to NATO’s core mission stretching from defensive to offensive in the previous few decades, atrophying their support and strengthening Russia and China’s PR campaign against it.
Those of us who preach non-interventionism must speak and work against our own government’s efforts to destabilize democratic countries and alliances, such as our increasing and unignorable threats to Greenland and Denmark. I believe that we should eschew intervening militarily in authoritarian countries, such as Trump’s comments about militarily supporting anti-regime protestors in Iran. I hope beyond all hope that those protestors finally end the horrific Iranian government, and the way to guarantee that fails is to allow it to become an American-backed coup.
We should also make clear that non-interventionism doesn’t have to mean allowing Russia and China to carve up the world, to take over democratic countries through force or otherwise. It can mean defending Taiwan and Ukraine, arming Europe, and keeping a new Cold War from turning hot. It also means preventing the American government from becoming an authoritarian superpower, and that starts right here at home. Donald Trump promised non-intervention - he was lying. We knew throughout the last decade that he was lying, he proved it in his first term, and many libertarians and non-interventionists naively believed him. A decade later, they are now learning how wrong they were.