Washington Wednesday: The just war question

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday, January 7th. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Time now for Washington Wednesday!

MAST: First up: the aftermath of the Maduro capture.

In the days since the U.S. captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, the Trump administration has worked to make its case for the operation. Here’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio:

RUBIO: We are not going to be able to allow in our hemisphere a country that becomes a crossroads for the activities of all of our adversaries around the world. We just can’t allow it. We can’t have a country where the people in charge of its military and in charge of its police department are openly cooperating with drug trafficking organizations. We can’t – we’re not going to allow that. These are – these things are direct threats to the United States, and we intend to use every element of leverage that we have to ensure that that changes.

BROWN: On Capital Hill, the administration briefed lawmakers on the operation. WORLD’s Carolina Lumetta has more.

CAROLINA LUMETTA: One thing Republicans and Democrats can agree on: Nicolas Maduro was an illegitimate president and a dictator. But they differ on whether Saturday’s operation was constitutionally proper.

On CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Senate Intelligence Chair Tom Cotton said both the Maduro capture and the Iran strikes over the summer fall under Trump’s authority as the chief law enforcement officer for the country.

COTTON: He has the inherent authority under our Constitution to protect these American national interests as the chief law enforcement officer to make sure that indicted drug traffickers face justice whether they're indicted in Venezuela or indicted in the United States.

Earlier this week, Trump administration officials met with top leaders in Congress and members of key committees to answer questions about Operation Absolute Resolve. After the two-hour briefing, lawmakers appeared divided, mostly on party lines.

Many Democrats have questioned whether President Donald Trump had the authority to bomb Caracas without first seeking congressional approval.

Congressman Gregory Meeks is the Democratic ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He’s critical of both the orders and the plan moving forward.

MEEKS: The military did its job, it had a plan, et cetera. All of that was great, as far as that's concerned—I don't like the orders that they were given—but I can't say the same for the plan after.

President Trump has said that for now the U.S. will run Venezuela, and get the ball rolling for elections later. Maduro’s hand-picked vice president, Delcy Rodriguez has taken the oath of office as the interim president. But Trump said he could authorize a second strike at any time if Rodriguez doesn’t cooperate.

Senator Roger Wicker is the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He says the operation was in the national interest:

WICKER: I think the president’s and the secretaries’ justifications, as stated to the press, were correct. It was a necessary thing to do to protect the United States

He also expressed his trust in the administration’s ability to handle a transition.

WICKER: I think we have a lot of professionals running this and I have confidence in them.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has called the operation decisive and correct. He says Trump complied with a requirement to report to Congress within 48 hours of a military engagement. Article 1 of the Constitution says Congress must make the decision to go to war. But in a news conference announcing the operation, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it was a law enforcement action, not an act of war.

RUBIO: We called members of Congress immediately after. This was not the kind of mission that you can do congressional notification on. It was a trigger-based mission in which conditions had to be met. Night after night we monitored that for a number of days…It's just not the kind of mission that you can pre-notify because it endangers the mission.

Some lawmakers argue that this still violated the legislative branch’s authority to advise and consent. Here’s Kentucky Senator Rand Paul.

PAUL: It's a way of saying we're going to commit war, but we're going to call it a law enforcement operation… You could say, well, then we don't have to ask Congress or the people for a declaration of war against Saudi Arabia. We could just fly in there, swoop in there, bomb the capital, and take them.

Democrats, including Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, say even indictments and secret operations do not justify the administration’s actions.

MURPHY: It doesn't, doesn't matter. The Constitution doesn't have a carve out for sneak attacks on countries that don't present an imminent threat to the United States of America.

The Senate is expected to vote this week on a resolution demanding the White House to end hostilities in the Caribbean until Congress approves. Similar resolutions in both chambers were voted down last year.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Carolina Lumetta in Washington.

MAST: Joining us now to talk about it is political scientist Hunter Baker. He is a WORLD Opinions Contributor and provost at North Greenville University. Good morning Hunter!

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning!

MAST: Hunter, there were months of increasing pressure on Venezuela…

NBC: The US escalating pressure against Venezuela by designating a cartel group allegedly tied to president Nicolas Maduro as a foreign terrorist organization. CNN: A surprise military deployment is on its way to the coast of Venezuela… >>CNN: US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announcing the US carried out a new military strike on an alleged drug trafficking boat. CBS: Today the world’s biggest aircraft carrier the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford arrived in the Caribbean Sea.

…But I don’t know that many people saw a direct operation like this coming. I suspect there were big political moves going into it, and more to come. So walk us through what you see as the politics of Trump’s decision to remove Nicolas Maduro from power.

BAKER: Well, I want to note, you know, we've been talking about this for for quite a while. In terms of the the drug boats and the the U.S. military presence outside the country, there was tremendous telegraphing being done. The administration tried to build off ramps. It won't be stated this way, but they they tried to give Maduro opportunities to take a lot of money with him, basically to go away, because, if you're the administration, you really want to avoid the messy part of this that we are now in. But Maduro did not accept any kind of deals or opportunities to go off to Cuba or Russia or whatever. And so now we've done the part that we're really good at, the quick military action, as we saw in Iran and as we've now seen in Venezuela.

But what comes now is the hard part, what we're going to actually do in Venezuela now that we have removed Maduro, and in terms of the politics of it, of course, it affects Donald Trump. I mean, Donald Trump is at the top of this, but there's also Marco Rubio. Marco Rubio, I think a lot of people sense that he is sort of a prime author of this action, he is the person who is obviously the most keenly interested. Rubio is a classic Cuban American who has strong feelings about communists and socialists in Latin America, and who wants to reverse the progress they made to make sure that people are free. JD Vance, you know, it's been pointed out to me by serious Washington insider, Vance is maybe on the other side of this thing. You know, he's making the right noises, but he has been largely absent, and that's because he may feel differently. You know, as a former enlisted man in the U.S. military may be much more reserved about the kind of things that could lead to boots on the ground. So right now, it's almost like we're looking at a sort of a high risk venture, and if it works out well, it's going to look really good for Donald Trump, and it's going to look really good for Marco Rubio.

BROWN: While this was a law enforcement action–Maduro being forced to answer an indictment in an American court Monday, there are obviously greater matters at hand. Donald Trump has already referred to oil and a renewal of the Monroe Doctrine with regard to foreign powers in the American hemisphere. How should Christians be thinking about this situation?

BAKER: Well, there was a, there was a guest on the show yesterday, Admiral Montgomery, who used the phrase, we need to fixate on the democracy issue over against maybe the oil issue or the, or the money issue. And I think as Christians, we do need to be doing that. It is important what kind of rights the people of Venezuela have. The moral credibility of the United States is important. And I think that the idea of rescue is important here. There was a great Wall Street Journal editorial earlier in the week that pointed out that, no, this is not like we just went in and toppled some legitimate head of state. We toppled somebody who I think that, I think a person like Augustine would describe as a gangster, somebody who is ruling purely by force and without justice. And and we've gone in and we've rescued these people, or we're trying to rescue them from that regime. And I think that that's entirely valid, and the fact that the people who were elected and repressed have kind of given their approval lends credence to that. But so people are going to be watching what we do and where we put our attention, and it needs to be on more things than just the oil.

MAST: The Venezuela intervention comes from a president who made a name, in part, in 2016 by promising not to get involved in foreign entanglements of the type in Iraq and Afghanistan that cost trillions of dollars and many lives. Some predict the same situation could play out in Venezuela. What are your thoughts on the Trump administration’s capability and desire to bring about real change in Venezuela?

BAKER: Given our recent history, I was not at all surprised that the immediate sort of commentary, especially from Democrats, with regard to this action in Venezuela, centered on our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. And certainly, I mean, so there are some parallels. I mean, in Iraq and Afghanistan, we were very confident. I was one of those people. You know, our way of life, democracy, human rights, this is so appealing. We're going to be able to spread this model around the world, even as the Soviet Union fell, we're going to be able to take this everywhere, China, the Middle East. We're significantly chastened now relative to how we were then.

However, it's really important to look at Venezuela and to see it as different. Venezuela has a different history, a different people, a different religion. Venezuela is formerly a very prosperous country with a formerly booming economy, and they have had a functioning democracy in the past. So I think it's going to be a totally different kind of a situation to help them to recover what was lost in this quarter century of socialist authoritarianism in the region.

Nevertheless, it is tricky. People may see, you know, you took out Maduro. Okay. Why aren't we immediately putting in Machado or Gonzales? Why don't we immediately have a new election, and the answer is, we are not in control on the ground. I mean, we are able to exert pressure. We have leverage, significant leverage, but we are not actually there with our military calling the shots. And so I think it's going to have to be worked out. Right now. We're working through this vice president. There are a number of other figures in the Venezuelan government who are very powerful, and so we're going to try to work with them right now in the short term. But I think that longer term, you're going to have to try to find some way to bring about elections.

MAST: Hunter, I want to follow up with that real quick. I know in recent months, the President has taken a lot of criticism for being so involved in foreign affairs as opposed to domestic ones. And although there was the increasing pressure on Venezuela, it's not like he wasn't paying attention there. But here we have yet another very real, very serious situation that's going to require that attention. How do you see that affecting his presidency and maybe his effectiveness here at home?

BAKER: Well, it's interesting. The American psychology is highly affected by things like gas prices, and gas prices affect other prices in our economy. I don't know about you. I have felt just a little bit better because I paid $2.15 at the pump recently. And so, you know, people may be experiencing that a little bit. We've had some good economic reports with regard to the growth of the economy. So maybe, maybe a little bit of pressure has been relieved there. I think that hopefully we're going to avoid another government shutdown. So, so on the economic side, things are maybe feeling a little bit better here in the short term.

But yes, I mean, Americans are sensitive. Certainly, we saw, I think, they disapproved of George H.W. Bush when they felt that he was far too focused on on international matters instead of, instead of American things. But this is easier for Americans to understand, I think, than the stuff that's often Asia or the Middle East. This is our neighborhood, and Americans, I think, have typically understood that it matters what's happening in our neighborhood, whether it's Cuba or other parts of Latin America.

MAST: Hunter Baker is provost at North Greenville University. Hunter, thank you so much.

BAKER: Thank you.

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