On Venezuela and the Risks of an Overstretched Military

Drug Interdiction and Shaping Operations

Satellite imagery from the European Space Agency Satelite-2 showing American vessels off the coast of Venezuela. Retrieved from here

Trump is overstretching our military.

Our capabilities across domains are carefully arrayed against specific threats. We build war plans and contingencies years in advance and allocate resources accordingly. At the present moment, American forces are structured to fight one major theater war while maintaining strategic capabilities in another. For example, the United States can theoretically meet the military challenge of a country like Russia or China while simultaneously deterring other adversaries. The United States can maintain this posture while also managing a small number of contingency operations in other parts of the world. These contingencies can include the emergency evacuation of American citizens in response to a crisis abroad, or the delivery of humanitarian aid following a natural disaster.

When we aren’t actively fighting, we are training, conducting readiness exercises, and overhauling platforms in the Air Force and Navy. War plans are continually updated, tested, and ready for implementation.The focus of American military strategy in the current moment should be on preparing for the next war, most likely involving great-power competition in the Indo-Pacific or European theaters. We can walk and chew gum at the same time: our military can manage limited strike missions and contingencies while preparing for major wars. What we cannot do, however, is sustain domestic policing missions or launch open-ended campaigns against narcotraffickers without undermining readiness.

The border policing mission has already changed the posturing of active Marine and Army units. Today, we see the deployment of troops in U.S. cities like Washington DC and Los Angeles and threats to expand this policing role to a half-dozen more. Parallel to these domestic operations, the United States has assembled a flotilla for counternarcotics operations that doubles as preparation for possible strikes on Venezuela. This is not sustainable. If the goal were simply a show of force to deter illegal immigration and drug trafficking, the effect on readiness would be minimal. But the Trump administration is signaling something far more expansive. These missions amount to a lawless, inefficient misuse of U.S. military power, all of which undermining the Department of Defense’s core responsibility to defend the nation.

We’ve seen this mistake before. During the Bush 43 presidency, the United States embarked on a war of choice against an imaginary threat in Iraq, distracting us from the existential challenges posed by a resurgent Russia and emerging China. Those adversaries exploited our strategic diversion to accelerate their rise. The Trump administration risks repeating this folly by entangling the military in missions it was never designed for, once again enabling opportunism by our most dangerous enemies.

Finally, I am deeply concerned about the growing pretext for attacking Venezuela. Trump’s first administration included prominent Venezuela hawks and saber-rattling was a recurring theme. The signals coming from the White House today suggest a return to that playbook with talk of air and missile strikes couched in the language of counternarcotics operations, yet carrying an unmistakable undertone of regime change. The administration is attempting to justify potential attacks on narcotraffickers by designating them as terrorists, but this rationale is legally dubious at best. Drug trafficking, even when conducted by violent criminal organizations, falls into a different category under international law and stretching the definition of terrorism to cover these actors sets a dangerous precedent. This opens the door for any administration to invoke “counterterrorism” authority for military action in virtually any context, eroding the checks and balances meant to restrain the use of force.

Equally concerning is the strategic recklessness of escalating against Venezuela under these terms. Caracas remains deeply unstable, with a collapsing economy and a population already suffering from food shortages, mass emigration, and political repression. A U.S. military strike framed as counternarcotics interdiction could trigger a wider conflict in the region, drive Maduro closer to Moscow and Beijing, and invite asymmetric retaliation across the hemisphere. Worse, it risks entangling the United States in yet another open-ended campaign without clear objectives or an exit strategy. The danger is not only that we waste precious military resources on an ill-defined mission, but that we further diminish our ability to deter real adversaries, such as Russia and China, who would see in our distraction a green light to press their advantage elsewhere.

In short, the Venezuela option reflects both the erosion of legal guardrails and the corrosion of strategic judgment. By conflating law enforcement with national defense, the Trump administration is undermining the legitimacy of U.S. power abroad and exposing the nation to long-term strategic costs that far outweigh any tactical gains.