President Trump warns Venezuela, won't rule out a military solution.

From left to right. Sec. State Rex Tillerson, President Donald Trump, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster.

President Trump responded to the Venezuela crisis by saying that he won't rule out a military option to deal with dictator Nicolas Maduro. Reuters. The United States sanctioned Maduro after he instituted a people's assembly that left out opposition groups and cracked down on opposition figures. Violence has occurred in Venezuela where 120 people have died in protests and thousands have been arrested. Trump refused to clarify what he meant by a military option saying he wouldn't discuss it. Trump, of course, has other options as well, especially sanctions on Venezuela's oil industry. 

My Comment:

This seems like the media getting worked up about nothing. The exact quote was this: 

"The people are suffering and they are dying. We have many options for Venezuela including a possible military option if necessary"[emphasis mine]

The key word in that quote is "many options". The media is making it sound like this is Trump's first option when nothing could be further from the truth. He's just stating the obvious. We can, if we want to, utterly destroy Venezuela's government. That is not in doubt. 

Of course, we have other options besides military strikes. The first and most obvious is further sanctions against Venezuela. Venezuela's economy is based on oil exports and the collapse of oil prices and the countries refusal to reinvest in their oil industry has already hurt them. New sanctions against their oil industry would probably completely collapse their economy and then their government. 

Doing so would have consequences. Though Venezuela's influence on the global oil markets have decreased and we are now energy independent (we now export oil), sanctions would increase oil prices. Not only does this hurt the American consumer it also hurts America's leverage with other oil producing countries. This includes Russia, and oil is one of our major areas of leverage against them. 

Sanctions would also have an obvious negative effect for the people of Venezuela who are already on the verge of starvation. Their economy is in shambles already and pushing them over the edge would probably cause chaos and destruction. We would probably get bad press from the international media who have ideological reasons to back up the leftist government of Venezuela. 

Another option is supporting resistance groups in Venezuela. This could be something as simple as giving them money or something as controversial as giving them weapons. There are opposition groups in Venezuela but they don't have the funds or weapons to start an insurgency. One group has tried but they lost half their numbers in a raid that secured weapons.

Doing so seems unlikely though. We have not had a lot of luck in funding rebels lately, especially in the Middle East. Donald Trump especially dislikes this option and has ended most of our efforts to do similar things in Syria. I find it extremely unlikely that he would do so in Venezuela after rejecting the option in Syria. 

Trump always had a point when he criticized our efforts to arm rebels in Syria. In short, we never had accountability where those arms went. Many times they went to Islamic rebels and were used against our interest. Funding rebels against Venezuela might get rid of their far left government but it makes little sense to overthrow it if we get a far right one or another far left one. 

Another option is to contact the Venezuela's military and supporting a coup. This has a long and proud history in South American politics and the CIA has gotten very good at doing so. The problem is that the military is largely supportive of Maduro. The officers have been well taken care off by Maduro and have little to gain by betraying him. Still there has to be at least one that will take that option up if offered, especially if the economy tanks due to sanctions. 

The military option is probably the last and least likely option. Trump generally isn't interested in nation building and I doubt his base would support a war of choice against Venezuela. Doing so would be unpopular and would not gain the United States anything. 

I am guessing that if we were to go to war with Venezuela it wouldn't be much of a war. Yes they have MANPADS, but we have the most powerful military in the world. They wouldn't stand a chance against a conventional war and even that seems unlikely. Instead I see a surgical strike on Maduro himself as that would be all we needed to do. 

But I think that would be extremely unlikely. So why did Trump say that the option was on the table? Well, what does he gain from taking it off the table? The press will still hate whatever he does period, let alone against Venezuela. He won't gain any good press for anything he does, even if he raised the dead the media would bash him. 

I also think it's pretty clear that Trump is taking a page from two other Republican presidents. Richard Nixon was famous for developing the "Madman theory", and Ronald Reagan had used the same thing as well. In short, the Madman theory suggests to our foreign opponents that the president is unstable and irrational, while nothing of the sort is true. That worked for Richard Nixon who was able to end the war in Vietnam in part because the North Vietnamese were terrified of what Nixon would do. 

It's very clear that Trump is channeling Nixon and that should be pretty obvious from his threats against Venezuela and North Korea. Trump always said his foreign policy was going to be unpredictable. It's fairly obvious that he is doing so, but our media just can't figure it out.