The Regime Changers Work for the President

Yes, blame Rubio for his part in this unfolding disaster, but it is Trump’s policy and he deserves most of the blame for it.

Juan David Rojas comments on the Trump administration’s regime change policy in Venezuela:

The regime-change faction, in other words, has got the upper hand. But how? Blame the regime-change capital of the Americas, Miami, and its native son, Marco Rubio.

It is true that Rubio has been the driving force behind Trump’s aggressive Venezuela policy in the second term just as he was in the first. When Rubio was nominated to be Secretary of State, I warned that he would have a baleful influence on U.S. foreign policy, especially when it came to Latin America. On anything related to Venezuela and Cuba, Rubio has always been an ideological fanatic. Rubio’s role in the administration practically guaranteed that Trump’s policies in the region would be hardline and interventionist.

When Trump selected Rubio to serve in a top position, he was confirming that this is the kind of foreign policy he wanted. When he made Rubio his “temporary” National Security Advisor earlier this year, he was putting an interventionist zealot in charge of his foreign policy. The U.S. is pursuing regime change in Venezuela because Trump has been in favor of doing this for years, and he surrounded himself with hawks who want the same thing. Yes, blame Rubio for his part in this unfolding disaster, but it is Trump’s policy and he deserves most of the blame for it.

Rojas writes that the regime change faction “got the upper hand,” but there was never a time when it didn’t have that advantage. There has been a narrative in the press that there was a tug-of-war over the direction of Venezuela policy under Trump, but the outcome of that struggle was never really in doubt. If it was a tug-of-war, one side was much stronger and the other had maybe one or two people.

Some misguided conservatives may have held out hope that Trump wasn’t going to pursue regime change in Venezuela again, but this was largely wishful thinking. If personnel is policy, Trump made clear months ago what his policy was going to be and it wasn’t going to be one of engagement and commerce. The failure of Trump’s Venezuela policy in the first term should have made him change course, but intead he chose to put the authors of that failed policy in charge. Once that happened, Trump’s Venezuela policy was bound to be horrible.

Many analysts have made the same big mistake in interpreting Trump’s foreign policy over the years. They take his belated, opportunistic criticism of the Iraq war in 2016 as if it were a guiding principle of his entire foreign policy worldview instead of the cynical political posturing that it always was. Many people take for granted that Trump is opposed to regime change policies because he falsely claimed after the fact that he had been against the Iraq war. The truth is that he was never against regime change in Iraq, and later he wasn’t against regime change in Libya.

What he objected to in both cases was that the U.S. didn’t plunder the resources of those countries when it had the chance. Trump has never been opposed to U.S. wars overseas. He is opposed to the U.S. not getting “paid” like a mercenary for its military services. Trump has no problem with attacking other countries, but he wants to get loot in the process. Should Trump manage to push Maduro out and force regime change in Venezuela, you can be sure that he will make control of Venezuelan oil and gold a top priority.

Some opponents of regime change policies often cling to unreasonable hopes that a president will turn against the very hardline advisers and appointees he picked to implement his policies. They can see that the administration is stacked with regime changers, and they know that the president put them there, but they still try to appeal to the president as if he weren’t fully on board with his own insane policy. The appeals always fall on deaf ears because the regime changers work for the president.

Before the military buildup and the boat attacks, Trump still favored “maximum pressure” sanctions that have impoverished and killed Venezuelans. No one “hijacked” Trump’s Venezuela policy. He is the one flying it straight into the side of a mountain.

Rojas is right that “the Trump administration would do well to sideline Rubio and his allies and cut another deal with Maduro,” but that isn’t going to happen. The president has had many opportunities to sideline the hardliners and interventionists on a range of issues, but instead he promotes them and entrusts them with running his foreign policy. Trump is a hawkish militarist, and everyone should set their expectations accordingly.