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Republicans Oppose Ground Troops In Venezuela As Trump Threatens War

WASHINGTON — Republican lawmakers support President Donald Trump’s increasingly hostile military campaign against Venezuela, including lethal U.S. strikes against suspected drug smuggling boats and seizing sanctioned oil tankers coming to and from the South American country.

But there’s one step they aren’t willing to endorse, at least so far: a military invasion involving land-based troops.

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“I don’t think having troops on the ground in Venezuela is a good idea,” Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) told HuffPost. “Putting pressure, in terms of the sanctions on the oil — a lot of that oil has already been sanctioned, as you know — I think it’s fine.”

“My views haven’t changed about landing ground troops or offensive operations in Venezuela. I’m not a forcible regime change guy,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) noted.

But the questions surrounding the legality, strategy and wisdom of Trump’s pressure campaign against Venezuela and its president-turned-dictator Nicolas Maduro, have so far not resulted in significant Republican pushback against the administration’s approach, even as rumors swirl of further escalations and potential pushes for outright regime change.

“A lot of us have been asking the president: What are you doing out there?” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said. “Is it a war on drugs, or is it regime change? We haven’t heard.”

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That has worried former U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam War veteran who handled the end of the Iraq War and the rise of the Islamic State group under President Barack Obama. Hagel told HuffPost in an interview on Capitol Hill this week that he worried about the U.S. getting drawn into another endless war without a clear path to success or exit strategies.

“Every one of these wars — Afghanistan, Iraq, [and] Vietnam — have ended very badly for this country,” Hagel, a Republican senator before joining the Obama administration, said in an interview with HuffPost.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Trump must seek congressional approval before engaging in war with Venezuela, as required by the U.S. Constitution.

“It’s not what the Constitution intended, and not what the Founding Fathers intended,” said Paul, who often joins Democrats in efforts to limit U.S. interventionism. “They intended that war would be, one, declared by Congress, but two, that most wars would be fought in defense of our country, not in the desire to change the government of other countries.”

“If our operating procedure is to get rid of bad governments, you know, I could probably list 20 other governments that are equally as, you know, problematic as the Venezuelan government,” he added.

President Donald Trump speaks as U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth looks on during a meeting of his Cabinet at the White House. A bipartisan congressional investigation has begun regarding Hegseth's role in ordering U.S. military strikes on small boats in the waters off Venezuela that have killed scores of people.

Trump’s escalating military campaign, which has drawn bipartisan scrutiny, has killed over 100 peopleand counting. The Trump administration has provided no evidence that the boats are involved in drug trafficking. Still, Trump and his GOP allies argue that the strikes in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean are legal and necessary to stop the flow of drugs into the United States, despite legal experts calling them violations of international law.

On Friday, Trump told NBC News it is possible the U.S. could go to war with Venezuela, as his administration continues to ramp up pressure on Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. He also said he does not need congressional approval to launch strikes on land against Venezuela.

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“I don’t rule it out, no,” he told the news network when asked about the prospect of war.

The buildup toward the invasion, and Trump’s reported focus on what would happen to Venezuela’s plentiful oil supplies, has reminded critics of the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. (Trump has long falsely claimed he opposed the invasion.)

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Congress’ most hawkish members, predicted Maduro would be ousted soon, and said American oil companies should be able to reclaim drilling rights they lost after a negotiated process in the 1970s.

“The oil fields belong to Venezuela, but the property rights we lost need to be restored,” Graham said. “So I believe the day he leaves, which is close at hand, we got a chance to reconstruct a relationship with Venezuela that would be mutually beneficial and the Venezuelan people would get to live without oppression and fear.”

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Trump’s designs on Venezuelan oil have created bipartisan alarm in Congress, and undercut both the administration’s stated rationale for the conflict — stopping the flow of drugs to the United States — and Trump’s own self-image as a skeptic of foreign intervention and regime change.

“They think the most powerful nation in the hemisphere has the right to dominate all of the other countries. I think that that is absurd, outrageous, and anti-democratic,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told HuffPost. “I think he let the cat out of the bag by saying he’s interested in protecting his oil company friends and seeing what they can get out of Venezuela. We don’t go to war to protect the billionaires.”

The GOP-controlled House of Representatives this week rejected two Democratic resolutions aimed at halting the strikes and “hostilities in or against Venezuela” without congressional approval. Similar efforts aimed at limiting military actions against Venezuela were blocked in the GOP-controlled Senate earlier this month.

Senate Republicans have pushed back on the Trump administration in one instance, however. They included a provision in the annual defense policy bill that Congress passed this week pressuring the Pentagon to disclose footage of a controversial Sept. 2 “double tap” military strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat near Venezuela. The strike killed two stranded survivors, and lawmakers froze U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s travel budget until he provides Congress with the footage of the incident. Hegseth did so only for a select few members, but not all of Congress.

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The U.S. military has amassed about 15,000 troops near Venezuela, the largest military buildup in the region in modern history. The armada enforcing a blockade around the country includes 10 U.S. Navy warships and the nation’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford.

“This is pretty dangerous when you amass a force that he’s amassed off the coast of Venezuela and make the threats that he’s made, and then try to sort out what consequences there may be,” Hagel warned on Thursday. “You can’t do any of that until you think through the strategy. What is your strategy? What are your objectives? How are you going to do it? What could go wrong?”

“If it’s the overthrow of another country, I mean, there’s international law,” he added. “That’s not who we are. We’ve tried all of that in different situations over the years, and it’s all ended pretty badly.”