Last week, Trump ordered the attack of Venezuela to kidnap their president. This strategy has been pulled lifted from dusty history books.
Trump is claiming this is a ‘law enforcement’ action and not a military action. Not only is this not original, but it’s been used before, with extended, problematic results.
Looking back at history, early involvement in Korea was called a ‘police action’. President Truman was playing with the truth to avoid the need for Congress to declare war before sending in troops.
Tens of thousands of American soldiers were killed. A heavy U.S. military presence in Korea began in the 1950s and continues in 2026.
Vietnam is another place where early U.S. military involvement was categorized as a ‘police action’. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed during that police action. Environmentally, the war wreaked wholesale destruction on Vietnam and its people.
Politically, the Vietnam War became a catalyst for the emerging generation gap. Cultural and moral splits arose across the United States as demonstrators took over streets and campuses to protest the draft, deaths, and war. Our involvement in that war created a symbolic battlefield in the United States as involvement was argued.
As a person born in 1956 in the United States, I vividly remember the news reports of these demonstrations I read about as a teen or saw on television. As a retired military member, I heard too many horror stories of Vietnam. Films of the bombing campaigns such as Operation Rolling Thunder and Linebacker I and II were shown to us, including the violent destruction.
I remember the My Lai massacre, a scandal that shocked us, and young John Kerry’s testimony. I recall photographs of children burned with napalm. The vivid imagery of Operation Babylift and the fall of Saigon are seared into memory.
I imagine that Trump and his advisors are madly spinning that this is nothing like either of those wars. Glances back to early newspaper articles reveal slow, soft involvement in them, just as we see unfolding for us today.
Trump’s Administration has revealed confusion about what’s intended in Venezuela at this point. Trump informs We the People that the United States will ‘run Venezuela’. Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez has taken over as interim President to manage the country.
Much as you would expect if another nation attacked the United States and kidnapped Donald Trump, acting President Rodríguez made a defiant speech against allowing any nation to run them or treat them like a colony.
Trump responded as a bully, threatening acting President Rodríguez she’ll pay a bigger price if she doesn’t comply with his demands. The messages and mannerism of Trump’s response don’t project an early or peaceful resolution, as he included threats to send more military into Venezuela.
Attacking Venezuela aligns with Trump’s practice of making and breaking promises. Trump campaigned against getting involved in other nations militarily.
Yet, Trump has continually employed the military as a baseball bat during his second term’s first year in office. He’s suggested annexing Greenland is a good idea, and has implied using military action against Mexico and other nations is possible while recently adding Cuba to the conversation.
My last concern goes back to ‘exit strategies’. Trump complained mightily that exit strategies for U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t exist. He then established a clumsy exit strategy for removing troops from Afghanistan (the Doha Agreement) which President Biden executed.
*An important side note to Trump’s approach to the Doha Agreement is that he didn’t include the Afghani government in the negotiations. This is the same approach he’s trying to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, not including Ukraine in the negotiations.
During his first term, Trump also directly answered reporters’ questions with the response, “I don’t do exit strategies.” That doesn’t bode well for the United States now.
We know from Trump’s business practices and marriages, his business strategies are bankruptcy, divorce, or cheating on his businesses and partners. But in those endeavors, he lacked the U.S. Treasury’s resources and U.S. military power.
It feels to me, Trump is making the same historic mistakes the United States made in the past, repeating his own patterns of impulsive errors. But now, the stakes and consequences are much, much higher.
Michael Seidel, writer 