Six years ago, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., delivered a speech on the Senate floor slamming President Trump’s State of the Union address.
“Maybe his best metaphor was his claim to bring democracy to Venezuela. There’s a big policy there. It flopped,” Schumer said, just a day after Trump’s speech, touting that Maduro’s dictatorship would be “smashed and broken.”
“The president brags about his Venezuela policy? Give us a break. He hasn’t brought an end to the Maduro regime,” Schumer continued. “The Maduro regime is more powerful today and more entrenched today than it was when the president began his anti-Maduro campaign. Same thing with North Korea, China, and Russia. Same thing with Syria.”
Fast-forward to the U.S. arrest of Maduro on sweeping narcotics charges under the second Trump administration. Now, Schumer is accusing the Trump administration of potentially sparking an “endless war” in Venezuela with Maduro’s removal from power.
“But launching military action without congressional authorization and without a credible plan for what comes next is reckless,” says Senator Schumer.
For some time now, our politics have embraced irrationality. The left attacks whatever Trump does, no matter what the subject. They react the same way, even when Trump’s actions benefit the American people, because they are lapdogs to the ideologues on the left who advocate doing everything possible to destroy Trump. Schumer is so afraid of the progressives taking his toys away that he’ll say anything.
The right is irrational, also, when it comes to Democratic policies, but the nuance is not as heavy-handed. If you’re on the right and believe the left has gone too far, you’re using exaggeration and cherry-picking of information to make your case.
To rationally analyze Trump’s foreign policy, we need to use a different lens. The left thinks of Trump as a Neoccon-lite ideologue looking to accumulate authoritarian power, but it’s easy to see that they are wrong. Neoconservatives believed the U.S. should: use military power to spread democracy, act as a global enforcer, support regime change (Iraq War, Afghanistan surge, Libya, etc.), and maintain U.S. leadership through intervention. They are ideological interventionists. Anthony Blinken, Biden’s Secretary of State, was a true Neocon.
Trump’s worldview is closer to “America First” nationalism: he is skeptical of foreign wars, opposes nation-building, frames alliances as business deals rather than moral missions, and prefers coercion (sanctions, tariffs, threats) over occupation. Trump hates the wasting of money in foreign lands, so he would never advocate nation-building. His behavior puts him in the tradition of right-wing populist realism, not neoconservatism.
Trump has used business deals to seek an end to the Ukrainian war (unsuccessful so far), the Israeli war with the Palestinians (partly successful), and he has tied trade to the military and economic negotiations with the EU and the UK. He used coercion with Iran, and then backed up his warnings with action. The same holds for Venezuela, where Trump tried trade negotiations, intimidation, threats, and finally, as a last resort, initiated an attack.
Two factors make the Venezuelan case different. It’s a nation located in our hemisphere, and it participates in drug trafficking to the United States, which is killing our people. In addition, China, Iran, and Russia have been making inroads into the Caribbean by building relationships with Venezuela, and this is an unacceptable threat to the United States, which has not allowed foreign interference in the Americas since James Monroe was president.
What have these countries been up to?
Russia has maintained one of the closest relationships with the Maduro regime since at least the 2000s through military sales, diplomatic support, and economic ties. Moscow has supplied fighter jets, air-defense systems, and other weapons to Venezuela and has used its UN Security Council veto to shield Caracas from Western actions.
Russia repeatedly publicly defended Maduro against U.S. pressure and condemned U.S. actions as aggression. Despite rhetoric and arms transfers, there was no treaty obligating Russia to intervene militarily if Venezuela were attacked. Recent reporting suggests Moscow pulled back some public support as U.S. actions intensified, illustrating the limits of the alliance in practice.
China was Venezuela’s largest external financier for many years and a top buyer of Venezuelan oil via “oil-for-loans” arrangements. Beijing extended tens of billions in loans tied to future oil deliveries. China also provided diplomatic support to Maduro at the United Nations and publicly criticized U.S. pressure on Venezuela, calling U.S. actions a violation of international norms. China’s involvement was largely economic and diplomatic, not a binding military alliance. Recent events exposed the limits of Chinese support in terms of actual security guarantees.
Iran and Venezuela have cultivated closer ties over the last decade, in part to evade U.S.-led sanctions and coordinate in energy and military technology exchanges. Iran sent fuel supplies, refinery parts, and technical assistance to Venezuela and has discussed long-term bilateral agreements. Tehran publicly condemned U.S. actions and framed its partnership with Caracas as resistance to U.S. hegemony.
All three of these adversaries seek to weaken the United States economically and politically. They wish to distract her from responding to other activities they are pursuing.
Now, their attempts to increase their leverage in the Caribbean via Venezuela have been cut off. The American left is deeply split on Trump and U.S. foreign policy, which has caused it to break into 3 camps:
The establishment liberal view (Biden/Obama) sees Trump as dangerous, reckless, and destabilizing, claiming he weakened NATO and U.S. alliances, treated dictators as equals (Putin, Kim Jong-un), pulled out of agreements (Iran deal, Paris climate), and made U.S. power unpredictable. From this view, American leadership keeps the world stable. Trump disrupted that system without replacing it with anything coherent. In their eyes, he was not anti-war — just anti-institutions.
The liberal view argues for the status quo, which is a neoliberal/globalist worldview. The only way to stop the neoliberal advance is to blow it up. Trump pretends to treat dictators as equals only to strike deals with them, and he rejects the existing institutions as corrupt. Trump’s unpredictability can be an asset, because our adversaries should not know what to expect.
The progressive anti-war left (Bernie/AOC) is conflicted. They hate Trump, but many quietly agreed with parts of his foreign policy: They liked that he didn’t start major new wars, questioned NATO and military spending, talked about ending “endless wars”, and criticized Iraq. They hated that he increased drone strikes, backed Saudi Arabia in Yemen, escalated the conflict with Iran, and used sanctions that hurt civilians. To them, Trump was half-right, half-awful — anti-interventionist in rhetoric, but not in method.
The progressives have the most naïve foreign policy ideology imaginable. They reject the idea that global conflicts are caused mainly by villains. To them, the real cause is structures like capitalism and colonialism. They see war as a tool of elites, not of people. They favor international law over force, naively believing that international courts (which are respected by no one) can reconcile the conflicts among the world’s peoples.
The foreign-policy left (Noam Chomsky /realist left) believes the U.S. behaves like an empire. They view Trump as not uniquely evil — just more honest about how power really works. They argue that Obama and Bush used nicer language, Trump dropped the moral cover, and the empire stayed the same. To them, Trump didn’t “break” U.S. foreign policy — he exposed it.
The left will never stop haranguing Trump over foreign policy, even though they don’t agree about what it should be. We’re much better off having Trump break the elitist neoliberal approach to foreign policy, so we can eliminate wasting money overseas and work to get things done for the American people.
Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.
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