Cato Podcast Don’t Do It, Mr. President: The Prospect of a US War in Venezuela
11 snips
Nov 13, 2025 
Brandan P. Buck, a research associate at the Cato Institute with expertise in defense and foreign policy, joins the discussion on U.S. military posturing in Venezuela. They dissect the shifting justifications for intervention, highlighting dubious drug claims and the risks of regime change. Buck critiques the reliance on airstrikes without local support and warns of repeating past mistakes like in Libya. They also ponder the potential fallout on migration and governance post-Maduro, emphasizing the complexities of American intervention.
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Mixed Motives Drive Venezuela Policy
- The Trump administration's Venezuela policy mixes multiple motives: regime change, drug interdiction, and geopolitical competition.
- Those rationales frequently conflict and produce shifting, unclear justifications for action.
Monroe Doctrine Is A Weak Justification
- Invoking the Monroe Doctrine to justify intervention in Venezuela stretches the original meaning and ignores later shifts toward nonintervention.
- Historical debates show the doctrine cannot neatly legitimize modern regime-change missions in Latin America.
Drugs Argument Lacks Empirical Support
- The administration's fentanyl rationale is empirically weak because fentanyl production and precursor flows trace through China and Mexico, not Venezuela.
- Stretching the drugs argument to cocaine and claiming huge lives-saved numbers strains credibility.