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BUSH WALKED SO TRUMP COULD RUN INTO VENEZUELA  
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Grant Morgan
January 5, 2026
The American Prospect
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_ Trump’s blunder into Venezuela and how we got here _

Demonstrators protest the Trump administration’s actions in
Venezuela, January 3, 2026, in front of the White House in
Washington., Credit: Robyn Stevens Brody/Sipa USA via AP Images

 

Washington’s commitment to international law and multilateralism
died long before the emergence of Donald Trump. America’s commitment
to upholding global liberal values has always seemed to be largely
symbolic and determined by circumstantial events.

Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon all
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within Indochina that violated the laws of war and killed hundreds of
thousands. Bill Clinton managed to rack up
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some rather horrific incidents and boondoggles. And practically no
nation in the entire Western Hemisphere has escaped the tentacles
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of U.S. regime change policies
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Thirty-six years to the day before Trump’s military kidnapped
Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, Manuel Noriega was detained by George
H.W. Bush’s Delta Force in Panama and removed forcibly from power.

Despite these divergences, for decades the Cold War and its myriad
proxies helped to provide our government with cover from global
criticism. That many of our human rights
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atrocities and anti-democratic actions were done in opposition to
Soviet activity helped to paper over some of our worst deeds. But
after the collapse of the USSR, during America’s brush with
unipolarity and the war on terror, this pretext for international
order collapsed under the weight of new and intractable conditions.

George W. Bush’s foreign policy wasn’t an aberration, but it was
the moment where, unfettered from Cold War commitments to
international law and liberal international order, America began to
drunkenly bumble its way through unipolarity. Put simply, Bush’s
actions directly paved the way for Trump’s bellicose unilateralism.
And many incidents during the Bush years helped to build toward this
idea.

The invasion of Iraq was based on false
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and an intense penchant for graft
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Intelligence reports and National Security Council memos were ignored
in favor of contradicting information from less reliable sources.
Contractors and hawks came to run
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our operations in Iraq, with little oversight or constraint. Various
laws and human lives were ultimately trampled upon in order to meet
preconceived political goals tied to elite economic interests, under
the guise of liberating the Middle East from tyranny.

These kinds of graft-ridden foreign boondoggles had happened under
previous presidents. But never before had an administration been so
overtly and intensely tied to the idea of unilateral intervention.
Bush’s foreign policy became fundamentally dependent on democracy
being swiftly delivered to Iraq through regime decapitation. On the
political surface was a pure love for democracy, but beneath rested
something far more sinister.

Within a year of the invasion, the intent and scope of the operation
became clearer. Lies over weapons of mass destruction and connections
to regional terrorist groups had been used
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toppling Saddam Hussein, Bush’s promised vision of freedom and
democracy did not come to fruition, and in a few years Iraq found
itself suffering the damage from this imperial overreach. Sectarian
violence erupted throughout the country resulting in hundreds of
thousands of deaths
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while American occupation zones were gradually converted into
public-private partnerships between the American military and its
plethora of corporate
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benefactors.

Billions in state-building funds
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were lost to corruption, oil production was privatized
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and sold off to foreign bidders, and sectarian skirmishes stunted the
region’s political development. Despite these circumstances, no one
was ever punished. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld got to live
out their post-administration activities in the lap of luxury. All
participated in talk shows, wrote books, painted portraits, and
engaged in business deals, some of which were tied to their actions
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Iraq. The war had been overwhelmingly perceived as a catastrophic
mistake, and politically the Republican Party was punished in 2006 and
2008, but in the end, naked unilateral power projections abroad had
brought no consequences for those responsible. Halliburton was richer,
Iraqi oil was flowing
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and Bush was appearing on _Ellen_ to talk about veterans.

America’s unipolarism before Bush had been a moment of enormous, if
contentious, possibility. But after 9/11 and Iraq, the avenues for
global order became closed off. For the emerging world leaders of the
21st century, America’s excesses in the Middle East and its
unilateral power projections were not aberrations, but instead a look
into how global politics was evolving.

DONALD TRUMP CAME TO MEET this moment well. Trump campaigned on
America First policies like domestic industrialization,
anti-immigration, and opposition to foreign wars. He quite famously
attacked Bush and other hawks for their foreign-policy agendas. This
more isolationist approach appeared at a glance to stand apart from
Bush and his neoconservative establishment cadres.

Once in power, however, Trump has taken the lessons of the Bush years
in stride, if less subtly. In 2025 alone
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America bombed Iran, Venezuela, Nigeria, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, and
Yemen. And now, three days into 2026, our country has performed
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illegal coup against Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, alongside
military strikes in the country. The country is now supposedly set to
be run by American officials, though the credibility
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of these claims seems tenuous. The possibility of a ground war between
U.S. forces and Venezuelan militants, if not the actual army, seems
far more likely given Trump’s goals. As with Iraq, removal of the
dictator alone will probably prove an ineffective strategy, and more
resources will be needed to contain the ensuing chaos.

The justifications for these hawkish actions are also blatantly
contradictory. We ostensibly invaded Venezuela to engage in regime
change and build a new, democratic polity. But after mentioning these
necessities of justification, Trump immediately made energetic
promises of American occupation and oil privatization. He provided no
timetable for the occupation, no information around when elections
could be held, and nothing surrounding which “group” would
actually be running a country with over 30 million citizens.

Trump has followed the Bush Iraq playbook almost perfectly, and with
great speed. Trump has used Bush-era classics to justify the war, such
as through his administration’s classification
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of fentanyl (which isn’t even produced in Venezuela) as a weapon of
mass destruction, or of Maduro as a dangerous dictator who must fall
to protect our way of life. Further, the threats from Venezuelan
cartels, and their supposed connections to Maduro, have been
repeatedly brought
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without evidence.

The invasion and coup are about oil and power. During a press
conference, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth couldn’t hold
themselves back from gushing over the country’s mass oil wealth. The
occupation will now pay for itself and “our” oil wealth will be
delivered back to us, they said without any hesitation. U.S.
government investment, especially into Venezuela’s crumbling
infrastructure, was also promised. Within the next few months, the
goal is for Venezuela to have a kind of Coalition Provisional
Authority, whether on the ground or remotely through a pliant remnant
of the Maduro regime
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consisting of a broad coalition of Trump and American oligarchs who
will help to make Venezuela great again. Again, we’ve seen this show
before.

Fundamentally, the operation serves not to prevent drug trafficking or
engage in nation building, but as a promise that America will loot an
entire country with no repercussions or costs. An ostensible America
First agenda will now be delivered through hemispheric control and
private oil acquisition. The false pretenses that littered Bush’s
promises are still here, but after 20 years, our government cannot
even pretend to really care about their implementation. The
fundamental logic that drove Bush and his lackeys to exert U.S. power
for private gain
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is still alive and well, but now no effort is made to hide the selfish
goals. Iraq was the tragedy; Venezuela is now the farce.

BUOYED BY A SUPREME COURT that has bestowed upon him virtual immunity
for official acts, Trump can now openly threaten, bomb, and invade any
country that is not capable of defending itself. Graft
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and the open promise of enrichment among favorite cronies and
political operatives, is now commonplace and normalized.

Ultimately, Trump’s bellicose unilateralism represents not a
departure from foreign-policy orthodoxy, but the inevitable result of
Bush’s response to American unipolarism. Once intelligence and
nominal humanitarian ideals were openly politicized, and once it was
revealed that international atrocities could be committed wantonly and
without any consequences, the game was set internally. Further, once
it was revealed that international law, rather than serving as a
universal guardrail, was instead only applied to the weak, conditions
globally began to change. Despots and dictators recognized the new
rules and reacted accordingly.

For major powers, this logic is rather clear: Might makes right. The
U.S. can invade and plunder Venezuela without major consequences.
Russia can invade Ukraine and still maintain connections
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with the Global South, and likely still end up with an outrageously
beneficial
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peace agreement. China can perform domestic atrocities against
minority populations and engage in a hegemonic squeezing
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of Taiwan and Burma with no real pushback. The Saudis
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Gulf monarchies
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and Israelis
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can all engage in their own little military projects, inflicting death
and destruction against millions, with very little punishment. If you
have enough political and economic power, international rules can be
entirely ignored, or even directly weaponized to go after enemies and
competitors.

Like Bush in Iraq, these imperial incursions may go poorly, leading to
quagmires and mass death and unpopularity at home and abroad. But with
the levers of democratic accountability broken, it’s not certain
what protections this offers weak countries in the crosshairs of the
powerful.

Bush set the precedent for all future presidents and world leaders.
Unilateral acts of aggression are now only illegal if you cannot back
them up with force or leverage. The economic spoils of war are now
normalized and quite ubiquitous. Adherence to human rights or freedom
is now window dressing, only to be used when politically convenient.
The hubris of Bush, and his failed attempt to cement America’s
unipolarity through force, has now led to a world where the powerful
can act without consequences. Putin can invade, Xi can invade, and
Trump especially can invade. Leaders can be abducted overnight. And
there seems to be little in the way of stopping these forces from
progressing further, dragging us deeper into a world order of chaos
and power projection.

_GRANT MORGAN is a freelance journalist and writer based in Washington
with expertise in U.S. foreign policy and international relations._

* Venezuela
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* Precedent
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* George W. Bush
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* Iraq
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