Trump Venezuela Intervention: When Executive Action Exceeds Constitutional Authority
President Trump has said the United States will “run the country” in Venezuela until a “safe, proper and judicious transition,” and that Venezuela’s oil sector will be opened to American companies, with U.S. firms prioritized in future production.
The administration describes this not as war, but as “law enforcement supported by the military.” That label matters. If this is law enforcement, the administration implies it can avoid the constitutional limits that normally apply when U.S. forces are used abroad.
The question is not whether Venezuela’s government is corrupt or whether legitimate grievances exist. The question is whether calling something “law enforcement” can lawfully justify actions that look like war by any ordinary definition.
The Constitution gives Congress—not the President—the power to declare war. That division is not a technicality. It is a safeguard against unilateral executive action—a requirement that representatives of the public debate and authorize any decision to use military force.
Constitutional Limits on Military Force
Under the War Powers Resolution, a president may introduce U.S. forces into hostilities only in narrow circumstances: self-defense, an emergency created by an attack on the United States, or explicit congressional authorization. Venezuela did not attack the United States.
And the timeline cuts against any claim of urgent necessity. The original criminal indictment of Nicolás Maduro was filed in March 2020. A new indictment was unsealed the same day military action began. If this were an unforeseen threat requiring immediate action, it is hard to explain why enforcement waited nearly five years.
Why the “Law Enforcement” Label Matters
Arrest warrants and criminal indictments do not normally authorize the use of military force to enter another country, seize its leadership, and administer its economy. Domestic law enforcement does not involve occupation or control over foreign industries.
The administration’s own statements underscore how expansive the claim is. Saying the U.S. will “run the country” through a “transition,” while restructuring Venezuela’s oil sector to prioritize American firms, is not the language of law enforcement. It is the language of control—and, frankly, resource extraction.
That matters constitutionally because the Founders did not design a system in which the executive could acquire war powers simply by relabeling military action. If the President can bypass Congress by asserting that warlike activities are merely enforcement operations, then the war power effectively migrates from the legislative branch to the executive.
Here’s the danger: if a president can occupy a country by calling it law enforcement, then “law enforcement” has no limiting principle. Any sustained use of military force can be recast as enforcement once labels substitute for authorization.
That shift is not incidental. It is the erosion of a central structural limit, and once it is accepted in one case, it becomes easier to reuse in the next.
International Law as a Comparative Check
This context matters even more given the administration’s recent withdrawal from over 60 international organizations, including bodies central to interpreting, administering, and enforcing international legal norms. Having rejected those institutions as illegitimate or contrary to U.S. interests, the administration cannot selectively invoke international legal mechanisms—arbitration awards, for instance—when they serve U.S. objectives while abandoning the framework that gives those mechanisms meaning and constraint.
Legal norms do not operate in the abstract. They gain authority from the institutions that interpret them and the procedures that apply them consistently. If multilateral legal frameworks are treated as optional, then domestic constitutional limits become the only remaining check on executive action. Those limits are precisely what this operation seeks to evade.
That process played out after Venezuela expropriated U.S. oil investments. ConocoPhillips won an $8.7 billion arbitration award in 2019. When the company moved to enforce that judgment, it did so by seizing specific PDVSA assets in the Caribbean, not by claiming the right to administer Venezuela’s oil sector wholesale.
The contrast is the point. If the objective were truly to enforce past legal judgments, the remedy would be targeted: asset seizure equivalent to the award, financial pressure through courts, or negotiated settlement. Instead, the stated objective is control over Venezuela’s primary revenue source. When indictments that sat dormant for years suddenly justify military control of an oil sector, the legal claims aren’t the reason for action—they’re the justification offered after the objective was chosen. That is pretext.
The Precedent This Sets
This logic is not new. In 1989, the United States invaded Panama in part to arrest Manuel Noriega on drug charges. Criminal indictments were used to justify military force far beyond what law enforcement normally entails. Each time this reasoning is accepted, it becomes easier to use again.
The danger here is not confined to Venezuela or to one administration. Once it becomes acceptable to invoke old indictments or civil judgments to justify seizing control of foreign governments or strategic sectors, legal process no longer restrains power. It becomes the mechanism through which power expands.
I will end with a question. If Russia or China sent troops into the United States, forcibly seized our President, announced they would “run the country” until a “proper transition,” and said they were taking control of American oil and gas production to compensate shareholders from an old arbitration award, what would we call that?
The answer shouldn’t depend on who we like. It should depend on whether law—especially our own Constitution—still sets limits that power cannot cross.