by Stefano Vaccara
NEW YORK (ITALPRESS) – The United States launched a large-scale military operation in the night against Venezuela, culminating – according to President Trump’s announcement in social media – with the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, transferred out of the country. The action, carried out with the involvement of military apparatuses and U.S. law enforcement agencies, also resulted in victims among Venezuelan civilians, as confirmed by the authorities of Caracas, who speak of a budget still being investigated. Washington reported that there were no losses between US forces. In an interview with Fox News, Trump stated that Maduro and his wife are in a military ship that is taking them to New York, where Venezuelan president was charged with drug trafficking.
The intervention represents the point of arrival of an increasing pressure exerted by the Trump administration in recent months: deployment of approximately 15,000 military personnel in the Caribe, raids against suspected drug trafficking vessels, oil tanker seizures and a sanction regime that put the Venezuelan oil industry in great difficulty, the main source of revenue for the Caracas government. According to the Venezuelan government, explosions struck the capital and other states of the country, leading to the declaration of the state of emergency. Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez has asked for evidence that Maduro is alive, while Attorney General Tarek William Saab denounced an attack that would hit “unarms.”.
On the US front, the first reactions come from within the administration. Attorney General Pam Bondi has announced that Maduro will have to respond to American justice for pending accusations in the South District of New York, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reiterated the line that the chavista leader would not be a legitimate president. From the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has not released immediate public comments on the operation, only confirming the absence of American victims. However, the attention has quickly moved to the United States Congress, where the climate remains suspended. At the moment, both senators and deputies, Republicans and Democrats, are avoiding official positions, waiting for the press conference announced by Trump from Mar-a-Lago. According to parliamentary sources, in the last few hours Rubio – former senator and deep connoisseur of the balances of Capitol Hill – would be contacting many of his former colleagues to explain the position of the administration and try to reassure them, a sign of a widespread discomfort among legislators for an operation that seems to have been conducted without a formal preventive passage to Congress.
The central question remains: Was Congress held in the dark of the intervention? If the White House had to argue that it was an international “law enforcement” action, it could try to place it outside the classic perimeter of the powers of war. But if it emerges that the operation has been a military intervention, the institutional clash appears inevitable, with the possible opening of auditions and a call to the War Powers Resolution. Also among the Republicans the fear is that a precedent is being created that is overly strengthening the powers of the executive, while the Democrats could use the Maduro case to relaunch the theme of constitutional limits of unilateral use of force.
On the international level, an official statement by the Secretary-General has not yet arrived from the UN. Diplomatic sources indicate, however, how probable the short call of an emergency meeting of the Security Council. The meeting would take place at a politically delicate time for the Council, where Somalia’s presidency has just begun, a country which President Donald Trump recently publicly called “the worst in the world”. Trump’s former national security advisor (and former GW Bush UN ambassador) John Bolton, this morning during an interview with MS NOW, stated that it was a necessary operation to remove Maduro but that “it should have happened long before in 2019”. According to Bolton already then Maduro had stolen the election and therefore was “illegal”. Now, according to Bolton, the problem is the Maduro regime that with the help of Cuba and Russia, can survive even without Maduro. So what’s Trump’s next move? What about Congress?
– Photo IPA Agency –
(ITALPRESS).
