Opinion | Trump is falling for a trap we can all see coming

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In the aftermath of America’s victory in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush allowed himself a moment of triumphalism: “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all,” he said. He was referring to America’s aversion to military conflict following the Vietnam War. With the oil-rich kingdom of Kuwait now liberated, Americans could bury the memory of that moral, military and societal quagmire.

President Donald Trump’s decapitation of the Venezuelan regime carried forward this tradition of historical forgetting. His declaration on Jan. 3 that the U.S. would “run” Venezuela was both shocking and familiar in its assertion of superpower will. So was the absence of any clear plan, legal justification or timeline for this de facto takeover of another country and its oil resources. To make sense of the dangers of this moment, Americans must resist our impulse to memory-hole the past unless we are intent on reliving it.

First, we must learn from America’s 21st-century wars. They have tended to begin with the cinematic removal of an odious adversary: the routing of the Taliban by Special Forces, some on horseback, in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks; the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue, symbolizing the end of his regime; Moammar Gadhafi hiding from a mob in a drainpipe. In each case, the moment of regime change was the high point: Nearly all that followed ran counter to the plans of politicians, military leaders and national security elites (in the case of Libya, me included).

Trump is trying to buck that trend by relying on the remaining members of the Venezuelan regime to administer the state while deferring to him on things he cares about — chiefly oil. But the Venezuelan state is hollowed out, rotten with corruption, crippled by sanctions and filled with factions — some heavily armed — that will compete for power. It can take many months for that competition to turn violent or chaotic. And it could take many years to rebuild Venezuela’s oil infrastructure.

Second, we must learn from our long history in Latin America. While interventions served certain U.S. interests — ousting leftist leaders during the Cold War or securing access to natural resources — they usually ended badly for the people of countries left with repressive right-wing governments, civil wars or rampant criminality. U.S. invasions of Grenada and Panama were exceptions, but those countries are much smaller than Venezuela.

Trump’s belief that he can wield military power and economic leverage to control the Western Hemisphere speaks to an even more necessary lesson. It was the uniquely dangerous blend of nationalism, authoritarianism and militarism that prompted the world to establish new laws governing the use of force after World War II. Trump ignored those rules in removing Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela, just as Vladimir Putin ignored them in Ukraine and Benjamin Netanyahu ignored them in the Middle East, while China regularly flexes its military might around Taiwan. War can prove contagious, particularly among nationalist strongmen who don’t play by any rules.

This instability abroad is tied to the health of American democracy at home. A military operation to remove Maduro with no congressional authorization, international legal justification or imminent threat would have been all but unthinkable as recently as the first Trump administration. It was possible in 2026 only because of the capitulation of a Republican-led Congress to the president, the immunity granted to Trump by the Supreme Court and the transformation of an apolitical Department of Defense into a Pete Hegseth-led Department of War.

Sometimes it can be hard to realize that the events you fear are the ones already taking place. Let us state it plainly: We have an autocratic leader seeking power and aggrandizement through the conquest of territory and resources. In addition to Venezuela, Trump has threatened to attack Cuba, Colombia, Mexico and Iran while musing about the annexation of Greenland, the Panama Canal and even Canada.

All this does not suggest a leader whose ambitions end in Caracas, nor does it suggest that Trump will easily succumb to the laws of American political gravity: sagging approval ratings, a midterm election defeat and lame-duck status.

It is this combination of unraveling American democracy and international order that makes this moment so unsettling. Indeed, even if the Trump administration somehow manages to muddle through in Venezuela, we seem to be returning to the pre-World War I era of strongmen and spheres of influence. Whether we choose to ignore it or not, history shows us where that leads.

What accounts for this American tendency to ignore the past?

Our size, wealth and military prowess have convinced us that we can simply shrug off blunders and military adventures; superpowers have a tremendous margin for error. America’s distance from 20th- and 21st-century battlefields has also served us well: Time and again, we have left broken places to others who must put them back together, absorb refugees and manage political instability. Indeed, unique among major powers, the U.S. has never been conquered or dismembered in a way that has embedded a degree of humility and caution in Europe and Asia.

A nation’s strengths can also become weaknesses. There is a natural American tendency to embrace optimistic scenarios and to believe in our own exceptionalism: the fundamental rightness of our actions, no matter what they may be. Many other countries, grateful for U.S. leadership in forging the postwar order and fearing a Russian- or Chinese-led world, have been willing to defer to American hegemony despite their discomfort with it. As the Trump administration abandons any pretense of shared interests or values, that currency is eroding.

History is catching up with us. Consider the Gulf War, when we “kicked the Vietnam syndrome.” If Osama bin Laden’s own words are to be believed, it was the staging of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia — to fight that war and defend the kingdom — that motivated him to attack America. The subsequent re-invasion of Iraq delegitimized American global leadership. China and Russia became more assertive. An endless, costly and jingoistic war on terror plowed the ground for a populist like Donald Trump to wrest control of the Republican Party from discredited elites. The machinery of the war on terror has become the foundation for Trump’s own security state — from ICE operations to the complex night raid that removed Maduro.

The wheel of history turned, and here we are. The second Trump term is only a year old. In the next three, we face the danger of both an end to the democratic transfer of power and a global war. Recent opposition to Trump from the courts and even Congress has provided cause for cautious optimism on the home front, but increasing belligerence abroad should raise alarm about more than the fate of Venezuela.

Recent history itself may prove an ally. One of the few areas of bipartisan agreement among the electorate is fatigue over and frustration with forever wars. Trump was elected on a promise to end them. Now, he has started a new one in Latin America that he openly describes as serving oil companies. It is hard to imagine a public justification for military action more designed to draw populist opposition from the left and the right, particularly during a cost-of-living crisis. A decisive shift in public opinion could impose guardrails around Trump’s instincts.

Americans have demonstrated an increasing tendency to live in the present. To avoid future calamities, we must show that we are willing to learn from the history that is rapidly catching up to us.