A Short, Victorious War

This Is Exactly What the Founders Warned Us About

The USS Gerald R. Ford—the world’s largest aircraft carrier—arrived in the Caribbean this weekend. Eighty people are dead from undeclared strikes. Fifteen thousand service members stand ready for war. A four-star admiral has resigned in apparent protest. And the President of the United States, speaking casually aboard Air Force One like a man deciding what to order for dinner, announced: “I sort of made up my mind” about military action. He cannot tell us what he decided, of course. That would require treating war as something requiring explanation rather than as personal prerogative.

No serious person disputes Maduro’s brutality. His regime has brutalized Venezuela for years, driving millions into exile and crushing democratic opposition. But brutality abroad does not authorize unconstitutional war at home.

Three weeks ago, forty-three people were dead and the pattern was already visible—regime-change infrastructure being deployed under humanitarian cover, liberation struggles aligned with imperial power, the convergence of Trump’s domestic desperation with the Venezuelan opposition’s understandable desire for freedom. The body count has nearly doubled since then. The carrier has arrived. The admiral has resigned. And still Congress has not authorized military force. Still the Constitution sits collecting dust while two groups of desperate people build machinery that will make genuine democracy impossible anywhere, including in the Venezuela they are trying to liberate.

We are watching the calculus of two converging desperations play out in real time. Trump faces metastasizing scandal—the Epstein files documenting connections that cannot be explained away, among mounting other crises. He needs distraction. He needs rally-around-the-flag patriotism. The Venezuelan opposition sees their chance. They whisper in his ear. Maria Corina Machado dedicates her Nobel Prize to him. They provide democratic legitimacy, moral justification, the cover story he desperately needs: we are liberating an oppressed people from brutal dictatorship, not launching undeclared war to save a failing presidency. Both sides think they are using the other. Trump believes he is using Venezuelan suffering for domestic gain. The opposition believes they are using his authoritarian impulses to free their country. Neither understands what they are actually building—the machinery that will make genuine democracy impossible anywhere, including in the Venezuela they are trying to liberate.

Meanwhile the Constitution sits collecting dust.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 could not be clearer: “The Congress shall have Power... To declare War.” Not the President. Congress. The representatives of the people. The body that must deliberate, debate, authorize military action before American forces engage in hostilities. This was not accident. The Founders had just fought a war against executive power that could launch military adventures at royal whim. They understood that the power to make war is the most dangerous power government possesses. That is precisely why they gave it to the branch closest to the people, requiring democratic deliberation before committing the nation to violence.

James Madison had thoughts: “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature.”

Congress has not authorized military force against Venezuela. There has been no debate. No vote. No declaration. No authorization for use of military force. Nothing. Just Trump saying “I sort of made up my mind” while deploying the world’s largest aircraft carrier and conducting strikes that have already killed eighty people. This is exactly what the Founders designed the Constitution to prevent: executive war-making based on presidential whim, launched without democratic authorization, conducted without accountability to the people’s representatives.

And last month, four-star Admiral Alvin Holsey—who was overseeing these strikes—resigned two years early. Pentagon sources told NPR they believe he left because he objected to assaults on boats “not showing immediate hostile intent.” Too woke a position, I suppose. The person who knows most about what is actually happening concluded he could not participate. A four-star admiral with thirty years of service, who understands civilian control of military and how to work within the system even when he disagrees—that person decided this was wrong enough to resign. When admirals resign in protest, when body counts double, when carriers get pulled from the Mediterranean for this operation, when presidents casually announce they have “sort of made up my mind” about war, you are watching constitutional catastrophe unfold in real time.

“A Short, Victorious War”—the phrase Russia’s Interior Minister Vyacheslav von Plehve reportedly used in 1904 to describe what conflict with Japan would do for the Tsar’s domestic troubles. Japan crushed Russia. The defeat triggered the 1905 Revolution. The phrase became darkly ironic shorthand for leaders starting wars they think will be easy wins that instead destroy them. This is the pattern every authoritarian follows when facing domestic crisis: launch foreign military adventure as distraction, expect quick victory to rally the nation, discover war is harder than anticipated, get mired in occupation and insurgency, return home to worse crisis than before. We have seen it throughout history. We have done it ourselves—Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan. Every time, American leaders convinced themselves this intervention would be different. That this dictator was so terrible his removal would produce grateful democracy. That this war would be quick, clean, decisive. It is never quick. It never cleans anything. And it never produces the democracy promised.

The Venezuelan opposition is so desperate to defeat Maduro—so understandably, legitimately desperate after years of suffering under brutal dictatorship—that they cannot see what they are enabling. They think they are being pragmatic. They think dissidents cannot afford the luxury of ideological purity. What they are actually doing is providing democratic legitimacy to constitutional catastrophe. Every precedent Trump establishes will outlast Venezuela: presidents can launch wars without Congressional authorization, evidence is not required for killing people if national security justifies it, constitutional constraints can be bypassed when targets are unsympathetic, commander-in-chief means doing whatever you want. These precedents do not stop with Venezuela. They affect every future president, every future war, every future target. They accelerate the imperial presidency that makes genuine democratic governance impossible anywhere.

And here is the cruelest irony: military intervention does not produce democracy. Liberation struggles aligned with imperial power do not produce liberation. They produce military occupation, chaos, insurgency, resentment toward liberators, and conditions that make democracy impossible. Ask Iraq how liberation by American military power worked out. Ask Libya. Ask Afghanistan. The Venezuelan opposition is helping destroy the very conditions—constitutional constraints on executive power, democratic deliberation before military action, accountability to law rather than whim—that make democracy possible anywhere, including in the Venezuela they are trying to liberate.

Eighty people are dead. In strikes on boats that Admiral Holsey believed were not showing immediate hostile intent. Ecuador released one survivor for lack of evidence. Colombia says we killed their fishermen. But we are supposed to trust Trump—the man who lies about everything constantly—with unilateral war-making power because this particular target happens to deserve it? The strikes have already begun. They have already killed eighty people. They are already hitting targets the person conducting them thought were illegitimate. And Trump has sort of made up his mind to escalate further. The table is not being set. The meal has started.

Maduro deserves to fall. No one who understands what his regime has done to Venezuela can dispute this. But not like this. Not through undeclared war launched by a president facing domestic scandal who needs distraction. Not through extrajudicial killings without evidence that admirals resign over. Not by sacrificing the constitutional constraints that prevent authoritarianism everywhere. Some things cost too much. Even freedom bought at the price of constitutional collapse is not freedom but the prelude to deeper tyranny.

The Founders gave Congress war powers for exactly this scenario. To prevent presidents from launching military adventures for domestic political gain. To ensure military action required democratic deliberation, not just executive whim. Trump is treating those constraints exactly like he treats every other constitutional limit: as obstacles to be ignored when action seems politically useful. And the Venezuelan opposition is providing the democratic legitimacy and moral justification that makes this constitutional violation seem acceptable. Both are wrong. Both are dangerous. And both will produce catastrophe that makes freedom impossible for anyone.

The wire still holds. But barely. And if Trump launches this war without Congressional authorization—if “I sort of made up my mind” becomes how America goes to war—we will have crossed into exactly what the Founders built the Constitution to prevent. What comes next will be catastrophic for Venezuela, for constitutional governance, and for democracy everywhere. The Constitution sits collecting dust while desperate people on both sides build the machinery of imperial presidency, convinced they are being pragmatic when they are actually enabling tyranny. May someone recognize what is being built before it is too late.

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