US Military

War with Venezuela

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment

Early this morning, the US conducted military operations in Venezuela with the objective of capturing Venezuelan President Maduro. This operation appears to have been successful in that US agents did take the President into custody, along with his wife. Trump said in a press conference that no US servicemembers were killed, though a few were injured. The extent of Venezuelan casualties, military and civilian, is unknown.

While it seems that US military forces conducted the operations, Trump administration officials have characterized this as a law enforcement operation and execution of an arrest warrant, apparently issued under a 2022 indictment, for the President, his wife, and brother. They should be arraigned on charges by Monday morning.

Whatever the purpose and justification, this is an unprovoked act of war and almost certainly illegal under US and international law.

Trump claimed this morning that the US will control Venezuela until a stable local regime can take over, but he has no soldiers on the ground and the nation remains in the hands of Maduro’s government, legitimate or not.

This is a moving target that I am watching from an international relations theory perspective. IR theories lay out thoughts on the behavior of nations and states, and I’m interested in how the Trump regime and its actions validate, or invalidate, these theories.

There is of course also an interesting domestic political thread here inasmuch as the current divide within the MAGA movement over “America First” could be widened further by this kind of intervention. One under-discussed part of the US Presidential election in 2024 is how young people (as well as some Boomers!) on both the left and right opposed Biden policy toward Israel. On the left this was due to Biden’s support for what they see as genocide in Gaza; on the right it was about “why are we spending money to protect Israel when we have troubles of our own” with a bit of antisemitism tossed in.

Trump ran on an anti-war platform in 2024 but has unilaterally initiated military operations in the Caribbean, Middle East, and Africa.

I’ll have more to say about this as things develop, and will cover the topic on Monday during the first Monday Morning Coffee live show at 10AM Eastern.

Captain Crozier Relieved of Command

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment

A couple of days ago I posted about how COVID-19 sidelined the USS Theodore Roosevelt. In that post I wrote that I expected the Navy to take any action necessary to protect the crew and get the ship back in action as quickly as possible. Now it looks like this didn’t happen quickly enough to satisfy her Captain, and he was not shy about letting people know. This got him canned.

After evacuating more than a hundred COVID-positive sailors to quarantine on Guam, Captain Brett Crozier became concerned that the Navy would not act fast enough to protect the rest of the crew. On 30 March, Crozier sent a sharp letter to his superiors pointing out that while the ship could fight if necessary, failure to rapidly disembark sailors during peacetime risked their lives unnecessarily.

This caused Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly to relieve Crozier of his command, ostensibly for going around his chain of command.

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Pandemic and National Security

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment
USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71).
U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Michael D. Cole
Public Domain,
http://www.navy.mil/view_image.asp?id=57046

One of three deployed US aircraft carriers has been sidelined by corona virus infections on board. This pandemic has, at least temporarily, taken this warship out of the fight. I would be surprised if it’s the only one, but even if it is we’re looking at a serious erosion of American war fighting capability.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt, a Nimitz class nuclear aircraft carrier, has a crew of about 3200, not including its associated Air Wing. More than four thousand Naval personnel were on the Theodore Roosevelt when the vessel docked in Guam with more than 100 crew members testing positive for the virus, according to the linked article.

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