The Future of Freedom Foundation
October 18, 2025
Whether he has done so wittingly or unwittingly, President Trump has backed himself into a corner with respect to Venezuela. After amassing a formidable armada of military forces in the Caribbean off Venezuelan shores and having killed some 24 suspected U.S. drug-law violators on the high seas, Trump has now effectively committed himself to initiating a regime-change war against Venezuela. Everyone should now brace himself for what is coming - another in a long line of foreign regime-change undeclared wars of aggression in violation of the U.S. Constitution and the principles set forth at Nuremberg.
After all, Trump knows that if he backs down now and orders a withdrawal of that armada of warships, war planes (including B-52s), and tens of thousands of troops, Venezuela's socialist president Nicolás Maduro will crow about how he forced the all-powerful ruler of the United States to back down and return his military forces to the United States. There is no way that Trump can now permit himself to go down that road. From his own personal perspective, he cannot be seen as being "weak." He has placed himself in a position where he has to show courage and fortitude by initiating a war against Venezuela, one that leaves Maduro dead or captured.
No doubt that Trump is hoping that this massive military buildup will pressure Maduro into abdicating and fleeing the country, in which case Trump knows that he (Trump) will be hailed as a hero for saving the country from an unelected socialist dictator. Will Maduro do so? It's possible, and he'd be smart to do so. But if he doesn't, Trump has placed himself in a position of having to launch an illegal regime-change war against Venezuela, one that will leave at least some innocent people dead.
But consider the benefits of such a war from the standpoint of Trump. First and foremost, a war against Venezuela will put to rest the Jeffrey Epstein rebellion within Trump's MAGA movement. With the massive military buildup in the Caribbean and the killing of unarmed suspected drug-law violators at the hands of the military, the Epstein rebellion has already dissipated. It will fizzle out with the first bombs or missiles fired into Venezuelan territory.
I pointed out this phenomenon back on July 22, before Trump had begun to send warships to Venezuela. My article was entitled, " Get Ready for a Big Foreign Crisis." No, I don't profess to be Nostradamus. My reasoning was simply based on the insightful words of James Madison: "The means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended."
There was a boiling revolt among Trump's MAGA supporters over Trump's failure to order the release of the Epstein files. What better way to suppress that revolt than to excite a war against Venezuela? When the bombing of Venezuela begins, I will guarantee you that the Trump's MAGA supporters will completely forget Jeffrey Epstein and will hop to, click their heels, recite the Pledge of Allegiance (which was written by a socialist), sing the Start Spangled Banner, thank the troops for their "service" in defending our "freedom," and bask in their vicarious courage. The Epstein rebellion will be all but dead.
Moreover, Trump knows that many Venezuelan citizens will hail him as the greatest liberator since Simón Bolívar for having saved the country from a socialist dictator who clearly lost the last presidential election.
There is also a huge benefit for the national-security branch of the federal government. Consider its 20-year deadly and destructive military fiasco in Afghanistan, one in which American soldiers were sacrificed for nothing, just like they were in Vietnam. The American people never even had time to reflect on the Afghanistan disaster because the Pentagon, using its old Cold War dinosaur NATO, quickly maneuvered America into another war - this one against Russia by using Ukraine as its proxy. As everyone knows, that war isn't going so well either.
And don't forget Iraq, where U.S. officials used their bogus WMD scare to justify an undeclared regime-change war of aggression, one that left thousands of Iraqis and Americans dead, destroyed the entire country, and installed a regime that was aligned with Iran, which is considered to be an official enemy of the United States.
Of course, Iran is the country whose democratic system was destroyed by the CIA in yet another instance of U.S. foreign interventionism, which led to the U.S.-supported tyranny of the Shah, which led to the Iranian revolution, which led to Iran being declared a permanent official enemy of the United States.
One year after the 1953 Iranian escapade came the CIA's regime-change operation in Guatemala, which led to a decade-long civil war that killed more than a million people. Oh well, at least they weren't Americans.
Clearly, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA could use a lift. A war with Venezuela will easily give them such a lift. Despite Madura's bluster, there is no way that the Venezuelan military can oppose the most powerful military in the world. After all, look at how quickly U.S. forces have dispatched and destroyed those suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean. They have been able to easily win those battles and, as the Pentagon points out, without any loss of American life.
Moreover, Venezuela has been the victim of socialism and U.S. sanctions for decades. Its military is so weak it couldn't defeat Grenada. Upon the first sight of U.S. Marines, Venezuelan forces and Maduro's civilian "militia" will quickly surrender. They are not about to sacrifice their lives for Maduro, who will be assassinated, executed, or captured and brought back to the United States in chains.
Trump and his MAGA supporters as well as the national-security establishment will be exultant over this gigantic difficult military victory. They will sing about how proud they are to be Americans because their difficult undeclared, unconstitutional, illegal war against Venezuela will have brought "freedom" to Venezuela and protected America from the dangers of socialism, the Tren de Aragua gang, illegal-immigrant invaders, and "narco-terrorism."
Never mind that the destruction of freedom in America through militarized and para-militarized omnipotent government will continue apace, with many shell-shocked American citizens passively letting it happen or even supporting what James Madison called "the instruments of tyranny at home." At the same time, the irrational mass killings, the soaring suicide rates among young people and veterans, the hopeless dependency on government largess, and the out-of-control federal spending and debt that threaten national bankruptcy will continue to afflict America's statist society - all coincidentally of course.
Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.