Victory in Venezuela, with some caveats

OPINION:

Let’s start off with the truth: Venezuela was a multidecade mess tolerated by presidents of both parties, and President Trump deserves all the credit for being man enough to rip off the bandage and get to work on the underlying problems.

That said, even by the modest standards of our current political moment, a lot of propaganda was associated with the recent unpleasantness in Venezuela. One especially enthusiastic White House staffer called it “one of the greatest foreign policy and military achievements the United States of America has ever seen.” Maybe, maybe not. I suggest that any of the battles won during either world war, or perhaps our victory in the Cold War or maybe the British surrender at Saratoga, were considerably more impressive and important.

The president also, understandably, got caught up in the excitement. At a recent rally with House Republicans, he said, “Nobody can take us militarily. Nobody.” That would have had a much stronger ring to it had we not taken a tie in Korea, lost in Vietnam and, more recently, been given the bum’s rush out of Afghanistan. I don’t know how to classify Iraq. As this column has pointed out before, it has been more than 80 years since we won a shooting war.

The wildly successful raid in Caracas, like the attack on Iran’s nuclear facility before it, is worthy of celebration and an unequivocal testament to the global supremacy of American special operations and air forces. Unfortunately, although those forces may be necessary for victory, they have yet to be proved sufficient unto themselves to guarantee victory.

To win what may soon be the occupation of Venezuela (the president has already alluded to this, so spare me the outrage), the United States will have to get much, much better at the quotidian chore of pacification. The last time we executed a successful occupation was in Japan after World War II. No one among the current Joint Chiefs is Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

The other facet of very optimistic thinking associated with Venezuela involves the likelihood that the oil companies will invest a bunch of cash to revive the country’s crumbling oil industry, which once produced 3 million barrels of oil a day and now produces about 900,000 barrels. Everything from the wellhead to the marine terminal will need to be rebuilt. As part of that effort, we will also need to rebuild Venezuela’s electricity system, which was among the hemisphere’s most rickety, and that was before we bombed it.

There’s no telling how much all that is going to cost or who will pay for it. The president has announced (on Truth Social, naturally) that Venezuela will hand over 30 million to 50 million barrels of oil to the United States. At current prices, that will fetch maybe as much as $2.5 billion. It’s a good start, but not nearly enough. Keep in mind, the oil companies have already had their investments in Venezuela stolen (“nationalized”) not once but twice. At a certain point, you learn not to touch the hot stove.

It’s not clear that the federal government will have any more luck. Efforts to “run” a nation, especially by outworlders, can turn into a pretty expensive and chancy proposition. Our most recent effort at nation-building (Iraq) cost us somewhere from $1 trillion to $3 trillion. That seems like a lot, especially for people who aren’t really our friends.

The reality is that the federal government is not all that great at what are supposed to be its core competencies. It can’t balance the budget, win wars, preserve public safety, interdict drugs, educate the young or do anything else we pay it to do. There is no reason to believe a change of location and language will make the bureaucracy any better.

We face a batch of bad choices. The worst thing we can do is to minimize the possibility and range of suboptimal outcomes. Whatever happens next will be difficult, long and probably expensive; at some point, we need to decide what, precisely, we are willing to do. Let’s start off by not pretending the entire enterprise is without risk.

• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor to The Washington Times.