Well! It was a big night on the world stage: the U.S., in an impressive blitzkrieg, has deposed the mephitic Maduro narcocracy in Venezuela. (So much for Nothing Ever Happens™!)
As I’ve been saying for a year now about the Trump administration’s foreign policy, I see the invisible hand of Michael Anton at work here, along with the spectral guidance of Anthony Codevilla, John Quincy Adams, James Monroe, and George Washington.
I’ll say this, also, to those who are squawking about this operation skirting Congressional approval for declarations of war: we are witnessing America’s transition from Republic to Empire (it’s been an empire de facto for a long time now, but is finally shedding the old skin).
In its Republican era, Rome typically followed a formal process to declare war, rooted in religious and legal traditions to ensure the conflict was a bellum iustum (just war). This helped secure divine favor and moral legitimacy. The formalities involved a college of priests called the fetiales, and the process (Livy describes this somewhere) involved sending a priest-envoy to demand redress of grievances, Senate debate if the demands hadn’t been met in a month or so, and then, once war was resolved upon, a formal declaration that included a fetial priest hurling a ritual spear into enemy territory.
Once Augustus came along, and the emperor began to hold the elevated command called imperium maius, all of that pretty much went out the window. When things needed doing, the Imperator just sent in the legions.
Do you remember that viral social-media thing last year in which women were shocked to learn how often their menfolk thought about ancient Rome? Well, this is why: we are Rome. It’s no coincidence that the Founders were positively marinated in, and deeply inspired by, classical history and philosophy — nor that Franklin, when asked what the Constitutional Convention had created, replied “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
Turns out we couldn’t; we got too big, and too diverse. It was probably inevitable: republics need to be small, and coherent. They can’t work otherwise. (Form and matter!)
So: will Donald Trump be parading the vanquished Maduro in a Triumph along Broadway? Stay tuned.
(Oh, and here’s a parting thought: perhaps regime change in Caracas, as blessed an event as that is, is only the exoteric reading here: maybe the whole operation is better understood as a shot across Zohran Mamdani’s bow.)
2 Comments
Ultimately, Mamdani is an irrelevant footnote who will be forgotten once his term is over, much like Dinkins.
It may be that now that the world is a Global Village (McLuhan), it is inevitable that republics become empires if they want to survive. In any case, we are not now and never have been a democracy, sensu stricto. I’ve been saying that we are a constitutionally-based republic with democratic input. But your deep post above gives me pause.
When half of the Congress is dominated by leftists, POTUS cannot wait for congressional approval. On the other hand, Article Two, Section Two does not unambiguously grant to POTUS the power to act without congressional approval. This needs adjudication by SCOTUS.