Former Trump Administration Officials: Americans Are Missing the Point on Venezuela

First-term Trump‑era policymakers believe Americans overlook the strategic case behind controversial decisions on Venezuela. Do they have a point?

AMIDST the chaotic January 3rd unveiling of the Trump administration’s national security strategy, there is no doubt that many have been trying to make sense of what has been slowly unfolding in Venezuela, and many other such regions — in South America and in the Middle East — that are currently within Trump’s scope.

Investigative journalist and television correspondent Sharyl Attkisson, on her most recent podcast episode — titled “Trump and Venezuela Explained: Clearly and Simply” — invited former Trump administration officials, from his first presidential term, to “clearly and simply” explain the unprecedented and unlawful abduction of Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro.

That the former Trump administration officials enlisted to explain his actions in Venezuela — Carrie Filipetti and Alexander Gray — were themselves key figures within Trump’s prior State Department, directly shaping the foreign policy and national security strategies they’re now tasked with analyzing, should not go unnoticed. It ought to be the lens through which everything they argue is filtered.

From Filipetti’s perspective, Executive Director of the Vandenberg Coalition, and the former Deputy Special Representative for Venezuela at the State Department, Trump’s actions in Venezuela can be analyzed as a trifecta: the operation, the messaging on the operation, and the ‘What comes next?’ phase.

On the operation, Filipetti had no qualms with the overall procedure of an unauthorized military operation to capture a sitting president of a foreign country, or the precedence it sets worldwide, saying:

“I give hundred percent, gold star remarks to everybody involved in the operation. I think it really demonstrated American leadership, American military prowess, our strength, standing by our word, and I’m really impressed by what the military was able to achieve. I never thought an operation like that was going to be possible in the first administration, so huge credit to them there.”

However, the messaging on the operation, she believed could’ve been more pointed and persuasive, instead of “hurting our own narrative” by openly declaring that the U.S.’s primary interest is in Venezuela’s oil and mineral resources. Filipetti argues that the Venezuelan regime’s illegitimacy, in addition to its human rights violations, should’ve been front and center in the messaging used to justify the administration’s actions against the Maduro regime. But her reasoning would essentially grant the U.S., and any other country with the military might to intervene in other nation’s affairs, free rein to do so. Filipetti backs up her support for intervention and the neglect of international law, saying “I think what we really need to acknowledge is that protecting the rule of law cannot possibly mean allowing a dictator like Maduro to usurp authority and repress his people with no consequence. So I actually view this [Maduro’s capture] as there being a responsibility for the international community to protect vulnerable citizens like those in Venezuela, and elsewhere.”

Remarkably, Filipetti’s point here only helps to confirm one thing: the U.S.’s State Department will employ whatever propagandistic narrative that is useful to America’s allies and its foreign interests, and detrimental to its adversary states. Were human rights violations and vulnerable citizens like those in Venezuela truly a concern for the U.S., both the Biden and Trump administration would’ve long intervened in Israel’s ongoing crimes against humanity and the destruction of Palestinian lives. Instead, they’ve funded Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel to the tune of “at least $21.7 billion in military assistance” since October 2023, according to The Associated Press. A nation that prioritizes vulnerable citizens would’ve at least halted all funding to Israel to prevent further crimes against humanity.

Additionally, the critique of the military operation in Venezuela, Filipetti argues, comes from the failure of Americans to see the bigger picture — that U.S.’s national security depends on us removing the Maduro regime from power to ensure stability in the region, and secure a tenable partnership with the country. While the ends are understandable, the means — which Filipetti lauds — is what many on the global stage seem to be deeply concerned with. Her assessment acknowledges that the vestiges of Maduro’s regime still remain intact, and that there’s more work to be done — the release of political prisoners, a sweeping electoral reform to facilitate legitimate elections with observers, among many others — for a return to democracy. On a fundamental level, however, Filipetti fails to contend with the longterm ramifications of Trump’s “peace through strength” policy, featured in his national security strategy, which dictates: “Strength [read: coercion] is the best deterrent. Countries or other actors sufficiently deterred from threatening American interests will not do so.” If the U.S.’s priority is to ensure stability in the region, would this foreign policy approach not directly threaten stability by creating a more hostile relationship between the U.S. and Venezuela’s top allies: Russia and China?

That aside, what comes next for Venezuela? Filipetti is uncertain:

“I think our success in that aspect really hinges on our ability to transition them to democracy and push towards the democratic actors that are already in Venezuela.”

For administration officials like Filipetti, who romanticize the notion of America facilitating the transition of a nation like Venezuela toward democracy, they’re either naive enough to believe such a farcical and duplicitous statement on its face, or they’re simply adept at the propagandistic tactics and euphemistic language that is necessary to manipulate public opinion from within the State Department.

For Alexander Gray, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, and former Chief of Staff at the National Security Council (NSC) under President Trump’s first administration, his assessment took on a more counter-strategic tone. Trump’s military intervention in Venezuela, according to Gray, was a long overdue procedure, required to neutralize the threat that Venezuela’s allies in Russia, China, and Iran posed to the United States:

“This is something that the United States really should’ve done in terms of reasserting our interests in the hemisphere. The number one issue here is that for decades, Venezuela has been a puppet of the Chinese, the Russians, and the Iranians. And we allowed it to go on in our hemisphere, in our backyard. And now we finally have pushed back, we’ve done something that not only was legally justified, but it’s something that from a geo-strategic standpoint, was essential and overdue.”

Gray argues that Trump’s move on Maduro was necessary because it reasserts America’s dominance and traditional foreign policy as it was, pre-Cold War era — what he refers to as “Hemispheric defense” — to deter the degree of intelligence and military influence that countries such as Russia, China, and Iran have in the Western Hemisphere. To him, Trump’s national security strategy is a return to the “fundamental issue in foreign policy, which is defend the homeland, defend the hemisphere.”

While this is a fair assessment, it entirely contradicts and nullifies Gray’s own take on Russia’s military actions in Ukraine in 2022. If Trump’s military actions can be justified as hemispheric defense against U.S. adversaries’ encroachment in the Western hemisphere, then Russia’s 2022 attack against Ukraine must verifiably be justified as its national security strategy against NATO’s eastward expansion toward Russian borders, and its aims to “restore its influence in the post-Soviet space,” according to The Ukrainian Review. But that view does not align with Gray’s outlook, which is on display on his Twitter/𝕏 feed, advocating that more U.S. funds be sent to help Ukraine resist Russia’s “unprovoked” invasion.

Furthermore, Gray believes the operation against Venezuela, and the impending actions against regions such as Cuba, Colombia, and the much sought after Greenland are pragmatic because of the message it delivers across the world:

“It sent a signal to the entire region, and the countries outside the region, like China and Russia, that we are serious. When the president says there is a Trump-Corollary to the Monroe-Doctrine, and we will not allow outside powers to meddle in our hemisphere, that’s a message to outside powers, but also to regional countries like Cuba, Nicaragua, Colombia, who might be tempted to engage in that kind of activity…”

There is, to be sure, a case to be made about genuine security threats in the Western Hemisphere. However, Filipetti and Gray’s justifications collapse when viewed in a global context. Their core assumption is that the U.S. should wield unconstrained military power wherever it chooses — particularly in the Western Hemisphere — while other nations must accept strict limits on their own strategic ambitions. If following America’s national-security playbook becomes condemnable only when others do it, then we are no longer dealing with principle, but with theater. And theater deserves to be treated as such.

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Listen to the full episode here:

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