Trump Is Unleashing Forces Beyond His Control (New York Times, David French)

When a strong state operates under the principle that war is just another extension of policy, it is tempted to operate a bit like a mob boss. Every interaction with a weaker nation is tinged in some way with the threat of force: Nice little country you have there — shame if something happened to it.

The Danger of Trump’s Flamboyant Violence (New York Times)

He is willing to use force — and risk the lives of American soldiers — for increasingly flamboyant expressions of strength abroad.

These high-risk actions seem designed more for ephemeral gain than long-term strategic advantage. There is a real risk of more to come. Mr. Trump’s appetite for military action seems to grow with the eating. For a commander in chief with three years left in office, his newfound fondness for military force is ominous.

Maduro vs. the Donroe Doctrine (Tina Brown)

Yep, it’s the “Donroe” Doctrine: chin-jutting hubris, flailing testosterone, and greed, greed, greed. America has the right to intervene, assault, abduct any government it doesn’t like in the Western Hemisphere and plunder the spoils. At least now we can forget about the last few months of fentanyl feint, when the U.S. military kept blowing up fishing boats allegedly loaded with Venezuelan narcotics.

The Fuck-Around-and-Find-Out Presidency (The Atlantic)

As John Bolton, currently a Trump nemesis but once one of his first-term national security advisers, told us, “There is no Trump Doctrine: No matter what he does, there is no grand conceptual framework; it’s whatever suits him at the moment.”

Trump’s Attack on Venezuela Is Illegal and Unwise (New York Times Editorial Board)

The nominal rationale for the administration’s military adventurism is to destroy “narco-terrorists.” Governments throughout history have labeled the leaders of rival nations as terrorists, seeking to justify military incursions as policing operations. The claim is particularly ludicrous in this case, given that Venezuela is not a meaningful producer of fentanyl or the other drugs that have dominated the recent epidemic of overdoses in the United States, and the cocaine that it does produce flows mostly to Europe. While Mr. Trump has been attacking Venezuelan boats, he also pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, who ran a sprawling drug operation when he was president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022.

The Constitution requires Congress to approve any act of war. Yes, presidents often push the boundaries of this law. But even Mr. Bush sought and received congressional endorsement for his Iraq invasion, and presidents since Mr. Bush have justified their use of drone attacks against terrorist groups and their supporters with a 2001 law that authorized action after the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Trump has not even a fig leaf of legal authority for his attacks on Venezuela.