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The clouds of war drift over the Caribbean. America’s engines of death idle in the waters outside Venezuelan territory. A New York Times report announces that President Donald Trump has “determined” that the United States is in a “war” with Venezuelan organized crime groups, of which, the State Department assures us strenuously, President Nicolas Maduro is the leader. A Washington Examiner report says that American forces are prepared for “seizure operations”—that is to say, expeditions to take assets like ports in Venezuela. The forthcoming National Defense Strategy reportedly directs a turn toward hemispheric concerns, and it looks as if we’re about to start that turn with a bang.

Stern stuff. But what are we actually after here? Let’s lay aside the somewhat dubious legal reasoning behind “determining” that the U.S. is at “war” with non-state actors, and the specious claim that such non-state actors are under the direct control of the Caracas regime, all of which seems like a clumsy and even embarrassing effort to get around Congress’s residual war powers. The tranche of propaganda emanating from Washington says this is about drugs; in fact, Venezuela does not play an outsize role in the drug trade, particularly that of fentanyl, and the government is cooperative with international anti-trafficking enforcement. (Strange if Maduro is actually the head of a cartel.) Venezuelan aliens entering the country illegally have fallen to negligible numbers, so it seems unlikely that this is about the administration’s immigration policy, either. Chinese, Russian, and Iranian cooperation with Venezuela has been on the rocks these past few years, due to the Venezuelan regime being a terrible business partner on pretty much every metric, although the Russians have stepped in to back Maduro up against the recent American pressure.

So if it’s not about drugs, and it’s not about immigration, and it’s not about cooperation with American adversaries, what’s it about? Theory one: oil, of which Venezuela has rather a lot. This seems somewhat doubtful, insofar as launching a war is a risky way at best to maximize the exploitation in the short to middle term. (Countries undergoing invasions tend to have somewhat unsure industrial infrastructure, surprising to say.) Also, America has other, easier sources for hydrocarbons, including those at home; it’s not the 1970s. Still, Trump is on the record saying we should have done blood-for-oil for real in Iraq, so maybe it’s in the mix. Theory two: tying up forces in a hemispheric imbroglio so we can say “no” to Israel when asked for more direct resources in the Middle East. This has been floated to me seriously; it seems, frankly, insane, and also I suspect attributes more intentionality to our national security policy than is perhaps just. But we are in fact notionally trying to retrench from the Middle East, and the rumors about the new NDS suggest that hemispheric issues are at the forefront, so there is a certain appealing rhyme to this explanation. 

Theory three, is, by my lights, the most plausible: We’re just doing it because we can. Nobody especially likes communist Venezuela. Trump, for all his peace rhetoric, does in fact enjoy displays of American hard power. (How many diplomatic summits kick off with a flyover by the host country’s bomber fleet?) We have a “Department of War” now, which, Trump has emphasized, shows that we don’t just do defense, but offense too. McKinley, the 47th president’s historical fixation in the administration’s early days, had a “splendid little war” in Latin America with few immediate ill consequences. (Although it has been persuasively argued that the Spanish–American War had long-lasting distorting effects on American foreign policy and government.) The usual analysts can be found who will say that the enemy regime just needs a kick, and we’ll be greeted as liberators. 

Hell, maybe they’re right. Maybe the effort to overthrow the Venezuelan regime will not devolve into a guerilla war in that nation’s mountainous interior; maybe it won’t result in regional chaos that sets off another round of mass migration. Is that a gamble you’d like to make? We have been insulated by oceans from our meddling in the Middle East. If things go wrong in Venezuela, we have to live in this hemisphere. 

It is difficult to weigh the options when the administration is being obfuscatory or forthrightly dishonest about our motives. If it is in the American national interest to overthrow Maduro per se, the administration ought to make that case. Nor does it seem constitutionally healthy, after 30 years of aggregating war powers in the executive and the disastrous results, to resort to “determining” that we are at war with groups that the administration sometimes says are non-state actors and at other times asserts are working for the Venezuelan regime. 

Is that rain on my leg, or is the administration trying to sell me on a war?