The Case Against a U.S. Regime Change Operation in Venezuela w/ Justin Logan

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On this edition of Parallax Views, J.G. Michael is joined by Justin Logan, Director of Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, for a deep-dive into the dangers of U.S.-led regime change in Venezuela. Logan discusses the new article he co-wrote with friend of the show Brandan Buck for The American Conservative, “Don’t Do It, Mr. President,” a forceful argument rooted in the foreign-policy tradition of realism and restraint.

Logan unpacks why he and Buck see the Trump administration’s escalating military posture—from a Marine Expeditionary Unit to the USS Gerald Ford carrier strike group—as a perilous slide toward yet another unnecessary intervention. We also examine the administration’s bogus claims about “drug boats” allegedly bound for the U.S., a flimsy public rationale that Logan and Buck argue doesn’t withstand even minimal scrutiny.

From there, the conversation shifts to the long, troubled history of U.S. involvement in Latin America and the legacy of the Monroe Doctrine; why Venezuela, a country twice the size of Iraq with a loyal military, would be an extraordinarily difficult and dangerous target for regime change; and how the lessons of Iraq and Libya loom ominously in the background. Logan and Buck’s analysis stands as a welcome antidote to the neoconservative saber-rattling typified by Bret Stephens’s New York Times op-ed, “The Case for Overthrowing Maduro.”

Throughout the discussion, Logan offers a grounded reminder of why military adventurism contradicts the very promises Trump made about ending wars; and why Venezuelan regime change would almost certainly worsen the very problems Washington claims it wants to solve.