On Illegal War and Immoral Peace
Why we should be dubious of both the coming actions in Venezuela and the ‘peace’ proposal for Ukraine.
Well, it’s official: the Department of Government Efficiency, which launched to great fanfare early in Trump’s term but which sputtered to a halt after the departure of Elon Musk, is no more. Reuters reported this weekend that the administration is now acknowledging that the government-slashing group “doesn’t exist” anymore, despite eight months more of designated time left on the clock.
As the Economist’s Mike Bird notes, DOGE exits the stage without leaving a dent in federal spending, which is tracking to end 2025 significantly above 2024 levels. But the DOGE bros can console themselves that they did manage to fire a random assortment of late-career bureaucrats, inflicting immeasurable brain drain on the federal government, and doom an unspeakable number of children and vulnerable people around the world to deaths of disease, thirst, and starvation via their cuts to USAID. Hell of a job, boys. Happy Monday.
Caribbean Twist
by William Kristol
As the Trump administration reportedly plans broader military action against Venezuela, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, has arrived in Puerto Rico. Caine will be consulting with Southern Command senior officers and will be visiting some of the 15,000 troops currently in the region.
The New York Times explains, “General Caine’s visit comes as President Trump has approved several measures to pressure Venezuela and prepare for possible military action, according to multiple people briefed on the matter.”
So the Trump administration seems to be moving from blowing up small speedboats in the region that are allegedly transporting drugs, to more direct attempts to topple the Maduro government in Venezuela. As the Times points out, ”The U.S. Navy has routinely been positioning warships near Venezuela’s coast in locations far from the Caribbean’s main drug-smuggling routes.”
On Saturday, the Federal Aviation Administration warned of “worsening security situation and heightened military activity around Venezuela,” leading airlines to cancel flights to and from the country. Also on Saturday a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that the president did not rule anything out regarding Venezuela. “President Trump is prepared to use every element of American power” against the Maduro regime, the official said.
There’s one problem: In our constitutional republic, the decision “to use every element of American power” is not supposed to be a decision left simply to the discretion of one man. If we’re intent on using every element of American power, Congress must authorize that use.
But Congress hasn’t authorized it. Congress has barely debated it. Senior officials haven’t briefed key congressional committees privately. Nor have they testified before Congress publicly. And neither the president nor his Cabinet has made a case for war to the American people.
Perhaps they should try making that case. Because while a broader war with Venezuela appears imminent, the public is not on board with it.
A new CBS News poll shows only 24 percent of respondents believing the Trump administration has clearly explained the U.S. position on military action against Venezuela; 76 percent don’t think there’s been a clear explanation. Only 30 percent of the American public favors military action against Venezuela; 70 percent of the American public would oppose it. And three in four Americans—including over half of Republicans—say Trump should get congressional approval before taking military action in Venezuela.
So Donald Trump is seeking to go to war without the authorization of Congress and without the support of the American people. Even leaving aside the dubious merits of the case for this war at this time, deciding to go to war without the support of lawmakers or the public is a recipe for disaster.
Nicolas Maduro is a dictator. We should pursue—as we have been pursuing through actions of our executive and legislative branches—political, diplomatic and economic means to try to help the Venezuelan people remove him. If the president now wants to make the case for the use of military force against him, he can do so.
He hasn’t. And it would be a total abdication of responsibility for Congress to sit by timidly as Trump unilaterally launches an illegal and unauthorized war of choice.
It is right and proper for our most senior military officer to visit troops about to go into harm’s way. But there is currently no authorization for the president to send those troops into harm’s way. We have already been engaging in acts of war on the high seas without legal justification. Now we are going to escalate that war with no congressional authorization.
One of the charges in the Declaration of Independence was that the King of Great Britain sought “to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.” We have no kings here. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to choose whether to take the nation to war. Congress should insist on its right and its duty to make that choice.
Moscow’s Mule
by Cathy Young
Donald Trump’s “peace plan” for Ukraine has caused an international firestorm—perhaps because its origins are surrounded by mystery.
We know the plan is the love child of Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff and Vladimir Putin’s emissary, financier Kirill Dmitriev. But what did Trump know about it? (Apparently not much.) Where does Marco Rubio stand? Did Vladimir Putin greenlight this plan on the Russian side? Does he want it implemented? Can it be implemented? What exactly is in it, and how is it being revised? It’s the proverbial Winston Churchill line about Kremlin politics as a “bulldog fight under a rug”—only now with Jared Kushner under there, holding a leash.
There is widespread agreement that the 28-point proposal is devastating for Ukraine: it would lose the entirety of the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces (including the roughly 15 percent of these territories currently in Ukrainian hands) and the occupied parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhia provinces. The part of the Donetsk province currently controlled by Ukraine is to be converted, after Ukrainian withdrawal, into a “neutral demilitarized buffer zone” de facto recognized as Russian but off-limits to Russian troops. What does that mean? Who will police that zone, especially considering that the proposal rules out NATO troops in Ukraine? Those details are, we imagine, currently being filled in.
The plan also includes a proposed cap on the Ukrainian military that is outrageous in principle since it infringes on Ukrainian sovereignty. The one positive spin may be that the 600,000 cap does not include the National Guard and many other types of troops. And while it’s a substantial reduction from the current 900,000 troop size of the Ukrainian armed forces, that number is elevated precisely because the country is currently at war. Moreover, in their spring 2022 peace talk proposal, the Russians had demanded an 85,000 cap.
Still, many other provisions of the plan are infuriating not only for Ukraine but for the civilized world in general. There is, among other things, the failure to name Russia as the aggressor even once, and Russia’s proposed reintegration into the G-7 and other international structures. And yet some strongly pro-Ukraine analysts, such as expatriate Russian journalist Michael Nacke, argue that the proposal has some equally unacceptable elements for Vladimir Putin. Most notably, it stipulates a guarantee of Ukrainian security similar to NATO’s Article 5: an attack on Ukraine would be treated as an attack on the entire transatlantic structure.
Maybe Russia regards this clause as meaningless and believes NATO will never go to war with Russia over Ukraine. It is also worth noting that Putin has continued to insist that Russia intends to achieve all the goals of the “special military operation”—which would include the demilitarization of Ukraine and its de facto relegation to a Russian satellite. Nacke, like a number of other commentators, believe that whatever Ukraine does, Putin will not sign the Trump peace plan.
So the plan may not be a Kremlin wish list. But it does have a distinct Russian flavor. It’s possible that, as investigative journalist Christo Grozev has suggested, the Russian side of the plan comes not from Putin but from the “dovish” Kremlin faction concerned primarily with trade and improved relations with the West.
In this interpretation, the plan represents not so much a proposal for Ukrainian surrender as Trump administration amateur hour: a plan that was cooked up by a real estate developer and a financier that won’t be acceptable to either side. Will current attempts to revise it yield a better version? They’re happening as we hit send on this email. So stay tuned.
AROUND THE BULWARK
Trump’s Economic Numbers Don’t Add Up… On The Bulwark on Sunday, CATHERINE RAMPELL joins BILL KRISTOL to talk about the real state of the economy, new polling on how voters think Trump is handling it, and why JD Vance is suddenly diverging from Trump on key economic points.
Why Dems Are Pouring Money Into Tennessee’s 7th… The Democratic Party’s high hopes in the special election has Republicans rattled, reports LAUREN EGAN in The Opposition.
How Florida—Yes, Florida—Complicates Trump’s Obamacare Attacks… Republicans claim fraud is inherent in the Affordable Care Act. The Sunshine State shows the problem isn’t about the law, writes JONATHAN COHN in The Breakdown.
Trump Is Destroying JFK’s America… Kennedy’s vision of a country built up through the service of its citizens is fundamentally incompatible with the vulgar cynicism of the current president, writes TERENCE SWEENEY on the anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination.
Leaders Without Character Break Democracies… On How to Fix it, JOHN AVLON sits down with RYAN HOLIDAY for a deep dive into virtue, character, and what ancient wisdom can still teach a country drowning in cynicism.
Why Are Democrats Teasing Homophobia in New Attacks on MAGA? The strategy demeans an important constituency of the party without providing an obvious political gain, argues KAIVAN SHROFF.
We’re Led by an Administration of Liars… JILL LAWRENCE writes that while Trump insisted Comey be prosecuted for supposedly lying to Congress, his own administration is full of officials who lied to Congress.
Push Back Against Trump’s Press Abuse… It’s long past time for the Fourth Estate to challenge the president’s unhinged hostility and unbridled misogyny, writes BILL LUEDERS.
Quick Hits
MARJORIE, WE HARDLY KNEW YE: Marjorie Taylor Greene is out of here. In a shock announcement Friday night, the three-term Georgia congresswoman and MAGA firebrand said she plans to retire from Congress in January, having grown disillusioned with the body’s gridlock and unwilling to contort herself any more for Donald Trump. In a 10-minute direct-to-camera video apparently filmed in her living room1, Greene pulled no punches in her excoriation of the leadership of House Speaker Mike Johnson and seethed with indignation over her treatment at the hands of the president over her support for the release of the Epstein files: “Standing up for American women who were raped at 14, trafficked and used by rich powerful men, should not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the president of the United States, whom I fought for.”
The most notable moment was her indictment of the broader MAGA movement with Trump at the helm:
It’s all so absurd and completely unserious. I refuse to be a ‘battered wife’ hoping it all goes away and gets better. If I am cast aside by MAGA Inc and replaced by neocons, big pharma, big tech, the military-industrial war complex, foreign leaders, and the elite donor class that can’t even relate to real Americans, then many common Americans have been cast aside and replaced as well.
There is no plan to save the world or insane 4D chess game being played.
When we reacted to the announcement Friday night, Sam, JVL, and Andrew were split on what to make of it. Is Greene washing her hands of political life altogether? Or is this a way of staking claim to MAGA territory ahead of what promises to be a ludicrous GOP presidential primary in 2028? Only Greene herself knows for sure.
ALWAYS THE KENNEDY YOU MOST SUSPECT: We’ve been steering mostly clear of the sordid drama captivating much of Washington media recently: journalists Olivia Nuzzi and Ryan Lizza’s self-serving and gossipy accounts of the dissolution of their engagement last year as Nuzzi embarked on a bizarre affair with then-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It’s a story with plenty of terrible behavior to go around—Nuzzi, the young reporter with an apparent zeal for striking up romantic relationships with subjects, Lizza, the established scribe who hit an almost comically clichéd midlife crisis, and RFK Jr, who appears as the off-stage author of some alarmingly horny Kennedy-grade “poetry.”
It’s all gross, and without a single really reliable narrator among the three. That it all took place among a particular celebrated slice of the Beltway establishment is enough to induce the sort of broad-base anti-elite revulsion that conservative commentators used to sum up as “this is how you got Trump.” But of course, the irony is that Trump, who has spent a decade channeling that revulsion to great political effect, obviously doesn’t share it personally himself. It’s his Health and Human Services secretary, after all, that’s tied up in all this.
And that’s why the Nuzzi-Lizza affair is more than just a car crash we’re all staring at. It is another embarrassment for the man in charge of our nation’s health, and it raises real questions about his conduct, drug use (see Nuzzi’s book), judgment, and mental well-being. “If anyone ever finds out” about their tryst, Lizza says Nuzzi told him, “I’m afraid Bobby will kill me.”
But it also seems unlikely to create any actual political headaches for him. Trump is all-in on the secretary. And GOP senators have proven pot-committed to the guy despite his active attempts to blow up America’s vaccine industry and consensus. What’s a sexting affair, however skin-crawling, on top of that?
Cheap Shots
In front of her Christmas tree, no less! It’s November, Marjorie!
“Well, it’s official: the Department of Government Efficiency, which launched to great fanfare early in Trump’s term but which sputtered to a halt after the departure of Elon Musk, is no more. Reuters reported this weekend that the administration is now acknowledging that the government-slashing group “doesn’t exist” anymore, despite eight months more of designated time left on the clock.”
Are you sure they didn’t finish the job early? Just asking for a friend!
Seriously, they’ve broken into a system they never should have had access to, and now no one knows what the hell they’ve managed to screw up; except allowing their half ass agenda to cost the American taxpayer over $200 billion, and fire some of our best and brightest, while replacing them with unqualified sycophants.
For all we know, they’ve managed to download every government system into Palantir’s database, for whatever nefarious agenda these people are pushing. IMHO…:)
War is no longer a rumor. It is a presence, breathing heavily at the door, summoned by a government so brittle it mistakes aggression for vitality. There is no strategy here. No doctrine. No national mandate. Only the reflexive lunge of men and women who have run out of competence and require a foreign catastrophe to distract from the domestic one collapsing in their hands. The engines warm. The maps unfurl. The choreography of violence begins its familiar rehearsal, not because these men are capable, but because destruction is the only arena where their failures can be briefly disguised.
If you want to know how a nation arrives at the edge of war while it can barely sustain its own basic functions, look no further than DOGE. That carcass wasn’t an accident. It was a blueprint. A department conceived in ego, starved of expertise, and left to suffocate under the weight of its own illusion. It purged the competent. It burned the institutional memory. It sent shockwaves through USAID that will echo in the stomachs of children half a world away, and when the smoke cleared, the architects blinked in confusion, wondering why nothing worked, why everything they touched sagged, cracked, or died.
DOGE didn’t fail. It revealed something.
It showed us that the decay wasn’t inside a department. It was inside the country that built it.
DOGE died of hubris, but the country that birthed it is staggering under the same terminal affliction, convinced it is still mighty while the ground beneath it dissolves grain by grain.
War is simply the next symptom. The next convulsion of a system that cannot admit its own fragility. A nation that once prided itself on competence now treats expertise as a threat. A government that once valued stability now worships improvisation and spectacle. What passes for strength is merely the desperation of men who cannot govern and cannot face the mirror, so they hurl the nation toward conflict to hide the cracks in their own foundations.
The war drums aren’t beating because America is powerful. They are beating because America is hollow, and the echo is getting harder to ignore.