As Chair of the New Jersey Libertarian Party, I must address the alarming justification now being offered for the United States’ military removal of Venezuela’s head of state.
In recent public remarks, a sitting United States senator declared, “The days of narco terrorist thugs and tinpot third world dictators down south pushing us around are over. We are a superpower. This is our hemisphere. And we are going to start acting like it again. President Trump is taking back control.”
That statement was not made by a fringe commentator or a private citizen. It was made by an elected federal lawmaker entrusted with constitutional responsibilities over war, diplomacy, and oversight of the executive branch. The language itself is not merely inflammatory. It is a declaration of doctrine. It asserts hemispheric dominance rather than constitutional restraint, power rather than law, and empire rather than republican governance.
For years, Marco Rubio has advocated direct United States intervention in Venezuela, repeatedly calling for regime change and the removal of its government by force. His position long predates the current crisis and reflects a belief that American military power should be used to reshape governments in Latin America when they are deemed hostile or inconvenient. That worldview directly conflicts with international law, which prohibits the forcible removal of sovereign governments and the seizure or control of national assets such as oil resources.
The rhetoric surrounding this operation makes the motivation unmistakable. Both Donald Trump and J D Vance have publicly framed Venezuela in terms of oil, resources, and strategic dominance. International law is clear that natural resources belong to the people of the nation in which they exist. Military force cannot lawfully be used to confiscate or control them. To argue otherwise is to revive the logic of conquest that the United States has long claimed to oppose.
What makes this moment especially troubling is the contradiction with prior public positions. President Trump has repeatedly stated that the Iraq War was a grave mistake that destabilized an entire region, enriched special interests, and cost countless lives without constitutional clarity or moral justification. Senator Vance has similarly criticized the Iraq invasion as a failure driven by elite consensus and unchecked executive power. Yet the removal of a sitting head of state through military force is, by definition, a regime change operation, no different in principle from the interventions they once condemned.
The historical parallel to Muammar Gaddafi and Libya is unavoidable. In 2011, the United States participated in the removal of Libya’s leader without a declaration of war and without a credible plan for post-conflict stability. The result was not freedom or democracy, but the collapse of the Libyan state, the rise of militias, human trafficking, open-air slave markets, and a humanitarian disaster that continues more than a decade later.
President Trump later criticized the Libya intervention, stating publicly that the country was destroyed after Gaddafi’s removal and that the United States should not engage in overthrowing governments without accountability or foresight. Senator Vance has likewise warned against regime change wars that leave nations worse off. By contrast, Senator Rubio praised the Libya intervention at the time and has consistently defended similar actions as necessary expressions of American power. The consequences of that thinking are now well documented and devastating.
Libertarians reject the notion that being a superpower entitles the United States to dominate an entire hemisphere or disregard constitutional limits. The removal of a foreign head of state is not a limited military operation. It is an act of war. It implicates Congress’s exclusive authority to declare war and commits the nation to unpredictable and often irreversible consequences.
If the lessons of Iraq and Libya truly mattered, Venezuela would have been addressed through diplomacy, lawful international pressure, and peaceful engagement, not through unilateral force justified by the rhetoric of dominance and control. A foreign policy rooted in liberty requires humility, restraint, and respect for law, not declarations of ownership over entire regions of the world.
The New Jersey Libertarian Party calls on Congress to reassert its constitutional role and on the American people to reject a return to imperial foreign policy, disguised as strength. History has already shown us where this path leads.
Respectfully,
Bruno Pereira
Chair
New Jersey Libertarian Party