200. Five Questions About the Maduro Arrest Operation

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There’s still a lot we don’t know about Friday night’s U.S. military operation in Venezuela, which appeared designed to secure the arrest of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro—both of whom are apparently now under indictment, together with four co-defendants, on a series of federal criminal charges in the U.S. federal district court in Manhattan. But given how big a deal this story is, and given how much uncertainty there seems to be about what the possible legal authorities for this episode could be, I thought it might be useful to put together a brief post outlining five sets of questions about the operation—and some tentative answers.

I’ll tackle those questions below the fold. But the scene that has kept replaying in my head as I’ve been following the news today is a fictional one—a conversation between White House Chief of Staff Leo McGarry and President Jed Bartlet toward the end of the last episode of the third season of The West Wing, titled “Posse Comitatus.” The basic gist is that McGarry is trying to persuade a reluctant Barlet to green-light an (arguably unlawful) special forces operation to kill the Defense Minister of the Sultanate of Qumar in the face of significant evidence that the minister was actively involved in plotting acts of terrorism on U.S. soil. Toward the end of the exchange, McGarry asks Bartlet what his true objection is, and Bartlet responds “Doesn't this mean we join the league of ordinary nations?”

Whatever else might be said about the law and politics of last night’s events, that’s the point from which I can’t escape—that there’s something deeply thuggish about this entire affair, and fundamentally contrary to what I’d always understood the United States’ position in the world to be. It’s not the first time, and I fear it won’t be the last. But just like the fictional operation in The West Wing, it’s hard to see how these events will make any of us safer in either the short or long term—even if they were lawful, which … ...