Chronicle Publisher Chad Taylor’s commentary was grounded in historical fact.
When President Truman sent American troops to Korea in 1950, he made a fateful choice of language. Determined to avoid a congressional declaration, Truman called a war a “police action.” That phrase was a strategic dodge and rewrote how presidents could intervene militarily without formal authorization.
Truman’s decision, born of Democratic leadership, reshaped the separation of powers and set a precedent later presidents of both parties exploited.
By contrast, U.S. interventions in the Western Hemisphere are grounded in the Monroe Doctrine. Reagan had serious reservations about invading Grenada. That doctrine informed strategic intent by identifying clear threats to U.S. security, but it never claimed to override constitutional requirements for war. Military commitments were limited in scope, tied to a specific action, undertaken with a deliberate and defined mission.
The U.S. views Western Hemisphere security with such vital importance we still operate the School of the Americas at Fort Benning under a new name exclusively for the hemisphere. It provides professional military education to eligible personnel from the region, with a curriculum that includes mandatory training on human rights, the rule of law and democratic values.
The United States conducted a law enforcement operation in Venezuela with the arrest and transfer of Nicolás Maduro to the U.S. on criminal charges. President Trump announced the operation as an action taken in the interest of U.S. national security and the rule of law.
Critics called the operation unlawful, and some UN members labeled it a “crime of aggression” against Venezuelan sovereignty. Yet many of those same voices have long accepted broader unilateral U.S. actions. In the U.S., senior lawmakers and officials defended it as fully within the president’s Article II authority to enforce the law, apprehend fugitives and protect Americans from imminent threats.
Truman’s Korean precedent was war by another name: a transfer of executive authority into areas the Constitution expressly reserves for Congress. Trump’s action, by contrast, was framed not as war but as a law-enforcement operation supported by military force: the arrest of individuals indicted in U.S. courts, not a new conflict with a foreign state.
Unilateral action is not unreviewable. Presidential power is not unlimited. But by grounding the Maduro operation in existing criminal indictments and Article II authority rather than inventing a “police action” fiction the administration avoided the semantic sleight of hand Truman normalized. Whatever one thinks of its wisdom or international legality, the Trump approach did not create a new category of conflict; it relied on existing statutes and constitutional authority.
President Obama argued unilateral action is justified when Congress refuses to act, the same logic applies to the Maduro case: Congress and the Justice Department issued indictments in 2020 yet failed to enforce them, leaving the president to exercise Article II authority to bring an indicted fugitive to justice.
We are not running Venezuela; we are assisting its institutions so they can function independently and avoid collapse.
Ray Anderson
Ethel
