U.S. Senator Rand Paul speaks to reporters as he arrives to vote on the resolution on Thursday. Mr. Paul, one of five defecting Republican senators, said the attack on Venezuela was an 'act of war.'Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
The U.S. Senate has rebuked President Donald Trump over his attack on Venezuela, voting to take up a resolution aimed at barring him from launching further military action.
Mr. Trump’s normally pliant Republican caucus saw five defections – Kentucky libertarian Rand Paul, moderates Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, populist Josh Hawley of Missouri, and Todd Young of Indiana – who voted with all Democrats and two independents in favour of the move.
The vote is mostly symbolic. The resolution will be debated and voted on again next week before going to the House of Representatives, where Republicans also hold a narrow majority. Even if it passes both chambers, Mr. Trump could veto it, which would require a two-thirds majority of Congress to override.
But it shows the range of opposition to Mr. Trump’s plans for a more bellicose and expansionist U.S. foreign policy. The weekend attack in Caracas captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Mr. Trump is now moving to seize the country’s oil.
Mr. Paul, who co-sponsored the resolution with Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine, said only Congress can decide to go to war.
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“Make no mistake: bombing another nation’s capital and removing their president is an act of war, plain and simple,” Mr. Paul, a long-time critic of foreign military action, told reporters outside the chamber.
Ms. Collins said in a statement that she was uncomfortable not only with Mr. Trump’s plans to “run” Venezuela indefinitely but also with his desire to either buy or invade Greenland.
“While I support the operation to seize Nicolás Maduro, which was extraordinary in its precision and complexity, I do not support committing additional U.S. forces or entering into any long-term military involvement in Venezuela or Greenland without specific congressional authorization,” she said.
Mr. Young pointed out that Mr. Trump was elected to get the U.S. out of foreign wars after the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq.
“A drawn-out campaign in Venezuela involving the American military, even if unintended, would be the opposite of President Trump’s goal of ending foreign entanglements,” he said in a statement.
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Mr. Trump, meanwhile, told The New York Times that U.S. involvement in Venezuela could last for years. After seizing Mr. Maduro, Mr. Trump left his authoritarian regime in place on the condition that it obeys commands from Washington. So far, the U.S. has arranged for Caracas to hand over between 30 million and 50 million barrels of oil, Mr. Trump has announced.
“Only time will tell,” the Times quoted Mr. Trump as saying when asked how long the U.S. will remain involved in Venezuela. “We’re going to be using oil, and we’re going to be taking oil.”
On Truth Social, Mr. Trump lashed out at the five senators who broke ranks, saying “Republicans should be ashamed” of them and they “should never be elected to office again.”
In addition to Venezuela and Greenland, Mr. Trump has also threatened Colombia and Mexico with military incursions in recent days.
The President has touted his new policy as a “Donroe Doctrine,” an expansion of the 1820s Monroe Doctrine that was historically used to posit U.S. hegemony in the Western Hemisphere and demand that other world powers stay out.
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Vice-President JD Vance told a White House press briefing that the War Powers Resolution was a “fake and unconstitutional law” and that the vote to rein in Mr. Trump was “not going to change anything about how we conduct foreign policy.”
He also tried to play down the administration’s threat to seize Greenland by force, a step that would constitute an attack on a fellow North Atlantic Treaty Organization member and almost certainly end the international defence alliance. But Mr. Vance did not rule out such a military action.
“Set to the side the crazy overreactions that I’ve seen from the press and from certain people in Europe,” he said. “What we’re asking our European friends to do is to take the security of that landmass more seriously. Because, if they’re not, the United States is going to have to do something about it. What that is, I’ll leave to the President.”
Mr. Trump has not said what he would offer Greenland to induce it to join the U.S. Reuters, citing unnamed officials, reported on Thursday that one option under discussion was offering payments of between US$10,000 and US$100,000 to each of the island’s 56,000 residents.
Denmark, of which Greenland is an autonomous territory, has repeatedly said that the island is not for sale and that it is up to the people of Greenland to determine their future. Greenland’s elected leaders have repeatedly rejected Mr. Trump’s overtures.
About 20 per cent of the territory’s GDP is provided by subsidies from Denmark equalling about $700-million annually. It is unclear whether Mr. Trump is proposing any plan to replace them.