Catholic Philosopher on U.S. Capture of Maduro: A Just War in Theory But So Far Not in Practice

American philosophy professor Edward Feser contends that the military operation, though justified in theory, has yet to meet the ancient just war criteria dating back to Sts. Ambrose and Augustine.

President Donald Trump, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio monitor Operation Absolute Resolve from Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on Saturday, January 3, 2026. Photo credit: Molly Riley (White House)

A military operation to remove President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela could have been justified on just war principles, but the way in which the Trump administration has so far executed it actually violates the ancient criteria.

This is the view of Professor Edward Feser who asserts that a just war requires not only a just cause but also a realistic hope of success and a concrete plan for a significantly more just replacement government that avoids plunging the country into chaos. None of these, he believes, is convincingly present in the Venezuelan case and Operation Absolute Resolve.

In this Jan. 6 interview, Feser, who teaches philosophy at Pasadena City College in California, notes that, despite triumphalist rhetoric, Venezuela’s governance has not substantively changed since figures who share Maduro’s principles and policies remain in power and the situation of the Venezuelan people has not significantly improved.

Feser also argues that Washington has not clearly explained how a transition to a more just order is supposed to occur, and he questions the sincerity of the liberation rhetoric emerging from the Trump administration. He further raises issues of lawful authority and constitutional procedure, stressing that a just war must be waged by a legitimate authority acting according to the rule of law.

Taken together, Feser believes the lack of clear just cause, inadequate planning, questionable motives, and constitutional concerns mean that, while such a war could be just in theory, this particular operation falls short of just war standards.

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Professor Feser, could the recent US operation to remove President Nicolas Maduro be justified in any way according to just war principles in your view?

The first thing to say is that we have to draw a distinction between the question “Could a U.S. operation of some kind to remove Maduro be justified on just war principles?” and the question “Is the particular way the Trump administration has actually gone about this justifiable by just war principles?” The answer to the first question is Yes, but the answer to the second question is No.

Removing a tyrant can certainly be a just war aim. But certain conditions have to be met. For one thing, there must be a realistic hope of success, which includes a well thought out plan to ensure that the government that replaces the tyrant is actually a significant improvement, and that the country being liberated is not plunged into violent chaos. At the moment, there has been no significant change in Venezuela’s government. It is still in power and its officials share the same principles and policies as Maduro himself. So, while many of the Trump administration’s defenders speak as if the mission has been accomplished, in reality very little of significance for the Venezuelan people has been accomplished.

The question, then, is whether and how a transition to a significantly more just government is going to occur. And the Trump administration has been vague about that. Related to this is the fact that despite the rhetoric about liberation, freeing Venezuela from oppression does not in fact seem to be the main motivation for the operation. When asked whether those who remain in power have been ordered to allow opposition figures to return or free political prisoners, President Trump replied: “We haven’t gotten to that yet. Right now, what we want to do is fix up the oil, fix up the country, bring the country back, and then have elections.”

In other remarks too, he has emphasized oil. And what that means concretely is helping certain U.S. corporations to recover oil-related assets that they have not been fully compensated for, and assist them in restarting their operations there. Now, merely removing Maduro is by no means sufficient to achieve all that. And it could turn out that achieving it would cost a great many lives, of both U.S. servicemen and Venezuelan civilians. It remains to be seen, and here too the administration has not told us exactly how this is supposed to work out. In any event, this, I would say, is not a war aim that could be justified by the principles of just war doctrine.

There are other serious problems too, not the least of which is that a war with Venezuela has not been authorized by Congress, which, given the U.S. constitution, the rule of law requires. But a condition of a just war is that it be fought by a lawful authority. The administration’s defenders will say that congressional approval was not required by law for the act of capturing Maduro. But even if that is the case, that particular operation is only part of a larger story. Larger military operations may well be necessary in order to ensure that a more just government replaces Maduro, and in order to secure the oil. And there were military operations against Venezuela already going on prior to his capture, such as the attacks on drug boats and the seizure of an oil tanker. The legality of all that is problematic, to say the least.

Could a case nevertheless be made that the following key just war criteria were met in that: a) the operation had a high probability of success b) there was just cause on the grounds that Maduro was allegedly responsible for narcotrafficking and organized crime that posed a threat to US security, and c) the operation was undertaken as a last resort after years of diplomacy, sanctions and attempts at dialogue?

Removing Maduro turned out to be relatively easy, but again, by itself that in no way satisfies the declared war aims, because his government is still in power. So, are we going to send troops into Venezuela in order to remove it entirely? If not, exactly how are we going to ensure that they govern any better than Maduro himself did? What if intimidation of the kind the U.S. directed at Maduro for months doesn’t work? Until we know what the actual plan is – if there is one – we have no reason to believe that there is a reasonable hope of success. And without that, a war cannot be justified by just war criteria.

As to the last resort criterion, again it depends on what is in view. Was the brief and limited operation of plucking out Maduro the last resort, that is to say, the only plausible means of getting rid of him, personally? Maybe, but again, that by itself solves very little. Would a full-scale land invasion that could cost a great many American and Venezuelan lives be the last resort – the only remaining means – of solving the problems you mention? I don’t think so, and certainly no one has made the case that that is so. And unless that case is made, the “last resort” criterion of just war doctrine has not been met.

Even though such a just cause falls short of being a response to an “armed attack” on a nation in the conventional sense, what do you say to the argument that narco-trafficking that has killed thousands of innocent civilians could be considered a modern form of armed aggression, one that Sts Ambrose and Augustine, the framers of just war theory who lived at a time when such narco-aggression was unknown, could not have foreseen?

First of all, we need to be cautious about the sophistries and word games that people are prone to resort to when trying to justify war. For example, the administration has claimed that people running drugs in boats are “terrorists,” and that fentanyl is a “weapon of mass destruction.” Neither of these things is literally true, either in the ordinary senses of the words or in the legal senses. And it is silly to appeal, as some have, to the fact that in a loose sense drugs have caused “terror” to families, and have caused “mass destruction” insofar as many have died from overdoses and the like. That simply has nothing to do with terrorism in the sense of resorting to violence to further political aims, or weapons whose purpose is to kill many people at once. So, these word games are completely irrelevant to the legal case for war. You might as well say that automobiles are “weapons of mass destruction” because many people die in car crashes. Or that producers of horror movies are “terrorists” because many viewers are terrified by what they see on the screen. It’s silly.

In the same way, promoting the drug trade is not in any literal sense “aggression” in the way that, for example, an invading army is committing aggression. That doesn’t mean that there are no cases where the problem of narco-trafficking could be a legitimate cause for war. For example, some cartels do make use of paramilitary forces, political assassination, and the like in order to control territory. In my opinion, that plausibly counts as terrorism and military action against those who carry out such violence could certainly be justifiable.

But that is very different from saying that just anyone involved in some way in the drug trade counts as a “terrorist,” or is guilty of “aggression” of a kind comparable to military aggression. That is just sophistry. Furthermore, once again we need to ask exactly what sort of operation is in view. Are we talking about a full-scale land invasion of Venezuela, with all the loss of American and Venezuelan lives that that would entail, as a means of dealing with the drug problem? No one has made the case that that is necessary, as far as I can tell.

Oil and natural resources were explicitly a major contributing factor in removing Maduro, and some of the rhetoric also could be read as vengeance. Does this breach the third just war criterion of “right intention” which states that any aim of such an armed response must be not to pursue revenge, power, or plunder?

If the rhetoric about liberating Venezuela is just a pretext and the true motivations are the ones you refer to, then yes, the “right intention” condition of just war doctrine would be violated.

Part of the problem here is that the administration has given no consistent and coherent explanation of exactly what it aims to accomplish, why, and how. For example, weeks ago, when drug boats were being attacked and Venezuelan airspace was closed, the president said “this is war” and that “very soon we’re going to start doing it on land too.” And of course, a large naval fleet was assembled off the coast of Venezuela, and a Venezuelan tanker was seized. All of that certainly entails war. Yet when seizing Maduro, the administration insisted that it was simply a law enforcement exercise rather than an act of war.

Here as elsewhere, the administration has a tendency constantly to shift its ground rhetorically and change policy on a whim, so that whatever happens, it can claim vindication. But this is incompatible with making a clear and coherent case for a policy. And without a clear and coherent case for war, one can hardly claim to have made a case that satisfies just war conditions.

Given what many see as the weaknesses and flaws of the UN and its decline in reputation over the years, is it fair to always consider the UN as being the “legitimate authority” only allowed to declare an act of war? Can the sovereign leader of a nation suffice in this regard? And does Marco Rubio’s assertion that this was a law enforcement operation to protect American citizens, and not an invasion or declaration of war, mean that just war principles shouldn’t apply in this case?

I do not myself agree with the view that a war of intervention is legitimate only if it has UN approval. So that isn’t the issue here, in my opinion. I agree with the administration that there can in principle be cases where the U.S. could on its own intervene to remove another country’s oppressive government, though of course everything depends on the details and on the specific motivation for doing so.

One problem in this case, though, is that just war conditions have not actually been met. Another serious problem is that the rhetoric from some in the administration, and from some of its defenders, goes well beyond anything that could be justified even in principle by just war criteria. For example, there has for over a year now been talk about annexing Greenland, and the president has explicitly refused to rule out military action as a way of doing this. But military action against Greenland, or even just the threat of it as a negotiating tactic, is manifestly contrary to just war doctrine. It would be naked aggression, nothing more than gangsterism.

Because the president and some of his allies so freely engage in this sort of irresponsible rhetoric, it is very hard to take seriously the suggestion that they are concerned to act justly where war is concerned. They have done enormous damage to their own credibility on these matters, and have no right to complain when critics question their motives. They have, unfortunately, given the international community good reason not to believe what they say about the Venezuela situation.

The Venezuela operation appears to have only been directed at legitimate targets: there were reportedly no civilian casualties, and so the operation could be viewed as proportional. Do you believe, therefore, that even though, in your opinion, the Venezuela operation could be argued not to have fulfilled the jus ad bellum criteria (reasons to wage war), it did fulfil the jus in bello criteria (right conduct in war)?

Once again, we’re still in the middle of what could end up being a much larger military commitment, so we don’t yet really know the scale of possible effects on the civilian population. But already there have been some serious problems. The attacks on the drug boats, which led up to the recent capture of Maduro, were of dubious legality. Worse than that, there have been charges that some innocent people were killed, and there is also the controversial case where it appears that people in one of the boats who were already rendered harmless were killed in a second strike. That would be against the laws of war, and the full story has still not come out.

It has also been reported that in the course of the recent operation against Maduro, his predecessor Hugo Chavez’s tomb was deliberately desecrated. Chavez was a thug who should not be missed. But there seems to have been no military reason for desecrating his grave, and it is Catholic teaching that deliberately disrespectful treatment of the bodies of the dead is sinful. This is not as important as the other problems I’ve mentioned, but it illustrates how the administration too often shows disdain for ordinary standards of decency. In my opinion, the president’s own rhetoric and actions too often evince what St. Augustine called the libido dominandi or lust for domination.

International relations have often historically been viewed by philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes as ultimately anarchical, susceptible to a power-driven international order that places national self-interest at the centre. In view of this recent operation in Venezuela, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the recent US bombing of Iran, and other examples, could we be returning to this Hobbesian view after decades of perhaps an overly idealistic approach to international relations that saw the world coming together under a limited, law-governed global political authority — a vision also espoused by John XXIII and Benedict XVI? And if so, how should the Catholic Church respond to this development in your view?

These matters are often discussed today as if there are only two options. On the one hand, there is a globalism that undermines national sovereignty, pushes for open borders, weakens local communities and traditions and otherwise works against the legitimate self-interest nations have in preserving their cultural identities and prioritizing the economic well-being of their own citizens. On the other hand, there is a bellicose jingoism that treats the international arena as an amoral, neo-Hobbesian jungle, where might makes right and the strongest ought simply to impose their will on weaker countries wherever this is in their self-interest.

Both Catholic social teaching and the Thomistic natural law tradition reject this as a false choice, and embrace a middle ground position that emphasizes the principle of solidarity. On the one hand, this entails respecting the independence of nations and their right to preserve their own identities, rather than absorbing them into a one-world blob. On the other hand, it entails promoting their cooperation and mutual assistance in what Pope Leo XIV calls the “family of peoples,” rather than a war of all against all in a Hobbesian state of nature.

Where war and diplomacy are concerned, this vision entails rejecting, on the one hand, the liberal and neoconservative project of pushing all nations to incorporate themselves into the globalist blob by economic pressure, regime change, or the like. But on the other hand, it also rejects a jingoistic realpolitik that sees all other nations fundamentally as rivals rather than friends, and seeks to bully them into submission rather than cooperate to achieve what is in each nation’s mutual interest.

The Church should recover this tradition and clearly and forcefully present it as an alternative to the two rivals which, unfortunately, dominate the scene today. She should make clear her differences not only from the obnoxious jingoism that emanates from too many quarters in the U.S. today, but also from the globalism that this jingoism is understandably reacting against. She should acknowledge the legitimate concerns of both sides, while emphasizing that her vision alone holds the true remedy.

For a view more supportive of the US military action, see this commentary by US Catholic scholar John Horvat who argues that Operation Absolute Resolve was not only justified but that the corrupt “narco-socialist” regime which broadly remains in charge of Venezuela needs to now be removed.