Lawfare Daily: The U.S. Strike on Venezuela and Capture of Nicolás Maduro
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 5 January 2026
⏱️ 50 minutes
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Summary
During a live YouTube discussion on Jan. 4, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson, Foreign Policy Editor Dana Stuster, and Public Service Fellow Loren Voss to discuss what we know—and what we don’t know—about the legal issues raised by the U.S. strike on Venezuela and the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. They spoke about what the administration's possible policy goals are in Venezuela, the potential legal justifications for the attack and capture of Maduro, and whether or not the United States is at war with Venezuela or some sub-groups.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare with Lawfare Senior Editor, Scott R. Anderson, foreign policy editor Dana Stuster, and Public Service Fellow, Lauren Voss. |
| 0:16.8 | The oil thing has come back over and over again and has been a subtext of other statements that they've made. |
| 0:23.0 | I think more broadly, it is one part of this broader national security strategy that they have put forward. |
| 0:29.0 | This idea that the United States is going to be more assertive in the Western Hemisphere, |
| 0:33.0 | that it is going to reposition assets to the Western Hemisphere and care less about Europe and about the Middle East. |
| 0:40.1 | In a live recording on January 4th, we discussed what we know and what we don't know about the legal |
| 0:47.4 | issues raised by the U.S. strike on Venezuela and the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. |
| 0:57.0 | There may be legitimate arguments that Venezuela has committed international law violations, |
| 1:00.0 | but not every international law violation means that you can go use force. |
| 1:03.0 | The union charter tells us the exact opposite. |
| 1:09.0 | I don't really quite know where to start with this. |
| 1:12.9 | So let's just start, Dana, with what happened? |
| 1:17.7 | What do we know? |
| 1:19.5 | And is the United States running Venezuela now? |
| 1:24.5 | Is it going to be a 51st state? |
| 1:32.6 | What do we know about the U.S. military operation in Venezuela? |
| 1:39.5 | And is it over? We don't know. And so what we do know is that on Friday, the United States carried out a military operation to seize President of Venezuela, Nicholas Maduro. Trump administration |
| 1:45.0 | has offered conflicting accounts of this in terms of whether it was primarily a law enforcement |
| 1:50.4 | operation. The Trump administration in a press conference yesterday said that the United States |
| 1:54.1 | is now running Venezuela and would be the country would be run by the U.S. Secretary of Defense |
| 1:59.7 | and Secretary of State. That was walked back today by the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who said that they are engaging with the vice president, now president of Venezuela, |
| 2:11.6 | and will be applying pressure to influence Venezuela's policies with new leadership through continued oil |
... |
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