Amina Serna: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Amina Serna, a producer for The Brian Lehrer Show, filling in for Brian today, who's taking a well-deserved break. Good morning, everyone. Coming up on today's show, we'll get updates on some plans for housing construction in Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards near Barclays Center. Similar plans have been up for discussion since the early aughts. WNYC and Gothamist housing reporter David Brand will join us to explain why there's recent movement after years of stalled progress.

We'll also talk with New York Times opinion writer Jessica Gross about interfaith holiday traditions. Maybe you're a Christmacha family, or you've got some atheists celebrating along with religious traditions, or any other way your family blends different backgrounds and different ways to enjoy holiday togetherness. We'll open up the phones for you. As this year comes to a close, you'll be seeing many best-of-2025 lists. We'll talk to Gilbert Cruz, editor at the New York Times Book Review, about their list of 10 best books of the year.

First, we turn to Venezuela. On Wednesday, the United States seized an oil tanker off of the coast of Venezuela, and yesterday, the US Treasury said it imposed sanctions on six supertankers and on four Venezuelans, including three relatives of the country's first lady, Cilia Flores. It is not known whether the newly sanctioned ships were among those now targeted for interception. These latest sanctions and seizures come after several months of the US campaign of boat strikes against what it says are drug vessels in the Caribbean and the Pacific, killing more than 80 people.

The latest moves signal that tensions are mounting between the Trump administration and the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Here is Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt speaking from the White House yesterday.

Karoline Leavitt: We're not going to stand by and watch sanctioned vessels sail the seas with black market oil, the proceeds of which will fuel narcoterrorism of rogue and illegitimate regimes around the world.

Amina Serna: Meanwhile, in Congress, the House passed a Pentagon bill pressuring Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to release boat strike evidence. A growing chorus from both sides of the aisle are asking the Trump administration to clarify its justifications for the escalations. Joining us now to break down the latest turn of events and to give us some political and legal analysis of the United States' actions are Tess Bridgeman, co-editor-in-chief of Just Security, former deputy legal advisor to the National Security Council during the Obama administration, and William LeoGrande, professor of government at American University and specialist in US-Latin American relations. Tess and William, welcome to WNYC.

William LeoGrande: Thank you.

Tess Bridgeman: Thank you. Good to be here.

Amina Serna: Listeners, we can take your calls on either the oil tanker seizure, the supertanker sanctions, or the US strikes on suspected drug-trafficking boats off the coast of Venezuela. We'll talk both about the politics and the legality of the US and how it's escalating tensions in Venezuela. We can take your questions or comments. 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can also text that number. All right, let's begin with the latest news of the oil tanker seizure on Wednesday.

William, as I said in the intro, you're a specialist in Latin American politics and US foreign policy towards Latin America. Before we get into why the US is targeting oil tankers, just how unusual or usual is this move?

William LeoGrande: Oh, it's very unusual. There's really been only a single case of the United States forcibly seizing an oil tanker on the seas in the last several decades. In that case, it was taking the oil tanker back from Libyan rebels who had seized it themselves. This idea of seizing a tanker belonging to a foreign government, I don't know if it's totally unprecedented, but it's extraordinarily unusual.

Amina Serna: According to the industry publication Oil and Gas Journal, Venezuela has roughly 17% of the world's known oil reserves. That's more oil than Saudi Arabia, Russia, or the United States. Historically, the United States was the largest buyer of that Venezuelan oil. Now it mostly goes to China. William, are you aware of that relationship and when it started to change, go from US buying the bulk of that oil to China?

William LeoGrande: It was when the United States imposed sanctions on Venezuela because of the breakdown in bilateral relations between the government of Hugo Chávez and then, subsequently, Nicolás Maduro. As the bilateral relationship deteriorated, the United States imposed sanctions and essentially prohibited most US companies from buying Venezuelan oil. The one exception was Chevron, which was given a license to continue to market Venezuelan oil for several years.

We went from being the principal buyer to buying very little Venezuelan oil, and so the Venezuelans had to look for other markets. The Chinese were willing to become one of them.

Amina Serna: For Venezuelan oil to actually reach China, the New York Times reports that the cargoes often pass through what they call an opaque web to avoid sanctions involving traders, middlemen, and tankers. Skipper, the name of the tanker seized by the US on Wednesday, is thought to have been deployed in this type of trade. Tess or William, can either of you kind of explain the existing sanctions on Venezuela and the other countries that these oil tankers are operating around?

William LeoGrande: Tess, do you want to speak to the legality of that?

Tess Bridgeman: I can take an initial pass through this, and it is a rapidly changing landscape. As listeners know, there were additional sanctions imposed just yesterday, and we're still unpacking what all of this will look like in practice. Essentially, Venezuelan oil has been a target of US unilateral sanctions along with some other sectors of the Venezuelan economy. The goal seems to be to obviously make it harder for the Venezuelan government to earn hard currency by selling oil, which is primarily how it generates revenue, how it imports things like food.

The goal with these sanctions is to deepen Venezuela's economic crisis. With the latest sanctions and with the seizure yesterday, they're clearly trying to discourage shipping companies, insurers, financial intermediaries, anyone who could touch that trade in the Venezuelan oil from engaging with the sanctioned entities. That's a strategy that's been pursued in other places in the world, usually successfully, only when multilateral. Given geography, given the United States' willingness to be incredibly aggressive at this current moment, it could certainly have a big impact in the short term, at least on the Venezuelan economy.

I think your point that what this does is drive trade into these sort of darker corners of the economy using shadow fleets. That's things like ships that are willing to unlawfully turn off their transponders so that they can't be tracked doing ship-to-ship transfers out at sea. Which is not per se illegal, but is certainly a very shadowy practice, those kinds of things you see economies that are heavily sanctioned turned to. Which also then drives them, of course, into the arms of states allied with them and adversarial towards us that are willing to engage in those practices, like Russia, like Iran, like China.

Amina Serna: Thanks, Tess. William, is there anything that you'd like to add?

William LeoGrande: No, I think that really covers it. When the United States imposes sanctions on a shipping company, they won't do business with Venezuela because if they do, then they won't be able to do business with the United States, and we're a more important customer. Hence, the Venezuelans have to turn to these shadow fleets in order to transport their oil because regular shipping companies won't do business with them.

Amina Serna: I'll just add, as Tess was saying, it's a rapidly evolving situation and news story. The New York Times did report yesterday that the oil tanker was carrying oil from the Venezuela state-owned company, and was falsely flying Guyana's flag. The country's maritime authority said the ship's ultimate destination was Asia. Insofar that was yesterday, it is evolving. Speaking of yesterday, William, news outlets reported on the sanctions of an additional six supertankers and four Venezuelans that happened.

Three of those Venezuelans are relatives of the country's first lady. Are you following that story generally? Again, it's rapidly revolving, but maybe you want to reflect on what the Trump administration is trying to signal by going after Venezuelans, insofar as they knew that these were family members of the first lady. Anywhere you want to weigh on that?

William LeoGrande: I think they're just trying to pressure Maduro in particular to step down from the presidency. It's clear that this is not about narcotics interdiction, which, of course, is the rationale they were using for striking the boats in the Caribbean. This is about regime change. It's about trying to overthrow the government of Venezuela.

Amina Serna: Let's go to a call. Nick in Essex County, you're on WNYC. Hi, Nick.

Nick: Hi. Oh, thanks for taking my call. I think it's a great conversation that your guests are having here, and it's great to acknowledge the United States' current behavior, which is really abhorrent and a breach, and really has gone quite far. I'd like to put greater context into the conversation because I believe it's missing, and I believe it would be productive. The United States has really, for the last, my goodness, almost 15-plus years since the Venezuelans voted in or the coup of Chávez in Venezuela.

The United States' foreign policy towards Venezuela, really since that moment, was nothing less than absolutely recalcitrant, and aggressive, and abusive to people in Venezuela who suffered as a result of an embargo that's been going on this long. Now, Donald Trump and the administration has pushed this to another zone, but the reason I think it's so good to have a context is not only so that we can get some clarity on what's going on in Venezuela, which I haven't really found yet in the press yet in the United States, if it was really good.

The other piece is that the current administration are very deft operators in creating and ginning up brouhahas and controversies, and this is one of them. Now it's no small thing to blow up ships and kill people. Again, this is an awful situation or to take a tanker, but the United States was taking Venezuelan property and life for the last 15-plus years. The reason why the context is important is because, at some point, this current administration will pass. Okay? The United States' position, State Department position to Venezuela is not objectively going to change.

They may not be blowing up boats in the Caribbean or wherever they're doing, and doing that, but the behavior and the position stance of the US is still going to be the same. It's important for the American public to really understand that context because that means that our behavior and stance will actually just continue. It just may not be so overtly a spectacle-creating because that's what's really happening here. Now, is it possible that the United States perhaps has a full-blown invasion into Venezuela?

I will say that I sort of don't think that's going to happen. This is that the Trump always chickens out, little thing that some people like to use, and that's what will happen here. My question then to your guests would be, I didn't hear this type of granularity and concern about the Venezuelan people when the United States was embargoing them, and people were starving during other administrations, like, say, Democratic or liberal-type organizations. I didn't hear concerned academics talking and smart people talking about the way that the US was treating Venezuela back then.

Now they are because they don't like Donald Trump. Look, it's really easy not to like the current administration. It's really easy. Anyone cannot like him unless you do like him. I hope that this contextualizes the conversation in even greater depth so that your listeners can get even more out of your wonderful tableau that you have created here. Thanks so much.

Amina Serna: Thank you, Nick, for your call and for your high-level analysis there. I will say we'll go on to discuss lawmakers' concerns about whether the United States is entering a war. I think very fair analysis and critique from Nick. Why are we so concerned now? Is it because Trump is president? William is somebody who's an expert on Latin America. Do you want to weigh in on this? Tess, I'll ask you to respond after as well.

William LeoGrande: Sure. I think the reason that there's so much attention on it right now is because people are, in fact, worried that we're going to war with Venezuela. Sanctions are in some ways invisible to the ordinary person who's, you know, reading the news. They're not newsworthy. At least they haven't been historically in the United States. I will say I think that a lot of us who follow Latin American relations and US-Latin American relations have been talking about Venezuela for a long time because the caller is right.

The United States has had a very hostile relationship with the Venezuelan government now for well over a decade. Sanctions have been in place for a long time, and they have really done a lot of damage to the Venezuelan economy, generated several million refugees from Venezuela. When you start taking military actions, blowing up boats at sea with dubious legality, I will say, and assembling a seventh of the United States Navy in the Caribbean, echoes of the early 20th century gunboat diplomacy, that makes the headlines and that gets people's attention.

Tess Bridgeman: I can certainly add to that, a few things. First that I don't think either of us were defending US-Venezuela policy over the past decade and a half, and with sanctions in particular. I think they're often looked at as this kind of go-to fix-it-all foreign policy tool, and they're really not. In order for a sanctions regime to be effective, it generally has to be multilateral. It has to have a clear and achievable goal. There have to be off-ramps.

There has to be consistent enforcement, and they have to be targeted so that they're not hurting the ordinary people in a country that are ostensibly the people who are supposed to be helped by the policy in the long run. There's a lot to say about why sanctions programs imposed by Washington and even some of the multilateral ones have not been effective. I think that's certainly the case with respect to Venezuela. I do want to emphasize the point that was just made, that this murder campaign in the Caribbean, along with the buildup of military assets.

That is clearly already an unlawful threat of the use of force, violating Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter, which is the bedrock rule of the international system that says you can't use force or threatening force illegally as a tool of your foreign relations. That is already being violated by the unlawful threat of force signified by this buildup. The overt threats coming all the way up from the president, but also the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense in the United States, directly threatening the Maduro government and backing that up with credible and coercive means.

We are in a very different situation than we have been in the past. I think it's important to recognize that while policy has been errant in the past, while strategy has been missing, this is a clean break from that in the types of tactics being used and the complete disregard for the rule of law. This is the first time we've seen the president assert authority to engage in killing outside of the law and to advertise it on social media, to boast about it. That is new. That is alarming. That should be chilling to all of us.

Amina Serna: We will discuss the boat strikes and the legality as you see it, Tess, as you've laid it out for just security in several articles. Before we move on, I want to ask you a couple more questions just about this oil tanker that was seized. The Trump administration says the tanker was moving sanctioned oil with the ultimate goal of it going to Iran, another country dealing with US sanctions. The White House has said that people on board the ship are now in custody, and an estimated 60 to 100 million dollars' worth of oil aboard will be seized.

The US says it was following maritime law. Is the US legally allowed to seize this tanker and keep the oil? Is there any sort of maritime law justification for that?

Tess Bridgeman: Yes, this is a bit of a complicated area that does have some gray zones. What the United States has been doing in terms of its domestic law is pretty clearly following procedures that, if they make their case to a court, will allow for forfeiture of that oil. They have said they obtained a warrant for the seizure of the vessel prior to the boarding and seizure. They have said they're going back to court for forfeiture proceedings. If they succeed in court, they will have, under domestic law, have made the case for the transfer of the oil, the asset being seized in this case, to the US Government.

It gets more complicated under maritime law. The fact that the ship may have essentially been stateless, falsely flying the flag of Guyana, is relevant. This would be a much more difficult case to make for a flagged vessel or a vessel that was in the territorial waters of another state. While there is a right of visit, certainly under maritime law for unflagged vessels, for stateless vessels, the idea that you can then simply seize what's on board that ship, bring it back into your jurisdiction and keep it, that as an international law matter, would be more unsettled, even though the US will claim that under our domestic law, they're following all the necessary procedures.

I think we'll see some controversy about this for some time to come, and I think also we'll need to see more facts as they evolve regarding exactly what was going on with this ship.

Amina Serna: Just one more question to test your knowledge of maritime law. The Venezuelan government called the move an act of "international piracy" and "blatant theft." Does this amount to piracy in any way? How is international piracy even enforced?

Tess Bridgeman: Again, I think this depends on how you look at that gray zone between search and boarding the vessel and then actually confiscating what's on board. I think piracy would be taking it a step too far. Again, though, I do want to see how the facts play out. I want to see what the United States is saying in court. I think what we need to see as well is whether the rest of the world is saying this is consistent with their views of maritime law because there is a pretty well-settled customary international law set of rules.

These facts are not ones that play out very often. I think it's something that we're going to need to see how other states react and what the United States is telling its domestic courts in terms of what it understood the facts to be.

Amina Serna: This is The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Amina Serna, filling in for Brian today. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll switch gears and talk about the politics and legality of the US's boat strikes in Venezuela. We can take your calls on this at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Stay with us. It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Amina Serna, filling in for Brian today. We're talking about the politics and the legality of the Trump administration's escalation with the government of Venezuela.

My guests are William LeoGrande, professor of government at American University, and Tess Bridgeman, the co-editor-in-chief of Just Security, who has held several positions in the Obama administration at the intersection of law and national security. All right. Moving on to the boat strikes. As is widely reported, at least 22 US strikes on suspected drug trafficking boats off of the coast of Venezuela have killed at least 80 people. The video of a September 2nd strike that killed 11 people has drawn criticism from both sides of the aisle.

That video, I'll remind listeners, showed that two men survived an initial hit on the boat and were then struck again and killed. Media is referring to this video as the "double tap strike." Here is Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen from Maryland speaking on the Senate floor yesterday.

Senator Chris Van Hollen: If the president really cared about addressing illegal drugs, he wouldn't have proposed deep cuts to the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Agency, nor would he have proposed to shutter entirely the organized crime Drug Enforcement Task Force.

Amina Serna: Here is the other side of the aisle. Republican Representative Don Bacon on CNN saying Trump needs to make his case for Venezuela operations.

Republican Representative Don Bacon: He should come to Congress, and if he wants to continue operations on these boats, should get authorization. If he's going to invade or do something with Venezuela, he needs to make his case, because right now, there's zero case being made for why we would do this with Venezuela.

Amina Serna: William, can you talk to us a little bit about what's happening in Congress? What are lawmakers on both sides of the aisle saying and calling for?

William LeoGrande: Of course, Democrats in particular are really upset about this, but increasingly Republicans are asserting the Congress's right to be involved in the use of military force abroad. First with regard to the boats themselves, because the administration has not gone to Congress for any kind of authorization to use force against these vessels. Then, as the threat of strikes inside Venezuela has increased, the president has said on multiple occasions that the land is next, meaning strikes inside Venezuela.

That's an act of war, and the Constitution gives the Congress the power to declare war. The administration at the very least needs to go to Congress and make its case for why the use of military force against Venezuela is justified and get congressional authorization to use that force.

Amina Serna: William, a listener texts, "Why does Trump want regime change in Venezuela?" I know that's a short question with a big answer, but how would you weigh in?

William LeoGrande: The Venezuelan government is a self-proclaimed socialist government. The current Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has been an intense adversary of both Venezuela and Cuba because of their socialist governments ever since he was first elected to the United States Senate. Now I think he's pushing for the Trump administration to increase the pressure first on Venezuela, but also on Cuba in order to try to foster regime change. The first Trump administration tried this once already with Venezuela by having the CIA involved by imposing sanctions, and it didn't work.

Now they seem to be willing to escalate to military force to see if they can't pull it off this time.

Amina Serna: Let's go to a listener. We have Claire in Livingston, New Jersey. Hi Claire, you're on WNYC.

Claire: Yes, I just wanted to make one fact known because I haven't heard it on any program, and that is the fact that this large ship is firing on these little boats and killing, at this point, 80 people. What I'm saying is, why are they not pulling up to the boat and arresting those people and finding out whether they really have any drugs or not have it? 80 people would not be dead. That's all I wanted to say.

Amina Serna: Claire, thank you so much for your call. Tess, I've seen it reported throughout these past couple of months that this is not very typical of the US military. Typically, as Claire said, people would be arrested. Can you just weigh in on that comment?

Tess Bridgeman: Sure. Happy to. The caller is absolutely right that what the United States would normally do and has been doing up until this point, and even has been doing on occasion, even since these illegal strikes began, is called interdiction. It's a Coast Guard-led, Navy-supported effort that is, in fact, supported by US allies in the region and in Europe often. There's a very well-settled legal framework governing those law enforcement operations because again, the people on board these vessels, while they may be suspected of engaging in criminal activity, they're not combatants, they're not engaged in hostilities, they're not engaged in armed conflict.

The laws of war, the laws of armed conflict, simply don't apply. I think that's an important kind of baseline frame for this that we need to keep in mind. The United States, despite what the administration has been claiming, has not been attacked in the sense of the law of armed conflict. It has not suffered an attack that could justify the use of force in self-defense. It is not in what it is calling a non-international armed conflict, which is a conflict between states and non-state groups.

It is not in a non-international armed conflict with any cartel, with any criminal gang in the Western Hemisphere, or otherwise. The fact of simply applying a label to those groups, whether it's the foreign terrorist organization designation, labeling them narcoterrorists, et cetera, that does not import with it the authority to use force. It doesn't turn a law enforcement situation into an armed conflict situation. It certainly does not bring with it the authority for the United States to simply kill suspected criminals.

What this entire campaign is, is a pre-planned campaign for the killing of human beings, which, under domestic law, is murder. Under international law, we call that an extrajudicial killing. Just to go back to the point about what Congress is asking for and the kind of interplay between how the president and the Congress would normally operate here, because this is all completely unlawful, because there is no armed conflict, because there has been no armed attack, there's actually nothing that Congress could do in this situation that would make the president's action lawful.

There's no authorization for use of military force, no declaration of war that would change this situation at all from the perspective of it constituting murder under our domestic law and an extrajudicial killing under international law. While Congress had a very important role to play and needs to really be stepping up with its oversight, getting to the bottom of the facts, getting the administration to give its legal justifications more clearly, calling for witnesses, subpoenaing documents, all of that needs to be happening.

Hopefully, even more forcefully using the tools at its disposal to cut off the ability to continue the campaign. What it can't do is authorize it. Nothing it could do would make this campaign lawful.

Amina Serna: Tess, you were talking-- Oh, sorry, go ahead, please.

William LeoGrande: I just wanted to add that this is not even really about narcotics trafficking because most of the boats that are carrying drugs from Colombia, transiting through Venezuela, and moving through the Caribbean are not even coming to the United States. They're headed primarily to Europe. Almost all of the cocaine that comes from the United States manufactured in Colombia, transits either Colombia or Ecuador, and comes up on the Pacific coast to Central America and is smuggled across the Mexican border.

Amina Serna: Right. William, to your point, the Trump administration, and Trump himself, has claimed he's saving tens of thousands of American lives a day because he is intervening in the trafficking of fentanyl. You're making the point that these ships are carrying mostly cocaine, which certainly can be laced with fentanyl, has definitely upended many lives, but also to put a finer point on that as well.

William LeoGrande: That's right. All the fentanyl is being manufactured in Mexico with precursors from China. It really has nothing to do with at all with Venezuela. That's to the wider point, and we're seeing now that the real target is not narcotics trafficking. The real target is the government of Venezuela.

Amina Serna: Let's take another call. We have Jorge in Brooklyn. Hi, Jorge, you're on WNYC.

Jorge: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my call. I just wanted to comment. I'm a Colombian-born, naturalized American citizen for 50 years, and I've been very closely observing the relationship between the US and Latin America. In my opinion, I think that what's happening with these heightened, escalated attacks on Venezuelan boats. I agree with the previous caller. It has very little to do with drug wars. Colombia had been in a drug war with the United States for many, many years. They worked together to basically destroy the narcotics industry.

It was a huge failure. To the larger point I'm trying to make is that if the United States persists in this kind of aggressive action towards Venezuela, there's a very good likelihood that it will spread to Colombia, which has been mentioned several times. Not only that, it could spark a regional war. Think of Vietnam, think of Laos, think of Cambodia. I think it's a very dangerous situation, and I think it needs to be stopped now in any legal form, international or federal.

Amina Serna: Thank you so much for your call, Jorge. William, any thoughts as Jorge was speaking?

William LeoGrande: Yes. President Trump has already threatened Colombia. After President Petro in Colombia voiced his opposition to these attacks on vessels at sea, President Trump said, "He's going to be next. He'll be next." Now, you have to understand that the president of Colombia is a democratically elected president who has been historically cooperative by and large with US counternarcotics policy up until now because of what the administration is currently doing. Here, the president of the United States is threatening a democratically elected neighboring country.

This is not the way you build good relations with Latin America.

Amina Serna: I'm going to go to another call. Annette in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Annette.

Annette: Hi. I'll just make this short. I think he will invade Venezuela because with the new regime in Venezuela, they will have some kind of oil deal that Donald Trump can profit for. Remember George Bush, he invaded Panama for Noriega, claimed there was so much drug smuggling going on. Right now, Trump is interested in the canal. Keep a watch on what he runs the country on, what he can profit from. I was married to my husband, and my husband was Panamanian. He passed away in 2022. He always had his eye now on those two countries, Panama--

Amina Serna: Annette, thank you so much for your call. You told our screeners, "Remember when Bush invaded Panama." One more point, one more texter. Going to a similar point, William, is somebody writes, "George W. Bush attempted to overthrow Chávez directly in or about 2003. Chávez enjoyed broad support and was able to survive the attempted coup, but the result apparently was that he became more paranoid and more repressive. The attempted couple who ended up backfiring. You can make the same argument about other places where the US attempted to intervene."

We have several callers and texters making historical ties to this current moment. As somebody who's been covering Latin America and US policy towards Latin America, William, could you put it into a broader historical context for us?

William LeoGrande: The United States for 100 years has seen Latin America as sort of its sphere of influence. For a very long time, and especially during the Cold War, the United States was just very intolerant of any government that wasn't willing to be very friendly and open to the United States, both diplomatically and economically. We overthrew governments. We overthrew the Guatemalan government in the early 1950s, we overthrew the Chilean government in 1973, or assisted in the overthrow of the Chilean government in 1973.

We've been trying to overthrow the Cuban government for more than 60 years, and we haven't been able to do it. This is not new in a certain sense. Just recently, the Trump administration put out a statement reasserting the Monroe Doctrine, that is to say, the right of the United States to dominate the Western Hemisphere, and echoing the old days of gunboat diplomacy. Latin America today is a lot stronger, a lot more developed economically, a lot more global in its economic linkages.

We just can't turn the clock back to those days when we had a kind of almost colonial relationship with a lot of these countries. In the case of Venezuela, specifically, Hugo Chávez was, in fact, very popular and was freely elected several times. President Maduro, I think it's unquestionable that he lost the presidential election last year and then stole it. That's part of the reason, I think, that the administration, and particularly Secretary Rubio, is so intent on overthrowing this government. It's a socialist government.

It defies the United States. Now he can make the argument that it is, in fact, an undemocratic government, and therefore, somehow, that gives us the right to try to overthrow it. That's not, of course, how international law works, as I'm sure Tess will tell us.

Amina Serna: Tess, here's a question for you from a listener. They write, "Can The Hague charge US administration and top leaders with war crimes and even seek their arrest?"

Tess Bridgeman: First, just to say I completely agree with William, any attempt at overthrowing a government, whether they're democratically elected or not, would be blatantly illegal use of force known as aggression under international law. That is what Putin has engaged in in Ukraine, before that in Georgia, and other places. It is the bedrock of the international system that you can't seek to overthrow another government by force. It also doesn't work, as he's talked us through, so I won't go further into that.

With respect to accountability, that's a really important question. What we would see in a democracy that is functioning well is being able to hold our own to account. That is something that the United States has not been good at. We didn't see accountability up to the top of the chain for torture after the W. Bush administration authorized a campaign of torture. We do need to see it for murder. Whether it happens in a future US administration or not, I think is something that time will tell.

With respect to the caller's question, though, about who else could prosecute these crimes, you actually won't see any war crimes trials because there are no war crimes, because we're not at war. The law of armed conflict simply does not apply. What you could see here, though, is the case being made that this reaches the level of the crime against humanity of murder, which is defined as killing one or more people as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population. We certainly are seeing the systematic nature of this.

The president himself ordered this campaign. He went to his Department of Justice to get a manufactured set of facts to pretend we're at war to try to justify its legality. Everyone involved, of course, knowing full well that this is not actually a war. The possibility of a crime against humanity charge is much more plausible. Where you could see that happening, I think more likely than in the Hague, would be in states that have universal jurisdiction statutes, that's a law on the books that allows a state to prosecute someone for certain very grave crimes like genocide, like crimes against humanity.

Regardless of where the crime was committed, or the nationality of the offender, or the nationality of the victim. You just need the offender to be generally present in your state in order to bring those charges. Whether that will mean Hegseth, Trump, other senior officials involved in planning and ordering this campaign simply have to be careful where they travel in the future, or whether it's a more meaningful form of accountability for them, I think will remain to be seen.

Again, just to emphasize, what we really need to be seeing is the US Congress and, hopefully, in the future, the US justice system, taking seriously the idea that even our senior-most leaders are not above the law and that there can't be impunity for those who order these kinds of acts. Of course, the Supreme Court has given the president essentially immunity, but not Hegseth, not the others who are involved in ordering and planning this. Congress, of course, could be fulfilling its constitutional responsibility of holding the president accountable.

I hope that is something that they get more serious about in a bipartisan way.

Amina Serna: As we have just a few minutes left in this segment, William, I'm wondering-- I know you've mentioned a couple of these news headlines, and I just want to go back to them very briefly. Trump this week warned Colombian President Gustavo Petro could be targeted in the same way as Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro for Colombia's role in exporting illegal drugs to the United States. William also mentioned the story from earlier this week that the US military flew a pair of fighter jets over the Gulf of Venezuela.

NPR reports the incident was the closest that warplanes had come to the South American country's airspace and that President Trump, as you said, has said that land attacks are coming soon. To either of you, Tess, how does this sort of land-- I don't know if you want to weigh in on the land action versus sort of maritime action, or William, I don't know what comes next. What are we looking out for?

Tess Bridgeman: I can just briefly say that any use of force against Venezuela itself or in Venezuela would be a prohibited use of force. It would be a violation of the UN Charter. It would likely be considered an act of aggression. It's the kind of thing that Congress needs to use the tools at its disposal to cut off. There is, in fact, pending legislation that could come to a vote under the War Powers Resolution that would require the president to withdraw forces from any use of force in or against Venezuela.

There are a few Republicans who have signed on to that. And I would hope that if we actually got into a situation where the United States was going down this reckless and deeply unlawful regime change path, that more Republicans would get on board and that Congress would be able to muster the votes to stop it.

William LeoGrande: I would just add that it would also be a violation of the Charter of the Organization of American States and could very well mean the end of the OAS.

Amina Serna: We will have to leave it there for today. Tess Bridgeman is the co-editor-in-chief of Just Security and former deputy legal advisor to President Obama's National Security Council. William Leogrande, professor of government at American University and Latin American policy specialist. Tess, William, thank you so much for your time this morning.

William LeoGrande: Thank you.

Tess Bridgeman: Thank you.

 

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