DANIEL ESTRIN, HOST:
We have been following the extraordinary news out of Venezuela this morning. Overnight, U.S. forces targeted the country, capturing its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife. Some U.S. lawmakers have been criticizing the Trump administration's stance on Venezuela. Among them is Senator Tim Kaine. The Virginia Democrat is the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. He's a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee as well, and he joins us now. Good morning, Senator.
TIM KAINE: Daniel, good to be with you.
ESTRIN: You were among the lawmakers who said the Trump administration's strikes on boats in the Caribbean were illegal. You were even discussing the possibility of those strikes constituting a war crime. So how do you see last night's operations?
KAINE: Daniel, I think these strikes are clearly illegal. They have not been authorized by Congress, and the Constitution is clear that the U.S. doesn't engage in military action or war without a vote of Congress, except in cases of imminent self-defense. The Constitution is absolutely clear on that. And so the boat strikes in international waters are illegal. Murdering shipwrecked sailors clinging to wreckage in those waters is illegal. And a U.S. invasion of Venezuela to depose its president and arrest him is illegal. And I have a vote scheduled in the next few days when we get back to Congress on Monday to put all senators on the record as to whether we should be at war with Venezuela without a vote of Congress.
ESTRIN: Senator, many Venezuelans do not support Maduro. Do you see anything positive from this development?
KAINE: Maduro is a disaster, and he's been disastrous for the country. And we could say the same thing about a hundred and fifty leaders of countries around the world. But our Constitution is very, very clear that we don't order servicemen and women into harm's way, risking their lives, unless there is a congressional debate and vote about whether the war is in the national interest. Here, there was no real notification, no real Consultation, no real debate, and definitely not a vote. The president believes he can wage war on his own. And in the last weeks, you've seen him use the U.S. military to ostensibly protect Christians in Nigeria and threaten to use the U.S. military to protect Iranian protesters. He's threatened U.S. military force or suggested he's open to it to seize Panama, to seize Greenland. It's time for Congress to get off the couch and exercise the oversight over this president's desire to wage war on his own.
ESTRIN: What do you think President Trump is actually getting at with this operation?
KAINE: It's unclear because the president started these operations in international waters, saying it was about narco-trafficking. But now both he and other administration officials have said, we want our oil back, we want our assets back and we also want to change regimes. The U.S. has tried to stand for the proposition that the sovereignty of nations should be respected. That's why we've criticized Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. But we can't, with a straight face, make the argument that we support the sovereignty of nations if we're willing to engage in a unilateral presidentially declared war against Venezuela. And thus, he is really undercutting U.S.' moral and - stance for an international rule of law where nations can invade each other willy-nilly, just because a president decides it's a good idea to do so.
ESTRIN: President Trump noted that there were some injuries on the U.S. side in the operation. He said they weren't serious. How do you see the U.S. getting involved in potentially a more protracted conflict in Venezuela, especially U.S. forces, with government troops or even non-state actors like drug cartels?
KAINE: It's very troubling. I mean, use - to use an example, the U.S. invaded the tiny island nation of Grenada in the 1980s, and U.S. troops were killed in that invasion, and innocent civilians, folks who were patients in a mental hospital, were mistakenly bombed. Wars have consequences. So, yes, the U.S. troops who have been deployed by this president - and they always serve honorably when they're ordered to do so - in my view, this is an illegal war. They are at risk, and some were injured. We don't know the extent of the injuries. Obviously, we are hoping that they're minor. There's no such thing as a war without a human consequence, and that's why it ought to be debated and voted before we wage into it.
ESTRIN: That's Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, calling the U.S. strikes in Venezuela an illegal war. Senator, thank you for speaking with us.
KAINE: Absolutely. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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