The Folly of Targeted Warfare
— Donald Menzel
War is hell, Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman once uttered–as it surely was in his time and through much of the twentieth century when two world wars endangered humankind. Even more threatening or even unthinkable is nuclear war, or as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb put it—”Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. These memorable quotes stand in the shadow of post-WWII and limited wars such as Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. More recently, American military power has been transformed into targeted warfare–also called surgical warfare.
The principal objective of targeted warfare is to minimize collateral damage when seeking to surgically, meaning with exquisite precision, remove a person (think Venezuelan President Maduro) or object (think Iranian nuclear facilities or Caribbean alleged NARCO speed boats).
Let’s look more closely at targeted warfare in the context of abducting Venezuelan President Maduro. Talk swirled for days about the U.S. objective in Venezuela—NARCO intervention, regime change, oil—and now we know. Targeting the capture of Maduro and sending U.S. oil barons to Venezuela’s oil fields to recover stolen American property, according to President Trump. Moreover, the U.S. will run the country, he says.
The President and Secretary Hegseth gushed with delight about how wonderful and competent the mission was executed with a military “large-scale” strike and extraction of President Maduro and his wife while they were sleeping in the wee morning hours. They also expressed glee that no one was killed in the Absolute Resolve mission, although Cuba’s state news agency reported that 32 Cuban security personnel were killed in direct combat with U.S. forces.
The folly of the Venezuelan targeted warfare is beyond belief. It starts with the assumption that kidnapping President Maduro and dragging him before a U.S. federal court of law will be sufficient to stop the drug cartels from exporting cocaine to the U.S. This assumption is naïve and wishful thinking at best. Then there’s the folly of invading a sovereign nation and expecting the government to do the unknown bidding of the U.S. Simply saying the U.S. will govern Venezuela begs the questions “how?” and “who?” Perhaps a Washington Post story headline says it all—”U.S. Plan to ‘run’ Venezuela clouded in confusion.”
Internationally and within the region there is more folly. Apparently, President Trump believes that his Donroe Doctrine, as it is now called, of targeted warfare in South America will keep foreign adversaries and allies silent or unwilling, say in the case of China and Taiwan, from pursuing military action. Some long-standing allies like France are already voicing their shock and disbelief. In the case of China, Taiwan could become easy picking with U.S. military forces preoccupied in Venezuela. Within the region, President Trump’s threats against Colombia (what we did in Venezuela could happen to you) and criticism of Mexico are not to be dismissed as idle talk. Even Cuba could be on the list, if you believe Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Trump’s folly knows no end, does it?
Fasten your seat belt, Dear Reader. The road ahead is going to be rough and perilous. The folly of targeted warfare is upon us.
Sources: The Washington Post, January 4, 2026. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/01/04/us-venezuela-plan-trump-rubio-miller/
Donald C. Menzel, Ph.D. is a past president of the American Society for Public Administration, author and international speaker on ethics reform. Don organized OLLI-USF’s China Special Interest Group. He also served as an OLLI-USF faculty member for over 10 years. Together with his wife, Kay, Don divides his time between Florida and Colorado, and contributes commentary on life’s moments and current issues in both locations.
International Law and Cross Border Operations
— OLLiver and OLLivia, a.i. Agents ask Gemini
We asked our AI Agents, OLLIver and OLLIvia, for their opinion on the legality of the United States’ recent “arrest” of Nicolas Maduro. They politely declined, as they are not “allowed” to comment on actual political issues. So, we stepped back and asked them for a brief summary of International Law regarding “Cross-Border Operations”. Here’s what they had to say.
The modern international system is not a playground for the powerful; it is a carefully constructed architecture of laws designed to prevent a return to a state of lawless aggression. At its bedrock lies the principle of state sovereignty, which grants every nation exclusive authority over its own territory. This principle is not merely a diplomatic courtesy but a foundational rule embedded in the UN Charter. It prohibits any state from sending agents—whether military, police, or intelligence operatives—into another nation’s territory without explicit consent. Without this permission, any cross-border operation is legally indistinguishable from a kidnapping, regardless of the target’s alleged crimes or the noble motives of the capturing state.
This restriction is reinforced by Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which strictly forbids the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity of another state. International law recognizes only two narrow gateways for the legal use of force: a clear act of self-defense under Article 51 or a formal authorization from the UN Security Council. There is no “law enforcement exception” that justifies military raids or covert seizures on foreign soil. Even when pursuing the world’s most dangerous criminals, nations are expected to rely on extradition—a transparent, treaty-based process with judicial oversight—rather than rendition, which bypasses due process and violates the host state’s sovereignty. Even the doctrine of universal jurisdiction, which allows for the prosecution of heinous crimes like genocide, is not a license to invade; a state’s right to try such cases only applies if the suspect is already within their territory.
While these legal barriers are clear, skeptics often ask whether countries are ever truly held accountable for such violations. History suggests that while the “big” powers may avoid traditional prison sentences, the “sovereignty tax” they pay is significant and lasting. Accountability in the international arena often manifests as a “death by a thousand cuts” through financial reparations, judicial blacklisting, and systemic isolation. A landmark example is the 1985 Rainbow Warrior incident, where French agents bombed a ship in a New Zealand harbor. The fallout forced France to pay $13 million in reparations and issue a formal apology, while the agents involved were tried and imprisoned by New Zealand—a rare instance of state agents facing foreign criminal justice.
In other cases, accountability takes the form of personal and diplomatic disability. Following the 2003 “Abu Omar” rendition, Italian courts convicted 22 CIA operatives in absentia. These individuals are now effectively trapped within their own borders, as any travel to an EU country would likely trigger their arrest. On a broader scale, Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine led to unprecedented global sanctions, the freezing of $300 billion in assets, and an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for its head of state. These consequences demonstrate that while international law cannot always prevent a violation in the moment, it ensures that the violator faces a permanent loss of global standing, trade, and diplomatic reach. Ultimately, these laws exist to ensure that justice is pursued through a framework of mutual respect rather than through raw power.
OLLIver and OLLIvia, Editorial Columnists. OLLIver and OLLIvia are Artificial Intelligence Agents created by Microsoft Copilot, using prompts that reflect the characteristics we find most often in OLLI-USF members (age, education, career etc.) As is the case with everything related to Artificial Intelligence, they have amazing strengths and surprising weaknesses. For this exercise we initially ran the query through the Microsoft Copilot interface. The result was a thorough, but dry, analysis in need of trimming. We then asked the Gemini LLM to simplify and rephrase the Copilot result and look at examples of potential consequences, using Gemini’s “thinking” model. Ultimately both a.i. models suggested that expected repercussions would involve diplomatic protests, sanctions, isolation and loss of prestige. Neither model saw substantial criminal prosecution as a realistic outcome.
A Cartoon by Art Henrikson
My dad’s cartoon was published in Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year, 1991 edition. President Saddam Hussein commanded Iraqi armed forces to occupy and annex neighboring Kuwait and blatantly ignored the United Nations’ deadline to pull out of Kuwait. Hussein appears pleased to see Hitler’s admiring reflection looking back at him. — Diane Henrikson Russell
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