The Chavez-Maduro regime has been in power for 30 years and is a hardcore group of people who will not give up power easily; removing Maduro alone is not sufficient because the rest of the regime remains in place.

Maduro and his regime pose threats to stability in the Western Hemisphere and to the United States directly by harboring Iranians who conduct terrorist activities across the hemisphere, and the US intervention is justified under international law because it acts at the request of the legitimate government—the people who actually won the Venezuelan election.

Trump said 'We're going to run Venezuela for a while,' but Marco Rubio immediately disavowed this on Sunday talk shows saying 'No, we're just going to talk about policy,' revealing internal White House disagreement about the scope of the intervention.

By undercutting the legitimate democratic opposition in Venezuela and suggesting the US will deal with the dictatorship to secure oil access, Trump undermines the legitimacy of the claimed humanitarian and democratic rationale for removing Maduro.

The Venezuelan regime is attempting to buy time in negotiations by showing openness while ensuring military loyalty, gangs remain cooperative, and maintaining support from China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba.

China controls 80 percent of Venezuela's oil exports and views Venezuela's oil reserves—17 percent of proven worldwide reserves, larger than Saudi Arabia or the United States—as a source it wants to control; China will not want this disappear.

Previous US interventions in Haiti (1915-1934), the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua produced not stable liberal democracies but authoritarian strongmen; Haiti was a shambles when the US went in, when it left, under Papa Doc, and remains a shambles today.

If Trump invades Greenland, it would be the end of the NATO alliance.

The current Colombian president was democratically elected and his government does not threaten the United States; while there are issues with narcotics trafficking, Colombia's democratic legitimacy and US interests there argue against intervention despite Trump's tough rhetoric.

The Bay of Pigs intervention did not provoke Castro to get closer to the Soviet Union; Castro was on a mission to do that from the beginning.

The 'troika of tyranny' in the Western Hemisphere—Maduro's Venezuela, post-Castro Cuba, and Ortega's Nicaragua—are leaning against each other and propped up by each other, suggesting they form an interconnected authoritarian bloc.

Nicaragua may have been worse off if the US had not remained engaged longer, as it is now ruled by communist dictator Daniel Ortega, suggesting insufficient duration of commitment may have enabled worse outcomes.

China and Taiwan's circumstances differ from Russia and Ukraine (and from Venezuela), because Taiwan's people reject the claim that Taiwan is a sovereign part of China, and Taiwan itself poses no threat to Chinese security, whereas Venezuela harbored threats to the US.

Oil was always a priority for Trump, and he wants to keep gasoline prices low at the pump because this is a significant part of the politics of the US economy that will influence the November elections.

While oil availability is a legitimate political concern, it is not a sufficient national security argument on its own for intervention; there are larger strategic issues at stake that justify the intervention.

Marco Rubio has been given responsibility ('viceroy' status) to make Trump's Venezuela policy work, indicating significant influence over the decision to intervene and remove Maduro.

If the Venezuelan regime falls, Cuba is in trouble not because of military action by the United States but because of the people in Cuba and millions of Cuban-Americans in Florida in daily contact with relatives, suggesting popular pressure rather than intervention causes regime change.

Venezuela has become 'the Afghanistan of South America' by providing opportunities for US adversaries to use Venezuelan territory for their advantage.

Venezuelan oil infrastructure has been destroyed by the Chavez-Maduro regime, and recovery will take years and billions of dollars in capital investment; therefore, whoever benefits from Venezuelan oil will not be Trump but the next president.

The Venezuelan opposition was prepared to assume control of government in 2018-2019 after fragmenting the Maduro regime at the top and arranging military defections, but these preparations may have been lost with the current intervention's approach.