WATCH: Rand Paul Warns Senate That Venezuela Could Be America’s Next ‘Disastrous Foreign War’

The U.S. Senate voted this past Thursday on a war powers resolution to prevent Trump from attacking Venezuela without congressional approval.

It was defeated 51-49, mostly along party lines, with two exceptions: Republican senators Rand Paul (R-KY) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), the former of whom was a co-sponsor.

“Tonight, I voted to proceed to debate on a resolution that would terminate the escalation of operations—covert, military, economic, or otherwise—against Venezuela without explicit approval from Congress,” Murkowski wrote on X after the vote.

“I have been briefed multiple times and reviewed classified documents that provide insight into the administration’s factual justification for these actions,” she continued. “Even with this additional context, I do not believe their case has met the standard of clarity and rigor that Congress needs to fully evaluate the legality and scope of these operations.”

“This resolution follows recent reports of U.S. intelligence and military operations in and around Venezuela, which have the potential to disrupt international norms and escalate tensions in the region,” Murkowski added. “After months of lethal strikes in international waters, bringing this resolution to the Senate floor would have allowed Congress to determine whether these actions warrant specific congressional authorization under Article I of the Constitution.”

Senator Paul, for his part, made a ten-minute speech on the Senate floor prior to the vote, warning that D.C. warmongers are manufacturing consent for another “disastrous foreign war.”

“Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and now potentially Venezuela,” Paul said. “The formula is always the same: proclaim that the regime of the targeted country poses such a threat to the American way of life that the only thing we can do is go to war, tell them that our intervention is a noble effort, one that will bring security at home and liberty to foreign lands, topple the government and declare a new age of freedom.”

Paul went on to argue that overthrowing Maduro risks creating “more regional instability, not less,” empowering “the very drug cartels the administration is ostensibly trying to destroy,” exacerbating “the already precarious humanitarian crisis in Venezuela,” triggering mass migration (including to the US), and endangering the lives of US troops.

“In addition to the strategic malpractice of pursuing regime change in Venezuela, there is also the inconvenient fact that the President simply does not have the authority to unilaterally launch wars,” he noted moments later.

We aren’t endorsing every single word Paul said, but feel that this is a speech that every American should listen to:

Here’s a full transcript of his remarks:

For decades, the globalists in Washington have led our country into one disastrous foreign war after another, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and now potentially Venezuela.

The formula is always the same: proclaim that the regime of the targeted country poses such a threat to the American way of life that the only thing we can do is go to war, tell them that our intervention is a noble effort, one that will bring security at home and liberty to foreign lands, topple the government and declare a new age of freedom.

The warmongers have recycled these experiments in regime change again and again. And what has it brought? Instability, chaos, suffering and resentment.

It is the height of arrogance to think we can forcibly remove the dictatorship in Venezuela and expect a different result. We should learn from history. Liberty cannot be imposed at the point of a foreign bayonet.

The United States maintains the most formidable military in human history. Of course we have the capability of overthrowing the Maduro regime, just like we had the power to overthrow Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. But what comes next? Is anyone thinking about the potential blowback that such a campaign could entail?

Overthrowing the Maduro regime risks creating more regional instability, not less. The breakdown of state authority may create a power vacuum that the very drug cartels the administration is ostensibly trying to destroy could exploit.

Just as our misguided interventions in the Middle east the led to the proliferation of terrorist organizations, this could happen in Venezuela, but this time, with the proliferation of organized crime. We could swell the ranks of the cartels with new recruits.

Remember what happened in Iraq. The de-Baathification of Iraq, removing all of the previous government soldiers. They had no place to go. They were used to being paid. They wanted money. And they went and worked and became terrorists.

Where do you think the tens of thousands of Venezuelan soldiers and desperate civilians will turn when their livelihood suddenly disappears? It may be the drug cartels. In its hubris, Washington may very well empower the cartels and make the drug problem in our hemisphere worse.

Certainly any war will exacerbate the already precarious humanitarian crisis in Venezuela and lead to mass migration into neighboring countries already struggling under the strain of millions of refugees. And rest assured, many of those who flee the disaster or the war that will come will make their way to the United States.

Most consequentially, any military operation comes with the risk that American service members will be killed or wounded. We owe it to our service members to only send them into harm’s way when vital American interests are at stake. Who is in charge of Venezuela does not constitute such an interest.

We’ve seen Chaos emerge from our misguided wars before. We overthrew Saddam Hussein thinking Iraq will be transformed into this great Jeffersonian democracy. Instead, what occurred was an insurgency that led to some of the most brutal sectarian violence in living memory. Washington’s foolish invasion empowered radical jihadists and ultimately led to the rise of ISIS, which posed a much greater threat to Americans than Saddam Hussein ever did.

A similar story unfolded in Libya. In 2011, our forces aided the rebels to oust Muammar Gaddafi. The result was a brutal six year war that saw the proliferation of Jihadist groups and the widespread human rights violations, including the resurgence of slavery. Weapons were spread throughout Africa. Our intervention helped spur mass migration into Europe and contributed to widespread instability across Africa as weapons flowed from Libya into the Sahel and sub-Sahara, where they continue to fuel conflicts and terrorism to this day. Libya is still highly unstable and the conflict constantly threatens to reignite.

Like Saddam and Gaddafi, Maduro is unmistakably a dictator. He’s a bad guy. He suppresses freedom of speech. He controls his people. There’s no free voting. He treats people poorly. And that’s an understatement.

But there are a lot of bad guys in the world. There are a lot of dictators, there’s a lot of socialism leading to starvation. It doesn’t mean that the United States should carelessly risk its blood and treasure to go and topple every one of them. And as we’ve seen all too well in recent decades, foreign military interventions often end up making things worse.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Imagine the anarchy that followed our wars in the Middle East. Do we really want to risk creating similar conditions in our own backyard?

With over 10,000 U.S. troops, eight warships, a Virginia-class submarine and dozens of F35s already in the Caribbean, and the USS Gerald Ford strike group surging towards the region, the stage for folly is set.

We are told that only drug dealers are the target of US operations. But the consolidation of the largest US force in the Caribbean in 35 years suggests that regime change may very well be the intended goal.

The use of lethal force and our massive military buildup is an invitation to retaliation. Attacked countries often attack back.

It is our soldiers in the field of battle, not the senators on this floor, that will bear the brunt of the retaliation. By then, the time for debate will have passed. The Senate will have once again excused itself from the responsibility of governing, and the United States will once again be at war.

Those who argue that small boats in the Caribbean are so dangerous that they warrant being blown out of the water must explain why, when some of the individuals happen to survive, they are not detained. The the drugs are not scooped up and tested. The survivors are simply sent back to their country of origin. Wouldn’t we ask who they work for? Wouldn’t we detain them? Wouldn’t we present evidence to a court and say what should be done with these survivors. We summarily shoot them when we don’t know who they are, but once we pick them up, we don’t summarily kill them. We don’t even try them The United States has now repatriated two of these survivors to Colombia and Ecuador. If, as we are told, these groups constitute our threat to our security equal to Al Qaeda, that they are somehow narco-terrorists, then why are we allowing these individuals to go home?

The truth is that these arguments are nonsensical. Drug traffickers aren’t equivalent to Al Qaeda, and the executive branch does not have the authority to kill at will, anyone, anywhere, at any time, for any reason. Repatriating survivors of the strikes suggests that the administration’s lawyers are not so confident that their arguments about Article 2 authority will survive legal scrutiny. Or perhaps they’re not confident that they can even bring drug convictions in a court.

In addition to the strategic malpractice of pursuing regime change in Venezuela, there is also the inconvenient fact that the President simply does not have the authority to unilaterally launch wars. The founders had the foresight to recognize that the executive branch is the branch most prone to war, and they therefore made it clear in the Constitution that Congress maintains the exclusive power to declare war.

Part of President Trump’s broad appeal was his strong contempt for the neocons in the right and the liberal internationalists on the left who never met a war they didn’t want someone else’s children to fight. He rightfully criticized those in Washington who supported nation building, nation building fantasies throughout the Middle East. Yet now certain individuals within the administration seek to lead the President astray.

I would advise President Trump to remember the wise words of his inaugural address when President Trump said, “We will measure our success by the wars we never get into.” President Trump, do not allow the warmongers in Washington to drag you into an unnecessary war of choice.

Washington has spent decades, trillions of dollars, thousands of lives, trying to remake other countries in our image.

The American people are sick and tired of their elected representatives in Congress standing idly by and saying, “Nothing to see here, the President can do whatever he wants,” while sons and daughters are sent to fight wars in distant lands.

As the administration authorizes covert CIA action in Venezuela and surges U.S. forces in the region, including our most advanced aircraft carrier, the risk of imminent involvement in hostilities is evident.

It is time that the first branch of government puts America first.

The majority party of this institution should stand by the principles of restraint as espoused by President Trump’s promise to the American people.

Honor and statesmanship should prevent the Senate from sitting idly by while elements within this administration blunder America into another foreign war.

The American soldiers, their families, and the American people deserve a debate and a vote before we send our armed forces into war.

If you agree that our soldiers and their families deserve at least this much, vote yes on this resolution.

Thank you.