STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
David Ignatius has been listening with us. He's a Washington Post columnist covering foreign affairs who has seen many presidents come and go. David, welcome back.
DAVID IGNATIUS: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: When you hear the president saying the United States will run Venezuela for much longer than a year and, quote, "we have to rebuild the country," what does it make you think?
IGNATIUS: So it makes me think this is an open-ended commitment. When I think back to the famous question that David Petraeus asked on the way to Baghdad in 2003, tell me how this ends, nobody can give an answer to that on Venezuela, least of all, it seems, President Trump. He doesn't know. He's pretty frank about saying that. We know this isn't regime change because elements of the old regime are still in charge in Caracas. So we don't really know what it is or how long it will last, or how deep the U.S. commitment military or otherwise is going to be.
INSKEEP: But we do know that it is a larger commitment than it seemed at the beginning. There was an argument that the administration's approach at the beginning had some wisdom to it. They said it was just a law enforcement operation, we're just taking the one guy, we're not doing regime change. But he now does seem to be talking of a much larger agenda if he's saying he's going to rebuild the country on a much more profitable basis.
IGNATIUS: Steve, what I've been struck by over the past week is the almost intoxicating effect of using military power for an American president. Trump is hardly the first person with whom you see that. It was clear with George W. Bush in 2003. In the beginning, upbeat days of Vietnam, you could see it in LBJ. There's something about using military power that puts a president in a different space. There can't be anything quite like it on Earth. The U.S. military is so strong and so devastating, as in this attack.
And it's obviously led Trump to talk about power in a different way, untrammeled power. In an interview with The New York Times, he said there are no limits on me except my own morality. But not international law. That's not going to stop me. Obviously, he doesn't think Congress has a role in stopping him. He has a kind of power that no other leader has. And he's determined to use it to get what he wants, even if that means demanding the sale or even the seizure of Greenland, to take the latest example.
INSKEEP: Well, the administration has disregarded international law, it would seem, and has not had to worry too much about Congress. Although, there was a vote in Congress that attempts to limit the president's future action in Venezuela. But I want to ask about one other possible limit. Is it possible that the president, as other presidents have, will find out that his actions are not limited by his morality, but by reality, realities of the world?
IGNATIUS: So they're limited by the patience of the American people. That's what George W. Bush, other presidents, certainly LBJ discovered. Americans like to jump in. We are an aggressive, interventionist country. But people tire of those commitments. So with Vietnam, with Lebanon, where I began my career as a foreign reporter, certainly with Iraq and Afghanistan, you saw the United States weary of the commitment that it had made.
And finally, the public just wasn't ready to continue. They wanted out. Trump was elected in part because people thought he was the president who was going to change that interventionist streak. And obviously (laughter), that's not what we're seeing. We're seeing a president as interventionist as any I can remember.
INSKEEP: And, stating the obvious, the United States did not sign up for a long commitment in Venezuela because Congress, among other people, weren't signed up in advance.
IGNATIUS: Well, you're seeing now some pushback from Republicans, Republicans taking that rare step of actually challenging the president and saying they want more congressional oversight power over this war. I mean, there's a reason, Steve, why the founders wanted Congress to have the war-making power, because they wanted more deliberation of covenants like this that involve the whole country.
INSKEEP: David Ignatius of The Washington Post. Always a pleasure talking with you, sir. Thank you.
IGNATIUS: Thank you, Steve.
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