President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026, in Palm Beach, Fla., as Secretary of State Marco Rubio listens.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s military action in Venezuela is further isolating the United States from the rest of the world, was carried out with no strategy on next steps, threatens to destabilise Latin America and raises concerns about the president’s mental decline, warned a group of former senior national security officials.

In a Tuesday call with reporters, veteran former CIA and foreign policy officials struggled to convey the level of ineptitude and recklessness they see in Trump’s decision last week to send US forces into Venezuela in the middle of the night to capture President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. Both are now in New York City, facing charges brought by the US government.

“There’s no process in our foreign policy anymore,” said Luis Moreno, a former ambassador to Jamaica and former foreign policy official with years of experience in the Caribbean. “We’re doing foreign policy, and defense policy to a certain extent, via tweet at 3 o’clock in the morning, and everyone has to respond to that.”

Because Trump didn’t seek congressional authorization ahead of the military attack, which is required by the Constitution, Republican and Democratic foreign policy leaders on Capitol Hill are in the dark on what the US is doing in Venezuela, a country of 28 million people who have already endured decades of political repression and corruption.

The Trump administration has yet to lay out a coherent plan for what happens now. Trump has claimed the US will now ”run” Venezuela and be “very much involved” in taking the country’s oil. Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried to walk that back, saying the US is overseeing the “direction” of the country. Vice President JD Vance said the raid was about “narcoterrorists,”while Rubio linked it to........

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