.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One as he departs for a state visit to Britain, at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., September 16, 2025. REUTERS Kevin Lamarque

Washington Post Columnist Theodore Johnson says President Donald Trump has a cynical reason for pushing war with Venezuela, and Trump doesn’t appear to have the talent to get it.

“Of all the ways to understand … Trump’s belligerence toward Venezuela — as a campaign against “narco-terrorists,” a play for its oil reserves, a desire to control the Western Hemisphere — the most overlooked is the outcome he covets more than all those things combined: greatness.”

Being considered among “the greats” remains one of Trump’s deepest interests, said Johnson, as seen in his March declaration to Congress that the first month of his second administration was “the most successful in the history of our nation,” before adding, “you know who No. 2 is? George Washington.”

Last year, Johnson notes Trump also told a convention of Black journalists, “I have been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln.” He even compared himself recently to Franklin D. Roosevelt, claiming his proposed 50-year mortgage policy makes him a similarly great American president.

“His open lobbying for the Nobel Peace Prize, describing every policy action in superlatives, and even the construction of a White House ballroom point to a preoccupation with glory,” said Johnson. “Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s posture has transformed the Caribbean into a theater of war.”

Johnson said Trump’s military has destroyed private vessels in international waters, claiming that they are running drugs to the United States, and it has issued kill orders for passengers stranded in water during those operations. Trump also declared Venezuelan airspace closed, and put the largest U.S. flotilla the Caribbean has seen since the Cold War and announced covert operations in Venezuela. These are telltale actions of a nation preparing for battle.

“Historians and political scientists have long reported that bravery and competence in war is the best predictor of presidential greatness,” said Johnson, but there is, however, “fine print.”

“Scholars have found higher scores for presidents who govern during deadlier conflicts, and also that war itself is more likely to harm a president’s reputation than to make one special,” Johnson said. “The path to war is no shortcut to greatness.”

“The tell of those hunting glory is the contradictions that emerge in its pursuit,” said Johnson. “In his bid for the Nobel, Trump has boasted about ending eight wars but looks ready to start one unnecessarily. His ‘America First’ policy agenda says nothing about forays into foreign lands. He portrays his interest in Venezuela as a war on drugs, but pardoned the former president of Honduras who was convicted in U.S. courts of running a state-sponsored drug operation,” said Johnson.

And war with Venezuela is the worst way to achieve that glory,” added Johnson, pointing out that Trump will be disappointed if thinks conflict will distract the country from his sinking approval ratings, his unpopular deportation campaign, Republican election losses or the saga around Jeffrey Epstein.

“This is a lesson on war that many presidents have learned the hard way, and Trump seems primed to join that club.”

Read the Washington Post report at this link.