The toppling and alleged seizure by invading American military units of Venezuela's socialist president will send a shiver of fear and consternation around the world. This power grab is unlawful, without justification, and regionally and globally destabilising. It overturns global standards, disregards sovereign territorial rights, and risks creating an anarchic situation inside Venezuela itself.
It is policy crafted from chaos. But this is the world we now live in – the world according to the US President.
A Remarkable and Perilous Declaration of Unchecked American Might
The direct attack on Venezuela marks an extraordinary, dangerous declaration of unchecked American might and comes in the same week that the President menaced armed attacks against a further disliked government opposed to the West: the one in Tehran. It comes after months of increasing US pressure through military, economic, and political means on Maduro, including lethal maritime attacks on vessels suspected of drug smuggling.
Trump asserts he is acting to prevent illegal narcotics flowing into the US through Venezuelan routes and to halt an purported flood of “criminal element” migrants. In an repetition of the American incursion into Iraq in 2003, he is also charged with desiring Venezuela’s vast petroleum and natural gas reserves – doubts strengthened by frequent, unlawful US seizures of Venezuelan petroleum carriers.
But Trump’s primary motives seem to be individual hostility aimed at Maduro, and a desire to revive the 19th-century Monroe doctrine by creating a US sphere of influence and dominance throughout the west.
Hemispheric Alarm and Global Repercussions
Regional leaders, including Colombia’s president, who has clashed with Trump in the past few months, greeted the coup with outrage and alarm; not least, perhaps, because they fear they too could become targets of Washington’s newly aggressive dominance. Cuba’s leftwing government has special reason for worry. It depends significantly on Venezuela’s regime for low-cost fuel and backing in politics and economics.
The US secretary of state has made no secret of his wish to see regime change in Havana. In Panama, too, levels of concern will be elevated. Trump has previously threatened military action there, over authority over the Panama Canal. Indeed, the alleged apprehension of Maduro recalls the 1989 US invasion of Panama and the toppling and arrest of its then dictator.
Authoritarian, anti-democratic regimes around the world will be closely observing Trump’s next steps, as will Washington’s allies in democracy. Iran denounced the overthrow. It has good reason to be fearful. But Russia’s president may not be completely unhappy by the removal of his Venezuelan ally.
A Perilous Benchmark for International Disputes
Trump’s unprovoked resort to violence is not so very different from moves during the invasion of Ukraine. Both have illegally attacked a neighbouring country and attempted to oust its leadership. For China’s leader, whose forces were last week practising military action against the “separatists” of Taiwan, Trump has just established a benchmark he may eventually happily emulate.
Trump’s coup is of great concern to Britain, the EU and western democracies. They ought to, and have to, unequivocally condemn it. It openly confronts the rules and principles of the global system they cherish. The US has once again ignored the UN and traditional methods of resolving disputes between nations. And it is acting with apparently scant regard for the subsequent events in Venezuela.
An Unclear Future and Potential for Chaos
The Caracas government has been decapitated, but other senior members of the regime seem to remain at their posts. They are urging resistance and, possibly, retaliation against the US. There are unverified accounts of non-combatant deaths. If a power vacuum forms, civil stability might disintegrate, igniting internal conflict or a potential armed takeover. And it is uncertain whether the most recent American armed intervention has concluded, or may intensify more.
The notion that banished dissident figures will quickly come back and that full democracy will now be reinstated is unrealistic. The next few days will be decisive. And the responsibility lies entirely with Trump.
The Illusion of a Peacemaker
Trump’s reckless action should at last bury his always misleading characterisation of himself as a “world peacemaker”. It’s high time that European leaders openly acknowledge him for who he is – a international provocateur of war, a universal menace.
Each time he blunders noisily into conflict zones, imposing timelines, delivering final demands, choosing sides and profiting from suffering, the quest for just and lasting peace is set back.
Little wonder peace is elusive. And bizarrely, even while presenting himself as a neutral peace broker and non-interventionist, Trump concurrently conducts warfare on the world. The US conducted record numbers of aerial bombardments in the Middle East and Africa last year, data indicates.
A Legacy in Blood
Since resuming the presidency a year ago, peace-loving Trump has launched strikes in Yemen, carelessly killing many non-combatants after loosening rules of engagement; bombed Nigeria, to counter-productive effect; struck locations in Somalia, Iraq and Syria; and bombed Iran, where he falsely inflated the effectiveness of American attacks on nuclear facilities. He even refuses to rule out bombing Greenland, a independent land of a Nato ally.
What is occurring in the President's mind? A charitable view is that in matters of war and peace, he has no conception what his actions entail – no strategy, no clue – and invents strategy as he goes, based on how he feels.
The sinister interpretation says he is fully aware what he is doing, that more and worse is to come. Like previous second-term presidents who exhausted options domestically, Trump finds the global platform offers greater possibilities for the exercise of power and self-importance. He is forging a historical record in blood.
Trump’s irresponsible, dangerously erratic behaviour is getting noticeably more severe. His Venezuela “triumph” may encourage him to try further and larger, irrational atrocities. He parades and postures, shouts for chaos! and unleashes the dogs of war.
