We all woke up to the news that the US had attacked Venezuela and kidnapped its President and his wife. This outcome was not on my bingo card. I fully expected Trump to overthrow Maduro, but I honestly did not think that Trump would be so blatant in violating US obligations under the United Nations Charter (which outlaws wars of aggression). I am still digesting the few scraps of real information that we have and will probably write more as additional information becomes available. Right now, however, I can make some general observations.
First, the act is the literal end of the world order under which we have lived since 1945. This world order was based upon a repudiation of balance of power politics which was the norm since 1648. Under the balance of power system, states are free to use any and all means available to increase their power and an important part of the system was an implicit recognition that powerful states can take actions to preserve their spheres of influence. Thus, for example, Russia simply asserted that Ukraine was an integral part of the Russian sphere of influence and justified its aggression in those terms. China makes similar claims to the South China Sea and to Taiwan. The US now is firmly entrenched in that 19th century doctrine and we now live in a world where, as the Athenians said to the Melians in the Peloponnesian War: “The strong do as they will, and the weak suffer what they must”.
Second, Trump apparently made the decision to attack Venezuela without consulting any members of Congress and without informing its allies of what was going to happen. In other words, he made a unilateral decision: it was neither democratic nor multilateral. It was an imperial order and that apparently means that Trump is prepared to do whatever he thinks necessary to secure what he believes are US interests. Unless the decision is restrained in some way by Congress, the Supreme Court, or by widespread protests, we now effectively live in a dictatorship.
Third, I suspect that the US will relearn the same lessons it ignored in its earlier attempts at regime change: Guatemala, Iran, Libya, Iraq, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, and Vietnam. It’s easy to overthrow a government, but very difficult to establish a viable, legitimate government to replace it. That task will be even more difficult in the case of Venezuela since Maduro was the only authority removed. All his henchmen are still there, and it is very likely that there will be political instability as the different groups compete for power. In this press conference Trump said that the US would “run” Venezuela for the immediate future. The profound irony of that assertion is that Trump has yet to learn who to “run” the US. And with Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio in charge, I expect that the Keystone Kops will meet their match in incompetence.
Fourth, Trump asserts that Venezuela “stole” US oil when it nationalized some US companies holdings. TO be clear, Venezuela never gave up its sovereign rights to its own oil. It simply gave the US oil companies the right to lift a certain number of barrels of oil and set a price for that sale. The companies never “owned” the oil; they simply agreed to pay Venezuela for its oil. So nothing was “stolen”. It is true that Venezuela refused to renew those contracts, but for Trump to argue that contracts are sacrosanct is absurd after he’s fired so many Federal employees who had their contracts simply annulled.
I suspect that I will have more to say about this matter as more information is available. But I can assert confidently that this decision to invade Venezuela will go down as one of the most egregious diplomatic failures in American diplomatic history.
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