Self-love is a two-sided coin. It can strengthen or stifle, expand or enfeeble, perfect or pauperise. When love is returned, one soars. When love is spurned, it cripples and disconsolates. Having touted himself as a “President of Peace”, Donald Trump is, today, the man spurned.
Now that the Nobel Peace Prize has eluded him even after claiming to have ended “eight raging conflicts”, Trump has begun to flex his muscles.
A large-scale strike on Venezuela’s capital city by the American forces overthrew the Nicholas Maduro regime. President Nicolas Maduro and his wife were captured, blindfolded and handcuffed, and taken to the US. The swift operation was carried out by the US Army’s Delta Force. It is an elite special operations group of soldiers trained in secret counterterrorism operations and hostage rescues.
The regime change is the name of the new game. Venezuela is the victim of the “Donroe” Doctrine, the “Trump corollary” to the much-maligned Monroe Doctrine. The 1923 Doctrine warned the European nations against further colonisation and intervention in the Americas. It established the Western Hemisphere as a sphere of American influence.
But leaders of the Senate and House Armed Services committees were not consulted on the regime change.
Maria Corina Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, who was expecting to be installed as president too, was spurned by Trump, who now says she does not have the “support or respect" within the country.
It is pretty obvious that having failed to end the Ukraine war through his mediation, the “President of Peace” now has donned another mantle, “President for war”. It is not for nothing that the Department of Defence is now the Department of War. Trump wanted this department to have a name that reflects its unmatched power and readiness to protect national interests.
Trump believes that everything he does is bigger, better, and more beautiful than anything that ever came before it. He can certainly claim that he has ousted Venezuela’s Nicholas Maduro regime without any resistance.
Uncle Sam has, in the past, invaded its southern territories by sending troops to Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Granada. In Guatemala, in 1954, and Chile, in 1973, the covert operations were masterminded and executed by the CIA.
Trump has sought to revive that dubious policy. In overthrowing the Maduro regime, President Trump has apparently gone by the Panama playbook. In 1989, president George Bush invaded Panama in a bid to oust the military dictator, Manuel Noriega. “Operation Just Cause” involved more than 20,000 American troops. Noriega could be captured only after a week, and the military operation resulted in the death of 200 civilians, 19 US soldiers, and 59 Panamanian soldiers.
Like Maduro, Noriega too was accused of being “an indicted drug trafficker”. Trump wants to make Venezuela great again! He claimed that Vice President Delcy Rodriguez was “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to Make Venezuela Great Again.” Trump has shamelessly said that American oil companies will “spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.”
The operation against Maduro followed months of US military buildup in the region, with the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier and numerous other warships positioned in the Caribbean.
Many Western analysts argue that Trump is seeking to “Putinise” his foreign policy. The Russian leader may very well have emerged as the ultimate role model for Trump. In fact, Mikhail Zyger, a Russian-born journalist, argues that Trump may be poised to “out-Putin” Putin on his own turf.
Trump has asserted that Russians didn’t interfere in American elections despite American intelligence assessments to the contrary. On Ukraine, both Putin and Trump speak the language of power.
To Trump, a Putin-style approach to international affairs is the right model. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has openly said that to remove narco-terrorists and secure our homeland, a full-fledged invasion, targeted strikes, and covert CIA operations are the legitimate options. He further says, “The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighbourhood, and we will protect it.”
While carrying out the US blockade on oil tankers under sanctions, the Trump administration has also been striking military deals with Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, and Trinidad, and Tobago. All in the name of the “war on drugs”. It also includes securing a base and deployment of American forces.
Trump may take up similar moves in Cuba and elsewhere. He believes United States oil companies will spend billions of dollars to bring the Venezuelan economy back on the rails again. It is out and out a resource war. In all likelihood, Venezuela will become a crypto economy.
Trump justified the stunning attack by accusing Maduro, without evidence, of sending “monsters” into the United States from Venezuelan prisons and by claiming Maduro’s involvement in the drug trade. But Maduro did steal the 2024 elections.
President Lula of Brazil, President Gustavo Petro of Colombia, and President Gabriel Boric of Chile kept a distance from Maduro. They condemned his electoral manipulation despite his assurances to the contrary. Boric said, “I have no doubt this election has been stolen.” On another occasion he said, “We are dealing with a dictatorship that falsifies elections.”
All said, President Trump is no longer bending international rules; he is demolishing them. The world seems to be at a dangerous precipice. We are heading towards a phase where there will be no world order, only a free-for-all where the strongest strive to prevail and the weaker must accommodate. In Trump’s imperial worldview, there are only provinces and vassal states.
Historian Niall Ferguson maintains that the liberal world order was, in any case, largely a fiction, disguising the raw power of the American empire. Trump has only shed the garments that dressed it up and taken the gloves off. His misguided valour is outright fascist. And fascism doesn’t arrive in fancy dress. Or are we witnessing what Kissinger had warned of: “a parlous condition verging on international anarchy?
The author comments on global affairs.
