The US kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and removal to the USA for trial on drug-related offences can only be described as bizarre. It might be compared with the US invasion of Panama in 1989 and the removal of Army Chief Gen Manuel Noriega, also on drug charges, to the USA, also on drug charges, to the USA, but then, General Noriega was merely de facto ruler, not the actual sitting President, as Maduro is. Another big difference is that even though it invaded Panama, it did not take over the country, as it claims to have done now. It provides an object lesson in how far the USA can go, but is the lesson worldwide, or limited to the Americas, in an extension of the Monroe Doctrine, according to which US President James Munroe asserted that no European power could interfere in the Americas, but which now seems to have been extended by President Trump to include the USA’s right to pick and choose other countries’ leaders. Earlier than Noriega was the Bay of Pigs invasion, when the USA tried to reverse the Cuban Revolution, but failed abysmally. Also earlier was the invasion of Grenada in 1983, which was veering towards the USSR just as the Cold War was winding down.
The problem with what may be called the Trump Doctrine is that it seems to cancel the concept of sovereignty that is the bedrock of Western international relations: that there shall be no interference by one state in another’s internal affairs. That is a very old principle, and goes back to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. What seems to be more relevant is the extent of Venezuela’s oil preserves, which are the largest in the world. Mr Trump was amazingly frank when he said that oil companies would “go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure,… and start making money for the country.”
That sounds like a straightforward takeover for the oil interests. There has been some hype of how Mr Maduro’s involvement in the drug trade was responsible, and Mr Trump has been at odds wuth South American states, picking off their vessels for smuggling drugs into the USA, but his failure to do anything about US demand shows that he uses drugs as a stick to beat other countries over the head with. The idea of occupying another country is highly problematic, as the USA found in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
