So regime change is back? Having for years mocked the wasteful, lethal Clinton-Bush-Obama crusades against states they hated, now President Trump has carried out a regime decapitation of his own. Having installed as his director of national intelligence one of the most stinging critics of regime-change wars – Tulsi Gabbard – now Trump launches not quite a regime-change war but certainly a regime-change strike. Having said MAGA would end these ruinous excursions and prioritise the needs of the American working class, now Trump goes south and does what so many administrations before his did: topples a Latin American dictator.
Make no mistake: America – the world – is a different place today than it was yesterday. The news of Washington’s removal from power of Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela is astonishing. It’s the return of gunboat diplomacy. It is 36 years since Washington last directly removed a Latin American leader from power, when Panama’s Manuel Noriega surrendered to invading US forces. Is Latin America to become ‘America’s backyard’ once more? That would be quite the turnaround, one might say betrayal, for a president whose rallying cry has always been ‘reshoring’ – reshoring of industry, of jobs, and of soldiers too frequently sent to their deaths in foreign follies by the vain crusaders of DC.
Now is a good time to remind people that you can hate a regime and still oppose ‘regime change’ of this kind. You can think a government is cruel, despotic and fraudulent – Maduro’s was all of those things – and still worry about the precedent set if that government is unilaterally toppled by an external power. I couldn’t give a damn about Maduro, or his wife for that matter, who is reportedly in US custody with him. But I am concerned about what comes next for the people of Venezuela. Gunboat diplomacy has a nasty habit of backfiring. Externally enforced regime change often sews chaos more than liberation. That’s the lesson of Iraq and Libya – it’s one thing to behead a regime; it’s quite another to replace it with something that feels real or legitimate. Does America really want a Libya in its own backyard?
The news from Venezuela is startling and still unclear. We know Maduro was captured by troops from the Delta force, the US army’s elite counter-terrorism division. We don’t know where he was captured or where he has been taken. The operation was so swift and seemingly bloodless that all sorts of questions are swirling around. Was he handed over by the Venezuelan military itself to offset Trump’s threats against the nation? Was this more an arrest – if a fiery, neocon-style one – than a capture in the traditional sense? The headless government of Venezuela has declared a state of emergency. US secretary of state Marco Rubio reportedly said there will be ‘no further action’ now Maduro is in custody.
It’s important to note the differences between this operation and those carried out by other US administrations in recent years. It seems more discreet, less bloody. Where America’s regime-change meddling in Iraq, Libya and Syria lasted for years and caused untold death, destruction and division, apparently the Venezuela op is over already. Where those crusades were justified in the imperious and super-moralistic language of saving the wretched from oppression, realpolitik appears to be Trump’s motivation. Apparently, they’re seizing Maduro only to make him answer for his alleged role in swamping the American republic with drugs and immigrants. Trump will present this as a defence of America’s sovereignty rather than a violation of Venezuela’s.
The White House is clearly pursuing geopolitical goals. It is clearly keen to remove an important foothold in Latin America for Russia and China. Both nations had close diplomatic and trade ties with Maduro. Yet this strategy, too, raises awkward questions about US impotence in our burgeoning unipolar world. Unwilling to back Ukraine, Washington hits out at Russia’s Venezuelan comrade instead. Thrown by the ceaseless rise of China, Washington lashes out at its fairly small-time ally in Latin America. It’s possible that just as Evil Iraq became a kind of moral foil for an Anglo-American elite bereft of moral purpose in the domestic sphere, so Maduro’s regime becomes the whipping boy of Trumpists who feel overwhelmed in the global sphere.
But there are important similarities between the destructive crusades pursued by both Republican neocons and Democratic ‘humanitarians’ and this Trumpist removal of the head of a foreign government. Like those murderous ventures, this, too, is unilateral, speaking to Washington’s belief that it has the right to determine the destiny of foreign nations.
And it could have unintended consequences, both for Venezuela and the world. We can of course hope that the pro-Maduro military machine and security apparatus will say, ‘Okay, game over’. But it is very possible, even likely, that they won’t. Foreign-imposed regime change leaves a power vacuum, and that power vacuum is often filled less by a new, shiny democracy than by disorder, war and a hyper-violent scuffle for power. That’s what we saw in Iraq, Libya and Syria. Those nations where all ruled by tyrannical regimes no decent person mourns – and those nations were all rendered even more unstable and apocalyptic by externally imposed regime change. Even now they’re rocked by strife as both domestic and foreign actors seek to swarm into the lingering black hole left by the West’s ‘saving’ of ‘the wretched’. Venezuela has a deep enough social infrastructure to be able to avoid calamities of quite that scale – but the promise of civil tension lurks.
We are about to witness an orgy of hypocrisy. Trump is reckless, Dems will cry – people who cheered far bloodier regime assaults by their feminist hero, Hillary. Trump is a war criminal, leftists will say – people who openly cheered Iran’s imperious proxy invasion of Israel and its Houthi-led toppling of the Yemeni government. ‘Yemen, Yemen, make us proud’, they chanted about those regime-changers. Staying principled will be tough. But it’s essential. Foreign-imposed regime change is always wrong. It emasculates people by reducing them to tragic objects requiring a benevolent saviour from afar. How much better to let people take matters into their own hands. Only Venezuelans should shape the future of Venezuela.
I thought Trump knew this? I thought he was all about refortifying sovereignty after the ruinous years of globalism, and pursuing the national interest rather than imperious follies? There will be blowback for him too, and potentially for the project of populism. These are dangerous days.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and blogs regularly on Spiked where this article was sourced.
Now is a good time to remind people that you can hate a regime and still oppose ‘regime change’ of this kind. You can think a government is cruel, despotic and fraudulent – Maduro’s was all of those things – and still worry about the precedent set if that government is unilaterally toppled by an external power. I couldn’t give a damn about Maduro, or his wife for that matter, who is reportedly in US custody with him. But I am concerned about what comes next for the people of Venezuela. Gunboat diplomacy has a nasty habit of backfiring. Externally enforced regime change often sews chaos more than liberation. That’s the lesson of Iraq and Libya – it’s one thing to behead a regime; it’s quite another to replace it with something that feels real or legitimate. Does America really want a Libya in its own backyard?
The news from Venezuela is startling and still unclear. We know Maduro was captured by troops from the Delta force, the US army’s elite counter-terrorism division. We don’t know where he was captured or where he has been taken. The operation was so swift and seemingly bloodless that all sorts of questions are swirling around. Was he handed over by the Venezuelan military itself to offset Trump’s threats against the nation? Was this more an arrest – if a fiery, neocon-style one – than a capture in the traditional sense? The headless government of Venezuela has declared a state of emergency. US secretary of state Marco Rubio reportedly said there will be ‘no further action’ now Maduro is in custody.
It’s important to note the differences between this operation and those carried out by other US administrations in recent years. It seems more discreet, less bloody. Where America’s regime-change meddling in Iraq, Libya and Syria lasted for years and caused untold death, destruction and division, apparently the Venezuela op is over already. Where those crusades were justified in the imperious and super-moralistic language of saving the wretched from oppression, realpolitik appears to be Trump’s motivation. Apparently, they’re seizing Maduro only to make him answer for his alleged role in swamping the American republic with drugs and immigrants. Trump will present this as a defence of America’s sovereignty rather than a violation of Venezuela’s.
The White House is clearly pursuing geopolitical goals. It is clearly keen to remove an important foothold in Latin America for Russia and China. Both nations had close diplomatic and trade ties with Maduro. Yet this strategy, too, raises awkward questions about US impotence in our burgeoning unipolar world. Unwilling to back Ukraine, Washington hits out at Russia’s Venezuelan comrade instead. Thrown by the ceaseless rise of China, Washington lashes out at its fairly small-time ally in Latin America. It’s possible that just as Evil Iraq became a kind of moral foil for an Anglo-American elite bereft of moral purpose in the domestic sphere, so Maduro’s regime becomes the whipping boy of Trumpists who feel overwhelmed in the global sphere.
But there are important similarities between the destructive crusades pursued by both Republican neocons and Democratic ‘humanitarians’ and this Trumpist removal of the head of a foreign government. Like those murderous ventures, this, too, is unilateral, speaking to Washington’s belief that it has the right to determine the destiny of foreign nations.
And it could have unintended consequences, both for Venezuela and the world. We can of course hope that the pro-Maduro military machine and security apparatus will say, ‘Okay, game over’. But it is very possible, even likely, that they won’t. Foreign-imposed regime change leaves a power vacuum, and that power vacuum is often filled less by a new, shiny democracy than by disorder, war and a hyper-violent scuffle for power. That’s what we saw in Iraq, Libya and Syria. Those nations where all ruled by tyrannical regimes no decent person mourns – and those nations were all rendered even more unstable and apocalyptic by externally imposed regime change. Even now they’re rocked by strife as both domestic and foreign actors seek to swarm into the lingering black hole left by the West’s ‘saving’ of ‘the wretched’. Venezuela has a deep enough social infrastructure to be able to avoid calamities of quite that scale – but the promise of civil tension lurks.
We are about to witness an orgy of hypocrisy. Trump is reckless, Dems will cry – people who cheered far bloodier regime assaults by their feminist hero, Hillary. Trump is a war criminal, leftists will say – people who openly cheered Iran’s imperious proxy invasion of Israel and its Houthi-led toppling of the Yemeni government. ‘Yemen, Yemen, make us proud’, they chanted about those regime-changers. Staying principled will be tough. But it’s essential. Foreign-imposed regime change is always wrong. It emasculates people by reducing them to tragic objects requiring a benevolent saviour from afar. How much better to let people take matters into their own hands. Only Venezuelans should shape the future of Venezuela.
I thought Trump knew this? I thought he was all about refortifying sovereignty after the ruinous years of globalism, and pursuing the national interest rather than imperious follies? There will be blowback for him too, and potentially for the project of populism. These are dangerous days.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and blogs regularly on Spiked where this article was sourced.
1 comment:
Are you saying Trump lied to you? Inconceivable!
Post a Comment
Thank you for joining the discussion. Breaking Views welcomes respectful contributions that enrich the debate. Please ensure your comments are not defamatory, derogatory or disruptive. We appreciate your cooperation.