If anything, America’s reckless and unlawful attack on Venezuela has grown even less defensible since the first bombs landed in Caracas and US special forces captured Nicolas Maduro and his wife.
We now know, beyond reasonable doubt, that it is all about oil and money. It is, thus, a nakedly neo-imperialist act of a kind that reaches back to darker chapters in American history, when invasions, seizures, assassinations, coups and general interference in the affairs of nominally independent Latin American nations by the CIA were routine.
In a few short years of Trump’s ascendancy, interrupted only by a Biden presidency that felt like the last wheeze of an old order, the United States has moved from being the guarantor (albeit flawed) of Western security to isolationism, and now to a fully fledged embrace of the 19th-century doctrine of territorial conquest and plunder. Gangsterism is the new geopolitics – and Donald Trump wants to be a boss, if not the Boss.
In the first press conference given by President Trump after he sent in Delta Force, it was said that Mr Maduro is, or was, an “outlaw dictator” and “illegitimate”, that he was “the kingpin of a vast criminal network” responsible for trafficking colossal amounts of deadly and illicit drugs into the United States, and that Venezuela had “unilaterally seized and sold American oil, American assets, and American platforms, costing us billions and billions of dollars”.
What is clear now is that President Trump and his colleagues are, in fact, far less interested in restoring Venezuela to democracy and curbing the drugs trade than they are in acquiring the rights to its vast oil reserves, and doing so to serve the interests of the United States.
Mr Trump has already contemptuously dismissed the de facto leaders of the Venezuelan opposition. The country is not heading for a rapid return to democracy. Instead, it will be “operated indefinitely” by the US through blockade and coercion. “We’re in the oil business,” as Mr Trump puts it – not the business of nation-building. If need be, that will include “boots on the ground”.
It would be a little fanciful to say that President Trump eyes the mineral and oil reserves of Venezuela in the same manner as Vladimir Putin covets the grain, sunflower oil and mineral resources of Ukraine to help prop up Russia’s economy – but there is an uncomfortable symmetry.
Nor is Mr Trump’s appetite sated. Aside from making threatening noises about Colombia and Cuba, he has renewed his demand to annex Greenland – also in “our hemisphere”, as the Americans see things. He says “we need Greenland from the standpoint of national security”, and he seems to be in a mood to make good on that claim. Given it is part of Denmark – and therefore a Nato territory – any US aggression towards self-governing Greenland would mark another serious, if not final, breach in what’s left of the Atlantic alliance.
How should America’s allies react? Certainly, President Trump’s actions are indefensible. In an ideal world, in which Britain and Europe were strong and the transatlantic alliance was still unconditional, other Western leaders would speak out against what America is doing. Such conditions no longer exist, and that is why Sir Keir Starmer and his colleagues feel they have to be so miserably mealy-mouthed in public.
Privately, they must be as appalled and frightened as anyone else. Throughout the weekend, the prime minister shied away from condemning the American action, confining himself to saying that he stands for international law (it would be a shock if he didn’t), and that he wanted to gather the facts (though they are obvious enough). His ministers say that they cannot offer a view, which is absurd, and that what the British government thinks doesn’t matter (which may be true, but shouldn’t be admitted).
However, at least the prime minister did take to the airwaves to insist that “Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark must decide the future of Greenland, and only Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark.” For one of the UK’s closest allies, he could hardly have got away with much less.
Such is the realpolitik of the new world order. Britain, the EU, and other allies such as Japan, Korea and Australia, cannot look upon the creation of old-school global “spheres of interest”, traded and run for profit by America, Russia and China, with anything less than utter horror. Some were once great imperial powers themselves, gleefully carving up Asia, Africa and Oceania, but they are now to be the subjects of a new imperialism.
The best weapons the rest of the West has are reason, and a quiet but powerful diplomatic offensive in Washington. The stance should be that of a critical friend.
Personal chemistry matters where Mr Trump is concerned. Fortunately, some Western leaders do command his respect and attention. Sir Keir is one such, as are the new prime minister of Japan, Sanae Takaichi, and the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum. President Trump has also been known to heed the leaders of Nato – Mark Rutte, especially – along with the Netherlands, Italy and Finland.
Together, America’s partners should show why the annexation of Greenland would be a disaster for the US itself – and unnecessary. They should stress, if they have not done so already, how willing Denmark and Greenland are to expand US and Nato facilities in and around this huge territory, and how Canada and the Nordic nations, too, can contribute much to stronger joint defence across the entire Arctic region. They can persuade Mr Trump of how, in other words, the collective and flexible nature of the Nato alliance can add to his country’s national security.
America’s allies also have to show how any secret reciprocal accommodation with China in the Pacific region over Taiwan, as some kind of “grand bargain”, would fatally compromise the independence of Japan, South Korea, Australia, the ASEAN nations, and possibly India as well. The same goes, as ever, for Russia and Ukraine.
Just as Europe, in a neo-imperial world, would be menaced by Russia, so too would those Indo-Pacific powers be coerced by China. Worse, the US would end up being confronted by a solid Russia-China axis with enhanced economic power. None of that is going to be in America’s best interests – or those of President Trump.
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