It goes without saying that Donald Trump’s regime change in Venezuela was reckless and unlawful. Yet condemning the vigilante intervention by the United States is almost beside the point. It has been done now, and it is possible that the oppressed and impoverished people of Venezuela will benefit.
What matters now is that the international community acts to help Venezuelans restore democracy and the rule of law. There is an alternative ruler of the country in the form of Maria Corina Machado, the opposition leader and winner of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize – but President Trump imperiously dismissed her claim, saying: “She doesn’t have the support inside the country or the respect.”
History offers little reason for optimism. The record of the US in seeking to install friendly leaders in Latin America is chequered at best. In the Middle East, a US intervention to depose the dictator of an oil-rich country resulted in a decade of sectarian strife.
As Sam Kiley, our world affairs editor, writes, the premise for regime change and invasion in Venezuela was “as false as the claims that Saddam Hussein was making a nuclear weapon”. The idea that the capture of Nicolas Maduro is justified as a police action to prevent his “narco-state” from feeding America’s drug habit is preposterous.
Of course, America does have an opioid problem, and Maduro’s Venezuela has been a gangster state run by drug barons. But most illegal drugs come into the US from Mexico, and the opioid crisis, which is at last abating, is primarily one of prescription drug abuse.
It also goes without saying that President Trump’s adventurism means the US has no claim to moral superiority over Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping. Putin’s nationalist-imperialist aggression in Ukraine differs only in degree and military effectiveness from Mr Trump’s assertion of US power in Caracas.
Mr Trump is a peculiar imperialist. He said: “We are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, judicious transition,” as if this were a mere administrative detail. His claim, in effect, is that Latin America is his sphere of influence, and it reflects the same cynical power politics practised by Mr Putin and Mr Xi.
Even so, the claim by Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, that Mr Trump’s intervention gives “a green light to the likes of Putin and Xi to attack other countries with impunity” does not withstand scrutiny. When, exactly, does he think Mr Putin has ever held back from aggression because it was not something the US would do?
The real case against Mr Trump’s action is this: it represents a gross violation of the internal affairs of a sovereign state. There was no humanitarian imperative for intervention. Even on a purely utilitarian calculation, the conclusion would be stark: miserable as conditions are for most Venezuelans, it is always possible to make them worse. Instability and civil war are real dangers – and it is patently obvious that the US has no appetite for the sustained effort required to maintain order across the country.
That is why the international community, preferably working through the United Nations and the Organisation of American States, should act quickly to establish what needs to be done to stabilise the situation. The first few days can be critical in determining whether a country slides into anarchy after a coup, whether carried out from within or imposed from without.
This crisis must not be allowed to go to waste. President Trump should, of course, be condemned for making an already dangerous situation worse in Venezuela. But the energies of the international community should now be focused on turning this crisis into an opportunity for the Venezuelan people.
