The overthrow and reported capture by invading US forces of Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s hardline socialist president, will send a shiver of fear and consternation around the world. The coup is illegal, unprovoked and regionally and globally destabilising. It upends international norms, ignores sovereign territorial rights, and potentially creates an anarchic situation inside Venezuela itself.
It is chaos made policy. But this is the world we now live in – the world according to Donald Trump.
The direct attack on Venezuela marks an extraordinary, dangerous assertion of unfettered US power and comes in the same week that Trump threatened military strikes against another unpopular anti-western regime: that of Iran. It follows months of escalating US military, economic and political pressure on Maduro, including lethal maritime attacks on the boats of alleged drug traffickers.
Trump claims to be acting to prevent illegal narcotics flowing into the US via Venezuela and to halt an alleged influx of “criminal” migrants. In an echo of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, he is also accused of coveting Venezuela’s huge oil and gas resources – suspicions reinforced by repeated, illegal US seizures of Venezuelan oil tankers.
But Trump’s primary motives appear to be personal animosity directed at Maduro, and a desire to revive the 19th-century Monroe doctrine by creating a US sphere of influence and dominance throughout the west.
Regional leaders, including Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, who has clashed with Trump in recent months, greeted the coup with outrage and alarm; not least, perhaps, because they fear they too could become victims of Washington’s aggressive new hegemony. Cuba’s leftwing government has particular cause for concern. It relies heavily on Venezuela’s regime for cheap energy and political and economic support.
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, has made no secret of his wish to see regime change in Havana. In Panama, too, anxiety levels will be running high. Trump has previously threatened military action there, over control of the Panama canal. Indeed, the reported capture of Maduro recalls the 1989 US invasion of Panama and the toppling and arrest of its then dictator, Manuel Noriega.
Authoritarian, anti-democratic regimes around the world will be carefully watching Trump’s next steps, as will Washington’s democratic allies. Iran condemned the coup. It has good reason to be fearful. But Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, may not be totally displeased by the defenestration of his Venezuelan ally.
Trump’s unprovoked resort to violence is not so very different from Putin’s actions in invading Ukraine. Both have illegally attacked a neighbouring country and sought to remove its leadership. For China’s Xi Jinping, whose forces were last week practising military action against the “separatists” of Taiwan, Trump has just set a precedent he may one day gladly follow.
Trump’s coup is of great concern to Britain, the EU and western democracies. They should, and must, unequivocally condemn it. It directly challenges the rules and principles of the international order they hold dear. The US has once again ignored the UN and traditional methods of addressing inter-state grievances. And it is acting with apparently scant regard or thought for what happens next in Venezuela.
The Caracas government has been decapitated, but other senior members of the regime appear still to be in place. They are urging resistance and, potentially, retaliation against the US. There are unconfirmed reports of civilian casualties. If a power vacuum develops, public order could collapse, sparking civil war or a possible military coup. And it is unclear whether the latest US military action has ended, or may escalate further.
The idea that exiled opposition leaders, such as the 2025 Nobel peace prizewinner María Corina Machado, will swiftly return and that full democracy will now be restored is naive. The coming days will be critical. And it’s all down to Trump.
Trump’s reckless action should finally lay to rest his always misleading characterisation of himself as a “global peacemaker”. It’s high time Keir Starmer and other European leaders publicly recognise him for what he is – a global warmaker, a universal menace.
Each time he blunders noisily into conflict zones, such as Russia-Ukraine or Israel-Palestine, setting deadlines, issuing ultimatums, picking favourites and monetising misery, the quest for just and lasting peace is set back.
Little wonder peace is elusive. And bizarrely, even while posing as a disinterested peacemaker and non-interventionist, Trump simultaneously wages war on the world. The US conducted record numbers of air strikes in the Middle East and Africa last year, surveys show.
Since returning to office a year ago, peace-loving Trump has bombed Yemen, carelessly killing numerous civilians after loosening rules of engagement; bombed Nigeria, to counter-productive effect; bombed Somalia, Iraq and Syria; and bombed Iran, where he mendaciously exaggerated the success of US strikes on nuclear facilities. He even refuses to rule out bombing Greenland, a sovereign territory of Nato ally Denmark.
What’s going on inside Trump’s head? A benign interpretation is that in matters of war and peace, he has no idea what he is doing – no strategy, no clue – and makes up policy as he goes, depending on how he feels.
The sinister interpretation says he knows exactly what he’s at, that more and worse is to come. Like previous second-term presidents who ran out of road domestically, Trump finds the world stage offers greater possibilities for the exercise of power and ego. He is building a legacy in blood.
Trump’s irresponsible, dangerously erratic behaviour is getting measurably worse. His Venezuela “success” may encourage him to attempt more and bigger, unhinged outrages. Like Mark Antony minus the toga and brains, he struts and preens, cries havoc! and lets slip the dogs of war.
