For many Venezuelans, especially millions of people compelled to flee in the country over the past decade of catastrophe under Maduro\u2019s watch, his removal is joyous news, and the first step to a happier future. <\/p>\n
On that count, the US operation was a clear tactical success in its brazen precision, and efficacy.<\/p>\n
Still, the likelihood of a strategic failure looms. <\/p>\n
A dark history of failed US interventions and regime-change projects haunt the current action. <\/p>\n
Boosters of the move liken it to the capture of Panamanian dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega in 1989, with US criminal investigations into money laundering and drug-smuggling justifying the operation. <\/p>\n
The analogy to the present collapses amid Trump\u2019s talk of open-ended control over Venezuela and its tremendous oil wealth.<\/p>\n
Running a country<\/p>\n
By the end of the weekend, the White House had done little to dispel the confusion about what comes next in Venezuela. <\/p>\n
Trump himself suggested the US would somehow \u201crun\u201d the South American nation until a proper transition away from the current dispensation could be forged. <\/p>\n
His lieutenants were more circumspect, emphasising US interests in dismantling alleged criminal networks within the Venezuelan state apparatus and reasserting American control or influence over Venezuela\u2019s vast oil sector.<\/p>\n
Venezuela\u2019s pro-democracy opposition voiced fears that they would be cut out in a Trump-brokered deal with the remnants of Maduro\u2019s regime. <\/p>\n
Speaking to the Atlantic, Trump said that he expected Maduro\u2019s former vice-president – and hastily installed successor – Delcy Rodriguez to essentially do the White House\u2019s bidding. \u201cIf she doesn\u2019t do what\u2019s rightshe is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.\u201d<\/p>\n
Venezuelans demonstrate support for US President Donald Trump and celebrate the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in front of the Metropolitan Detention Centre, a federal prison in Brooklyn, New York City. Photo \/ William Volcov, AFP<\/p>\n
A grim precedent<\/p>\n
The rest of the world has watched with mixed emotions. <\/p>\n
Many in Latin America, especially among the ascendant, Trump-aligned political right, cheered Maduro\u2019s ouster and what seems a grievous blow to the region\u2019s remaining left-leaning autocracies.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, world leaders feared a grim precedent. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe bombing of Venezuelan territory and the capture of its president crosses an unacceptable line,\u201d Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe action recalls the worst moments of interference in Latin American and Caribbean politics and threatens the regional preservation as a zone of peace.\u201d<\/p>\n
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot shed no tears for Maduro in a statement but said the US action \u201ccontravenes the principle of the non-use of force that underpins international law\u201d. <\/p>\n
He warned that it was part of the steady erosion of international norms, worsened by countries like Russia that are supposedly the guarantors of the rules-based order. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe growing number of violations of this principle by nations vested with the primary responsibility of permanent membership on the United Nations Security Council will have grave consequences for global security, sparing no one,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Breaking the rules<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s move into Venezuela is another nail in the coffin of the old post-war status quo. <\/p>\n
The White House reneged on commitments to receive authorisation from Congress before deploying the US military in Venezuela. <\/p>\n
Ahead of tomorrow\u2019s emergency United Nations Security Council session on Venezuela, Trump\u2019s UN ambassador, Mike Waltz, scoffed at the \u201chand-wringing\u201d of his diplomatic counterparts. <\/p>\n
Secretary of State Marco Rubio waved away concerns about an open-ended regime change mission as a kind of \u201cphobia\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cPart of what\u2019s troubling here is not just that the President has used force in clear violation of domestic law and international law but that it\u2019s clear he couldn\u2019t care less about the fact that he\u2019s breaking these rules,\u201d observed Oona Hathaway, a leading international legal scholar at Yale Law School. <\/p>\n
Speaking to the New Yorker, she concluded that Trump is \u201cjust going to do what he thinks is warranted based on his own kind of reasoning, as opposed to any kind of constraints or legal limits or having to seek advice or consent from the international community or the US Congress\u201d.<\/p>\n
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro onboard the USS Iwo Jima after the US military captured him. Photo \/ Truth Social<\/p>\n
Spheres of influence<\/p>\n
The sense of a paradigm shift is overwhelming. <\/p>\n
Oliver Stuenkel, an analyst of international affairs at Fundacao Getulio Vargas, a Brazilian university, suggested that the raid on Venezuela was the first \u201cconcrete\u201d sign of Trump putting into practice the White House\u2019s National Security Strategy, which declares the Western Hemisphere to be a US sphere of influence, rekindling the instincts of an era of gunboat diplomacy and neo-imperialism from a century ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a completely new age,\u201d Stuenkel told me. \u201cTrump doesn\u2019t say he wants to bring democracy. It\u2019s petro-imperialism. <\/p>\n
\u201cLatin American policy elites are slowly grasping that it would be a mistake to believe that just because Maduro is a dictator, that other countries that are democratic would be safe from the US.\u201d<\/p>\n
The timid responses of most European leaders betrays the deepening anxiety on the continent about the future of the alliance with the US. <\/p>\n
\u201cMaduro\u2019s capture is no regional anomaly; it is a signal event,\u201d noted Asli Aydintasbas and Chris Hermann of the European Council on Foreign Relations. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt highlights the volatility of Trump\u2019s foreign policy, his comfort with military solutions and his apparent openness to a world governed by spheres of influence rather than rules.\u201d<\/p>\n
That opens the door further for a new geopolitical Wild West, where might makes right, and laws and rules fall away. <\/p>\n
In a separate context, C. Raja Mohan, a prominent Indian geopolitical analyst, saw this already in action in Israel\u2019s recognition last week of the breakaway republic of Somaliland.<\/p>\n
\u201cDeclarations about the inviolability of borders ring hollow when aggression goes unpunished or is tacitly accepted,\u201d he wrote. <\/p>\n
\u201cWith major powers embracing territorial revisionism – China in Asia, Russia in Europe, and the US in the Western Hemisphere – it is na\u00efve for lesser states to depend on the presumed protective shield\u201d of the rules-based international order.<\/p>\n
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor\u2019s Picks<\/a>, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week\u2019s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For many Venezuelans, especially millions of people compelled to flee in the country over the past decade of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,6030,8239,95,130976,4995,41220,8530,130974,690,12817,58216,2178,33231,3592,8223,61676,42,105306,296,12472,22055,107147,5338,5978,13631,43,95231,2551,2572,14904,11923,130975,9979,6122,9939,8220,40,38,41,39,2179,9938,82855,107149,3807,3457,540,6123,1842,15391,1533,102,377],"class_list":["post-217027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-again","tag-american","tag-and","tag-audacious","tag-away","tag-capture","tag-carried","tag-commandos","tag-dead","tag-declared","tag-dominance","tag-donald","tag-elite","tag-fall","tag-forces","tag-geopolitical","tag-headlines","tag-hemisphere","tag-into","tag-laws","tag-leads","tag-maduro","tag-makes","tag-might","tag-never","tag-news","tag-nicolas","tag-night","tag-president","tag-questioned","tag-raid","tag-rendition","tag-right","tag-rules","tag-states","tag-targets","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-trump","tag-united","tag-various","tag-venezuelan","tag-west","tag-western","tag-where","tag-while","tag-wife","tag-wild","tag-will","tag-with","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}