The Trump administration’s naked demonstration of international lawlessness over Venezuela invites other rogue states to follow suit, but Michael Pascoe argues it also provides an opportunity for China to go high.

There’s nothing new about the United States replacing governments it doesn’t like, especially in Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine in its various interpretations is two centuries old. 

The Trump gang’s Venezuelan adventure though is particularly brazen and comes at a precarious time in international relations. I suppose adding kidnapping to existing crimes of murder, piracy and extortion is a small step for Donald Trump but a big one for other despotic rulers seeking precedents. 

A New York Times investigation a little over a week ago laid bare the machinations and motives for the three key players in attacking Venezuela. For Secretary of State Marco Rubio, it was Venezuela’s support of Cuba, for Homeland security adviser and “prime minister” Stephen Miller, it was drugs and migration and for Trump it was, of course, oil. 

It was never because the thrice-elected President Nicolas Maduro successfully stole an election (was Trump jealous?) and was a despicable dictator oppressing his people. Heavens, some of Trump’s most feted allies are feudal sectarian murderers. 

Whatever the motives, the kidnapping, bombing, murdering and piracy were all illegal. The United States Government saying otherwise is just making shit up however much media stenographers repeat it. 

Yale Law School professor and president-elect of the American Society of International Law, Oona Hathaway, spelt it out in a New Yorker interview: 

“The dangerous thing here is the idea that a President can just decide that a leader is not legitimate and then invade the country and presumably put someone in power who is favoured by the Administration. 

If that were the case, that’s the end of international law, that’s the end of the U.N. charter, that’s the end of any kind of legal limits on the use of force. And if the President can do that, what’s to stop a Russian leader from doing it, or a Chinese leader from doing it, or anyone with the power to do so? We’ve been supporting Ukraine, and its war against Russia, and Putin has been making very much the same argument about Zelensky.”

In the “deal” he is pushing on Ukraine, Trump has already approved Putin’s world view that might is right, that invading and occupying Ukrainian territory entitles Russia to keep it. 

Putin is the immediate winner from Trump’s Venezuelan foray. *

Worryingly for our region and particularly for Australia having invested its strategic future in being a vassal cog in America’s military deterrence of China, is what licence Xi Jinping might see in Trump’s precedent. 

As previously reported here, the world, the international order, has shifted under our feet while our government dumbly plods along with a 1960s mindset. The Trump gang has said the quite bit out loud: America owns the Americas, Europe is to be left to itself and/or Russia, and China’s military rise is acknowledged and accepted in Asia. 

The squadrons of China hawks might squawk that if China did want to attack Taiwan, it can claim to have more “legal” entitlement to do so than the US has in Venezuela. The US, Australia and nearly everybody else officially agree that Taiwan is part of China; the one-China policy. If China invaded Taiwan, it would theoretically be a domestic matter. 

But this is where Trump’s America is again gifting China opportunity. Every American attack on the old international order, its abandonment of treaties, its retreat from global aid engagement, its climate denialism, its contempt for the UN, 

makes China look stable and reliable by comparison. 

China’s “Wolf Warrior” period was brief and realised to be a mistake. The economic coercion Beijing attempted to exert over Australia backfired. Trump’s tariff mania and haphazard extraterritorial penalties and sanctions have subsequently made the wolf warriors look like labrador puppies. 

China particularly gained as the Gaza war turned genocidal and America’s support for Netanyahu remained total. Not for the first time in this space, it’s important to remember that most of the world is not in the American camp as we are or the Chinese camp as North Korea is. 

Most countries have a healthy suspicion about the dangerous nature of big powers throwing their weight around, flexing their power. 

Modern China is unique for having a relatively peaceful rise as a superpower. The odd border skirmish with India, some elbowing in the South China Sea, nothing like the rivers of blood spilt by every other major power. 

The Sinophobes’ warning that Xi might think, “if Trump and Putin can do it, I can too”, needs to be balanced by the opportunity provided to prove superior and gain by not doing it. 

Besides, a war killing fellow Han Chinese would be expensive and damaging with no upside. The Taiwan issue remains a useful domestic tool for rallying nationalism, a problem that doesn’t necessarily need to be solved. 

A war that trashes China’s rising international standing, well, that’s the sort of stupidity a Trump might indulge in. 

Meanwhile, I wonder how comfortably the people of Greenland sleep at night.

*The Russian Foreign Ministry’s response to Trump’s attack is, to say the least, bemusing if you’re an observer of hypocrisy:

“This morning, the United States committed an act of armed aggression against Venezuela. This is deeply concerning and condemnable.”

“The pretexts used to justify such actions are unfounded. Ideological animosity has prevailed over business pragmatism and the willingness to build relationships based on trust and predictability.”

“In the current situation, it is important, first and foremost, to prevent further escalation and to focus on finding a way out of the situation through dialogue.”

https://michaelwest.com.au/what-trump-venezuela-means-for-russia-china/

HERE MICHAEL PASCOE SUFFERS FROM AMNESIA... THE RUSSIAN/UKRAINIAN CONFLICT WAS PROVOKED BY THE WEST... START YOUR INVESTIGATION WITH BILL CLINTON NATO PUSH, THEN BUSH JUNIOR, OBAMA, TRUMP AND BIDEN.... AND EVEN ZELENSKY WHO CONTINUED TO FLAUNT THE MINSK AGREEMENTS... WHICH WERE SIGNED IN BAD FAITH BY MERKEL AND HOLLANDE... see UN #2202....

CONSIDER THAT THE 2022 [NEARLY SIGNED] PEACE AGREEMENT BETWEEN UKRAINE AND RUSSIA, HAD LEFT THE DONBASS PROVINCES UNDER THE UKRAINIAN GOVERNMENT "MANAGEMENT" — DESPITE ALLOWED AUTONOMY, BECAUSE THESE ARE POPULATED BY RUSSIANS WHO HAD BEEN BOMBED SINCE 2014 — [AND PROBABLY BEFOREHAND].

NOW TRUMP IS TRYING TO HAVE PEACE WITH RUSSIA BECAUSE A) HE KNOWS AMERICA CAN'T WIN A WAR OF NUKES [NO-ONE CAN] AND B) HE DOES NOT WANT RUSSIA HAVING A COMPLETE VICTORY OVER UKRAINE. FOR TRUMP, THE BEST WAY HERE IS TO STOP THE DAMAGE AT THIS POINT IN TIME — THEN RAPE RUSSIA NLIKE HE PLANS TO DO WITH VENEZUELA.

THE 2022 PEACE AGREEMENT WAS SCUTTLED BY BORIS JOHNSON [WHO GOT ONE MILLION BUX FROM WEAPON MANUFACTURERS FOR HIS GOOD DEED]...

WE ALSO KNOW THAT THE AMERICAN GEOPOLITICS HAS PLANNED THE DESTRUCTION OF RUSSIA SINCE 1917... AND THE AMERICAN MILITARY COMPLEX IS STILL WORKING ON THIS PROJECT WITH THE HELP OF A DEVIOUS PRESIDENT: CLINTON, BUSH JUNIOR, OBAMA, TRUMP, BIDEN, TRUMP AGAIN.... IN THEIR OWN STYLE OF DECEIT...

SO WHAT TO STOP CHINA AND RUSSIA: TO A GREAT EXTEND, RUSSIA AND CHINA ARE DECENT... RUSSIA HAS THE POWER TO DESTROY UKRINE [SORRY I MEAN YUCKRAINE] OVERNIGHT, BUT DOES NOT. THE INSTRUCTIONS TO THE MILITARY BY PUTIN IS TO AVOID UKRAINIAN CIVILIAN CASUALTIES [EVEN IN YUCKRAINE MANY PEOPLE ARE RUSSIAN]. 

MEANWHILE THE WEST PUSHES AND HELPS ZELENSKY TO KILL CIVILIANS IN RUSSIA, EVEN TARGETING THE PRESIDENT'S HOME AS WELL — SOMETHING THAT WASHINGTON HAD A HAND IN... 

RUSSIA SHOWS AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF RESTRAINT.

PASCOE NEEDS A LESSON IN "RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA" WHICH IS THE CORRECT WAY TO SEE THE CONFLICT. 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

President Donald Trump has threatened Venezuela's interim president, Delcy Rodriguez, with a “bigger price” than the one paid by her recently captured predecessor Nicolas Maduro.

In the early hours of Saturday, American forces swooped over the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and captured Maduro and his wife and took them back to the US, where they will soon face charges of orchestrating a “narco-terrorism conspiracy.”

In Maduro’s absence, Venezuela’s Supreme Court has granted Rodriguez, who served as vice president, presidential powers and ordered her to immediately assume office in an acting capacity.

However, “if she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” Trump declared on Sunday.

“We need total access. We need access to the oil and to other things in their country that allow us to rebuild their country,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday.

After carrying out a regime-change operation in the oil-rich South American country on Saturday, Trump said Washington will “run” Venezuela “until such time as a proper transition can take place.”

“We’re in charge,” Trump reiterated on Sunday, noting that Rodriguez was “cooperating” with the US.

Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello Rondon has told the country’s troops to “trust the leadership,” while Foreign Minister Yvan Gil has accused Washington of seeking to gain control of the Latin American nation’s natural resources.

https://www.rt.com/news/630363-us-attack-venezuela-caracas/

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ANYONE BUYING ANYTHING FROM AMERICA, WILL SUPPORT THIS HIGHWAY ROBBERY AND POSSIBLY BE A RECEIVER OF STOLEN GOODS... AUSTRALIA HAS ONE CHOICE TO MAKE: DUMP AMERICA UNTIL IT COMES BACK TO ITS SENSES [LOST A LONG TIME AGO MIND YOU SUCH AS THE JFK ASSASSINATION].

THE WORLD SHOULD TELL THE YANKS TO YANK THEMSELVES AND LEAVE THE REST OF THE WORLD ALONE... THE SCHOOLYARD BULLY CAN WEAR THE DUNCE HAT AND STAY IN THE CORNER THREE HOURS AFTER THE BELL....

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The administration of George W. Bush expended huge effort trying to convince the U.S. population and the world that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was not about oil.

Instead it was supposed to be about Saddam Hussein threatening his neighbors; about him acquiring a nuclear weapon and possessing other WMD; and of course it was about that old standby: bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East. 

Anything but about seizing Iraq’s oil. 

Yesterday morning at his over-the-top Florida mansion, Trump came right out and said it: his military attack on Venezuela was about the oil.

Not about drug smuggling, or a stolen election, but about “stolen” U.S. oil. 

“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” Trump said. 

“Venezuela has been a bust, a total bust for a long period of time. They were pumping almost nothing by comparison to what they could have been.”

According to Reuters, Venezuela was producing as much as “3.5 million barrels per day in the 1970s, which at the time represented over 7% of global oil output. Production fell below 2 million bpd during the 2010s and averaged some 1.1 million bpd last year or just 1% of global production.” 

What neither Trump nor Reuters mentions is the impact U.S. sanctions under Trump have had on the Venezuelan oil industry. They began to intensify in 2019 to restrict the state-owned oil business’ access to U.S. financial markets, to block its assets, and to limit its exports.

Trump also didn’t mention that Venezuela holds about 17 percent of global oil reserves or 303 billion barrels “ahead of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) leader Saudi Arabia, according to the London-based Energy Institute,” Reuters reported.

He absurdly said U.S. oil companies would be going in not to enrich themselves, but to make Venezuelans prosperous and free. “We want peace, liberty, and justice for the great people of Venezuela,” he said. “We will make the people of Venezuela rich, independent, and safe.”

To do that he vowed an absurd, open-ended U.S. occupation of the country, which could mean killing a lot of would-be free and rich Venezuelans.

“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition,” he said several times. And if the U.S. met resistance he vowed to strike Venezuela even harder. “We are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so.”

He vowed this stronger strike even though he said that “overwhelming American military power, air, land, and sea was used to launch a spectacular assault” on Friday night.

He absurdly boasted it “was an assault like people have not seen since World War II. This was one of the most stunning, effective, and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history.”

Trump omitted plenty in his performance yesterday. There is no more clarity today, especially about how the U.S. will “run”  Venezuela and who the U.S. will try to install in the long term. 

Trump dismissed the previously presumed replacement, Maria Corina Machado, the controversial Nobel Peace Prize winner who had called for U.S. military intervention.  

Trump said, “I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country. She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect.”

For the moment, Venezuela’s constitution has put Vice President Delcy Rodríguez,in charge. At yesterday’s press conference, Trump said U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had had a lengthy phone conversation with Rodríguez, and that she was “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.” 

There’s been much speculation that the U.S. bribed senior political and military figures to ensure there was no resistance to the U.S. attack, which involved 150 U.S. aircraft. No anti-aircraft systems were engaged and Trump said the U.S. suffered no casualties or loss of equipment.

But after she was later sworn in as acting president yesterday, Rodríguez delivered a fiery speech denouncing the U.S. attack, while insisting that Maduro is still Venezuela’s legitimate leader, even as he sits in a federal jail in Brooklyn. 

Rodríguez demanded Maduro’s release. She said the U.S. attack “had one objective: Regime change in Venezuela” to “allow for the capture of our energy resources, our mineral resources, our natural resources.”

Rodríguez said:

“We are ready to defend Venezuela. We are ready to defend our natural resources that must be for national development. … The extremists who have promoted armed agression against our country, history and justice will make them pay. … We will never again be slaves.” 

Rodríguez blamed Israeli involvement in the seizure of Maduro. She said the world was shocked that “Venezuela is the victim and target of an attack of this nature, which undoubtedly has Zionist undertones. It is truly shameful.” 

She did not elaborate. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar praised the U.S. kidnapping of Maduro hours after it occurred. Venezuela has been a leading critic of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and has close ties and sells oil to Israel’s mortal enemy Iran.

Another US Regime Change 

Whoever ultimately assumes power, Trump made clear he intends the U.S. to have a hand in choosing the new leaders of yet another foreign, sovereign state — something the U.S is an old hand at doing.

“We can’t take a chance at somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn’t have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind,” he said.

“Had decades of that. We’re not going to let that happen,” he said. “We’re there now. And what people don’t understand, but they understand as I say this, we’re there now, but we’re going to stay until such time as the proproper transition can take place.”

In other words, Trump said the U.S. is going to “run” the place even though all U.S. troops have withdrawn after the operation.

Bush never said the U.S. would “run” Iraq. It just did. And badly. 

The U.S. government can’t run the United States very well. But the Yanquis persist in thinking they can run countries whose cultures they don’t understand – or care about. 

Trump says he’s ready to deploy U.S. ground forces if necessary to “run” Venezuela, making them potential targets in an insurgency of armed citizens. 

“We’re not afraid of boots on the ground,” Trump said. “We don’t mind saying it, but we’re going to make sure that that country is run properly.” 

The way Bush “ran” Iraq “properly,” leading to civil war and ISIS and the U.S. essentially getting kicked out?

“We’re going to run the country right,” Trump insisted. “It’s going to be run very judiciously, very fairly. It’s going to make a lot of money. We’re going to give money to the people. We’re going to reimburse people that were taken advantage of. We’re going to take care of everybody.”

‘They Stole Our Oil’

Then Trump got down to the heart of the matter, the real motive for the U.S. action.

“We couldn’t let them get away with it. You know, they stole our oil,” he said. 

“We built that whole industry there and they just took it over like we were nothing and we had a president that decided not to do anything about it. So we did something about it. We’re late but we did something about it,” he said. “We’re going to take back the oil that frankly we should have taken back a long time ago.”

This U.S. regime change operation bears a resemblance to one 72 years ago in Iran, when the U.S. and Britain overthrew the elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, in 1953 because he dared nationalize Iran’s oil industry. 

Twenty-three years later, Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez nationalized Venezuela’s oil industry on Jan. 1, 1976. This was well before Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro.

European and U.S. oil companies that had been operating in the country were compensated with about $1 billion without dispute. After partial privatization, Chavez re-nationalized parts of the industry in 2007, which led to disputes that were resolved by World Bank arbitration. Venezuela has had difficulty paying.  

But the ideas that Venezuela “stole” “our” oil, or that U.S. sanctions have had nothing to do with the reduction of Venezuela’s output are worthy of Eugène Ionesco.  

Here’s another absurd thing: the U.S. director of National Intelligence is a woman who made her political career on vocal opposition to the very long history of U.S. regime change wars — especially in Latin America.  

In the midst of this latest U.S. regime change operation Tulsi Gabbard is completely silent and marginalized. “Who cares what she thinks?” Trump asked about her a couple of months ago.  

Isn’t it absurd that she is still in the job, unable to influence Trump? Isn’t it high time she makes a stand and resign right now as a protest against Trump’s recklessness? 

With Congress trying to mobilize a vote against the military operation and pro-regime-change newspapers like The New York Times blasting the Venezuela adventure as “illegal,” “warmongering” and “latter-day imperialism,” Gabbard would emerge a hero if she just stood up and quit.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.