The swift fall of Nicolas Maduro, from Venezuela’s dancing president to America’s shackled prisoner, is the latest episode in Donald Trump’s reality TV series — the highest-level sacking in the history of “You’re fired!”
Framed as a law-enforcement action to bring the authoritarian Venezuelan to justice for drug-dealing, the stunning military operation that snatched Maduro from a Caracas army compound had the added benefit, for Trump, of paving the way for U.S. control of the Latin American nation’s vast oil reserves. Which brings us to another TV celebrity, the late comedian George Carlin, who once said, “America is an oil company with an army.”
Video footage of missile strikes and the drone of attack helicopters over the mountainous Venezuelan capital, followed by images of the mustachioed Maduro in chained U.S. custody, made for high ratings and drove coverage of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal off the front pages and the top of TV news reports — at least for now. Which brings us to another entertainer, the proto-rap icon Gil Scott-Heron, who wrote, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” As it turns out, President Trump’s revolution — defying national and international law, business ethics, norms of governance and constitutional orde — will see every destruction of American values broadcast in living color and in many cases live.
We saw plenty of that in his first term but the real show began five years ago this week with the assault he inspired on the U.S. Capitol to try and overturn the peaceful transfer of power to Joe Biden after Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
Now let loose by a Supreme Court that holds him harmless for any actions taken in his official capacity, Trump is making the gunboat diplomats of the early 20th century look like amateurs in his pursuit of perceived American interest. He has turned the 19th century Monroe Doctrine into the “Donroe Doctrine.” He no sooner had Maduro and his wife Celia Flores facing charges in a New York City federal courtroom than he was launching threats against Colombia, Mexico and Cuba and once again asserting his right to grab Greenland as a strategic asset.
Trump’s serial threats against Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark, has ramped up tensions with the European Union and, in the worst-case scenario, could trigger armed conflict and the end of the North Atlantic alliance if Trump actually launched military action to seize the strategically placed territory and its rich mineral deposits.
In the meantime, Trump claims to be running Venezuela through pressure on its newly installed interim president, Delcy Rodriguez, a veteran Chavista who has held top government posts since the time of Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez, author of the Bolivarian Revolution, the socialist movement that for a time used soaring oil revenues to reduce poverty and provide better housing, health care, nutrition and education for the Venezuelan poor. “If she doesn’t do what’s right,” Trump said, sounding like a gangster, “she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”
In Trump’s view, doing what’s right means recreating the complete dominance of U.S. oil companies in Venezuela that prevailed before nationalization in the 1970s. “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken oil infrastructure and start making money for the country,” he said less than 48 hours before Maduro’s arraignment on drug charges.
Venezuelans driven into exile by poverty, food shortages, state-sponsored violence and political repression largely applauded Trump’s actions and bluster, never mind the fact that U.S. oil giants are unlikely to invest billions in Venezuela with oil prices low and the country’s long-term stability in doubt. Nor do they seem overly bothered with Trump’s efforts to strike a partnership with figures like Rodriguez, the hard-left former vice president who helped manage Venezuela’s descent under Maduro into dictatorial rule.
For at least the moment, Trump has sidelined the Venezuelan opposition, whose exiled leader, Maria Corina Machado, recently won the Nobel Peace Prize and declared herself ready to return to Venezuela. Trump called her a nice lady who didn’t have the respect and support needed to lead the country. Nor did he even mention Edumundo Gonzalez, who stepped in to run for president after the national electoral council disqualified Machado. According to election observers and independent tallies, Gonzalez overwhelmingly defeated Maduro but the official election machinery unsurprisingly declared victory for the incumbent.
Trump may believe he can get away with a cheap coup by manipulating Venezuela through sanctions and its naval blockade of oil shipments, allowing him to control the country without putting boots on the ground and risking American lives and blowback from the MAGA base wary of foreign interventions after the costly disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq.
If Trump has a long-term plan for transition to real democratic rule, he isn’t sharing it. Amnesty for Maduro loyalists? Safe passage abroad? Interim leadership by the opposition followed by new elections? Why declare a strategy when you can tease it, ensuring strong viewership for upcoming episodes of “White House Escapades”?
Finally, in the morally topsy-turvy Trump world, seeing Maduro — labelled a “narco-terrorist” — face justice for allegedly profiting from drug shipments stands side by side with Trump’s pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, convicted of drug smuggling in the U.S. for sending hundred of tons of cocaine across our borders.
If there’s any consistency in the Donroe Doctrine, it’s in the raw exercise of power to achieve the president’s goals. The White House’s recently released national security strategy underscores the administration’s intentions to dominate the Americas without interference from foreign actors like China and Russia, who, in Trump’s view, are free to dominate their own spheres of influence. So much for Ukraine and Taiwan.
Lest Trump’s actions be totally viewed as outliers, it’s important to recall our nation’s long history of interventions in Central America, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean and Africa. What’s different now is that Trump is adding white European powers to American imperialism’s list of potential victims. Stay tuned for more details of equal-opportunity imperialism by the ever boundary-breaking resident of the White House.
Ronald Mitchell
Editor and Publisher, Bay State Banner
