The extensive American military attack on facilities and infrastructure in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, reached its climax in an operation by Delta Force carried out last Saturday night. The assault, which resulted in the capture and transport to the US of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (the most hostile to the US, and one who firmly supported Iran, China, and Russia), and his wife, Cilia Flores, does not constitute a precedent in relations between the American superpower and its weaker rivals in Latin America and the Caribbean basin.
In January 1990, Panamanian President Manuel Noriega was kidnapped straight to the federal prison in Florida, where he remained until his release in 2007. Despite cooperating with the CIA, the fact that he worked in parallel for other intelligence agencies as well, and simultaneously did not refrain from involvement in drug deals, sealed his fate.
According to the UN Charter (Article 2), it is illegal to kidnap a sitting head of state, who enjoys absolute personal immunity, from arrest from the sovereign territory of his state (except by order of an international tribunal). However, this prohibition did not deter the George W. Bush administration in its operation against Noriega, nor did it prevent US President Donald Trump from granting Maduro a plane ticket and entry approval to his territory, even without a visa. This represents the purest and most refined expressions of the "Monroe Doctrine" from 1823, which defines Latin America as an exclusive legitimate American sphere of influence.
No surprises
Indeed, relying on this doctrine, US President William McKinley went to war in 1898 in Cuba against Spanish rule (and won it without difficulty), while in 1961 the newly minted President John F. Kennedy ordered an invasion (which was presented as an action initiated by Cuban exiles) of the Bay of Pigs in Cuba (which failed quickly and only contributed to strengthening the target of the attack – the regime of Cuban President Fidel Castro). Four years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson dispatched a Marine force to the Dominican Republic (and helped bring Joaquín Balaguer to the presidency).
Even if matters did not escalate to full-scale military confrontation, US administrations did not hesitate to exert their influence over the desired nature of rule in their backyard, and not infrequently, the pressure they exerted brought about regime change. This happened in Guatemala in 1954 (where the elected President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán was removed from power following a military coup planned by elements in the Eisenhower administration), and it also happened in Chile, when the severe measures (most of which were covert) initiated by the Nixon administration from 1970 to topple the regime of President Salvador Allende led to a military coup in 1973, to the suicide of the Marxist Allende, and to the rise to power of dictator Augusto Pinochet. This rule, it should be emphasized, was characterized by persecution, oppression, and murder of political opponents.
Against this backdrop of constant meddling in the internal politics of Latin American countries, only a minimal sample of which was mentioned above, Trump's conduct on the Venezuelan front should not surprise. Nor should it be linked solely to his "operational code" and his tendency to act "outside the box." For although the move was accompanied by unique "Trumpian" characteristics (such as his demand for compensation, which the US is entitled to not only in exchange for the oil that Venezuela exports to "axis of evil" states while circumventing the sanctions regime, but also based on its decision in 1965 to nationalize the oil economy), it is fundamentally rooted in entrenched and traditional behavioral patterns that US administrations shaped and implemented as far back as the distant McKinley era in Latin America, which they defined as an exclusive sphere of influence.
However, one cannot ignore the strong emphasis that Trump has placed since the beginning of his second term on the vital need to gain control of energy sources and vital raw materials that will enable him to free himself from a financial burden (or any dependence, although not regarding Venezuela), whether in his backyard (Panama) or in other arenas (Greenland). Nor should one ignore his determination to wage an all-out war against drug cartels and drug lords, mainly in Venezuela, whose activities pose a tangible and immediate danger to the prosperity, health, and resilience of American society. It should also be noted that the war against dangerous drug smuggling was a central plank in the recent election campaign, in which Trump pledged to uproot from its foundation the epidemic of dangerous drugs smuggled into the streets of American cities and sowing death.
Message to other rivals
Thus, while former vice president and his rival in the race, Kamala Harris, tried to address the problem of drug smuggling through long-term education and development programs throughout the region, but failed utterly to find immediate solutions, Trump demonstrated decisiveness, determination, and leadership in the face of the challenge.
In doing so, he also conveyed a very powerful message to other rivals of the US, primarily Iran and Hamas, not to take lightly his warnings and threats about his willingness to use force if they continue to demonstrate rigidity and inflexibility in their positions (Trump maintained dialogue with Maduro until the very eve of the operation, but failed to soften his positions on any front). Unlike President Kennedy, who did not succeed in sealing the tomb on the regime of his main enemy in the sector, Fidel Castro, despite his tireless efforts (and not only in the Bay of Pigs), the current president has managed to cement his status as the undisputed hegemon and not only in his traditional sphere of influence.
Although he succeeded, in his bold and precise operation, both in stopping and bringing Maduro to trial in the US and in projecting a powerful deterrent image to the enemies of the American superpower, as he emphasized in his press conference yesterday, it is not yet clear whether the military move will indeed prove itself as a root treatment that will block or minimize the path of smuggling the white death. It is also unclear whether the isolationist wing of the Republican movement will support what appears to be a slide toward greater involvement in the military and diplomatic arena.
Trump's dramatic declaration, in his press conference yesterday, about his intention to temporarily manage Venezuela until an orderly change of government, could be an opening to a prolonged entanglement fraught with risks and dangers. It is highly doubtful whether this scenario will appeal to this powerful component, whose sediments and scars from Iraq and Afghanistan (and perhaps Vietnam too) have not yet completely faded from its consciousness, and from the consciousness of large additional portions of the American public.
