The Donroe Doctrine

Last weekend the removal of Nicolás Maduro from the Venezuelan presidency in Caracas to a New York cell had every appearance of a delayed Christmas (or advanced ‘Reyes’) present for the Venezuelan people but that impression is fading almost by the minute. The whole operation might not even have that much to do with the country itself but rather be a means towards an end closer to home of hammering a final nail in the coffin of Communist Cuba by cutting off its Venezuelan oil supplies or an experimental dry run towards imposing all Washington’s conditions on Greenland without needing to change its status quo.

Back in 1939 the four-term Democratic US President Franklin D. Roosevelt said of the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza: “He may be a son of a bitch but at least he’s our son of a bitch” – this would seem the attitude of the current Republican White House denizen towards the thinly disguised military régime in Caracas as long as he can call the shots over Venezuela’s massive oil reserves. Contrary to what his inflated ego might tell him, Donald Trump is thus not especially original, echoing the “big stick” of Theodore Roosevelt more than a century ago (without ever “speaking softly”) while Panama’s Manuel Noriega was deposed by similar methods in 1989.

Critics are constantly pointing to the absence of the “D” word democracy in Trump’s discourse but another “D” word – drugs – is also fading fast in the case against the Bolivarian régime. Not only has the ‘Cartel de los Soles’ claim been dropped from the charges against Maduro but doubts are now arising if that cartel even exists. If Vice-President (now interim leader) Delcy Rodríguez and the Caracas military helm play their cards right, Venezuela might even be demoted to a minor player within the hemispheric drug problem – which actually comes closer to reality than its current demonisation in a subcontinent where Colombia, Peru and Bolivia are the leading cocaine producers with Ecuador rising fast as an exit point. Mexico remains the runaway leader in drug-trafficking to the United States.

Yet Trump’s indifference to democracy, along with his barely concealed contempt for a María Corina Machado depriving him of a longed-for Nobel Peace Prize, remains the biggest worry. Critiques of last weekend’s raid have been largely based on a violation of territorial sovereignty but in discarding either Machado or the 2024 president-elect Edmundo González Urrutia (Washington dixit, along with most of the world’s nations), Trump is also ignoring popular sovereignty – i.e. a double disrespect for two sovereignties. Yet the US State Department has a point when it says that the current conditions would not favour a civilian presidency – with the Bolivarian military establishment entrenched for over a quarter-century alongside both the legislative and judicial branches of government entirely captive, Machado or González Urrutia would have even less institutional props than Javier Milei when he took office in 2023 in Argentina (not that this stopped Milei, currently riding high on the strength of a popular mandate largely grounded in political fatigue).

With or without Maduro, the Caracas régime does not deserve the slightest sympathy because of a long string of human rights violations (which cannot all be laid at the door of the former bus-driver) cited by not only the enemies of 21st-century socialism but also by socialists like Chile’s ex-president Michelle Bachelet in her report to the United Nations. But the fact remains that Venezuela is  being subjected to extortion – as has already been the experience of Brazil, hit with 50 percent tariffs in the wake of ex-president Jair Bolsonaro’s conviction, and even the ultra-loyal ally Milei (“If you don’t win, no generosity,” said Trump while signing the bailout package helping to clinch last October’s midterm triumph).

Trump has been explicit in placing democracy on the backburner but has yet to clarify his approach to those human rights violations and the thousands of political prisoners – his announcement of the closure of the Helicoide “torture centre” would suggest that he considers oppression consigned to the past without looking any further. Yet while the political transformation of Venezuela might be an impossibility in the short term, if he now has the clout to dictate conditions on oil and the Bolivarian régime’s choice of friends abroad, it surely would not be hard to include the release of political prisoners if that interested him at all. Nor impossible for an Argentina giving him rare international support to have a say in the matter.

All a work in progress (or so we hope).