Venezuela, Canada, and the Donroe Doctrine
Yesterday’s illegal and violent annexation of Venezuela should dispel any remaining notion that the United States is a functioning democratic country worthy of any form of respect on the world stage. This was Trump’s Czechoslovakia and Canada is precariously positioned as his Austria.
There are no valid excuses for the behaviour. There was no UN mandate. There were no discussions with, nor assembly of, allies. The President did not even inform the Senate Armed Services Committee of his offensive military action. He had no congressional mandate to wage war. There was no international arrest warrant out for Venezuelan President Maduro, only a domestic one carrying a $50 million reward which Trump, who lacks a sense of humour, has already joked about claiming.
Whatever crimes Maduro may or may not have committed, the United States is not the world’s police force. They cannot no-knock-warrant an entire country. They cannot attack a foreign nation, kill its citizens, seize its president, drag him back to the United States to face domestic American charges, and announce that the country is now an American protectorate simply because they feel like it.
For the US to claim this imperial right is to give license to Russia to take over Ukraine, Moldova, or the Baltic States, for China to take over Taiwan, and for any other confrontational asymmetric international relationship that might be interested in the precedent. It is in direct violation of article 2 of the United Nations Charter and this action ends any pretence of the continued existence of an enforceable international rules-based order.
With the world’s three largest military powers all eyeing imperial expansion, it means the rest of us are on our own. There is no more heavy democratic counterweight.
The United States has invaded a foreign country for its resources, deposed its leader, and announced that the country is now under US governorship. In the 1930s timeline, we have leapt to March 15th, 1939, when Germany invaded Czeckoslovakia in violation of the previous year’s international agreement not to.
The international implications of this attack are far greater than the purported drug smuggling that Trump used as an excuse. Just a few months ago, he pardonned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández for similar drug convictions in the United States, laying bare the absurdity of the justification.
At the moment, 80% of Venezuela’s oil exports go to China. Just six hours before the Americans invaded Venezuela, president Maduro held a high-level meeting with a Chinese envoy, with the delegation still in Caracas during the assault. Dispensing with the drug excuse, Trump’s speech announcing the attack yesterday talked an awful lot about controlling the country’s oil industry.
It is also curious that the United States is willing to criminally prosecute the president of Venezuela — but not the president of the United States, whose own domestic insurrection trial should, by rights, be in its advanced stages today.
It seems self-evident that Nobel Peace Prize winner and Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado would be installed as the country’s new leader in short order, especially following the country’s 2024 election and her flattery of Trump. Except for two things: Trump believes the Nobel prize she won belonged to him, so, according to Trump, Machado “doesn’t have respect,” and of course she’s a woman, which is the other reason he does not respect her.
Assuming Venezuela does not quickly fill its own leadership vacuum, whoever the Americans decide to put in charge will be installed on the understanding that the country will be run as an American client state. Their American support would be premised on the opening of the country’s vast oil reserves to American exploitation, likely at the expense of Chinese access. The effects of this would be felt around the world, potentially flooding the oil market and crashing oil prices, impacting oil-producing nations like Russia and Canada.
If Venezuela is Trump’s Czechoslovakia, Canada is his Austria — and all of the Americas are the rest of Europe and North Africa, if we follow the parallels. Yesterday, he coined the term the “Donroe doctrine” which plays off the 19th century Monroe doctrine, which saw the United States as being in charge of the entirety of the Americas.
He has been open about his desire to take over Canada since his return to power nearly a year ago. He sees our country as culturally indistinguishable from, and economically essential to, his own. We have the rare earth minerals, oil, fresh water, and numerous other natural resources the Chinese and Americans both need. The US and China called a truce on their aggressive pursuit of those resources internationally just a few months ago in Busan, which the attack on Venezuela has effectively ended.
We know that this is the American focus, and, just like with Venezuela, Trump often refers to the non-sensical claim of fentanyl crossing the border into the US to lay a pretext for later action against Canada.
Canada is, then, in a very precarious position. This is visible in the extremely cautious wording of the Prime Minister’s statement on the attack, which supports the outcome but does not directly condemn the obvious violation of international law and territorial sovereignty to achieve it, instead using diplomatic language above Trump’s reading level to do so more subtly.
We are economically and military dependent on the United States. Prime Minister Carney is working on rearming and reorienting our economy away from the US, but both are multi-year, nigh generational, processes that have only just begun, and on the way there our leadership has to be exceptionally careful not to irritate the American dictatorship more than necessary. Carney’s humiliating apology to Trump over Ford’s ad a few months ago is in this vein. Carney strongly recognises the reality of the situation, not only in terms of what is happening but just how weak Canada’s hand currently is. He needs to buy us time until Canada’s military and economic dependencies can be refocused away from the United States.
The trouble we have is that the Americans have a ready partner in Canada, willing to lick Trump’s boots and hand over the country’s resources and sovereignty to the US at the first opportunity.
Anschluss is a very real possibility should this clown ever take power.
Despite Trump's misogyny, a woman has been (temporarily?) installed as the new president in Venezuela. From the NY Times this morning:
Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, took the oath of office yesterday and is now the country’s interim leader. Still, she called the United States an illegal invader and said Maduro was the “only president.” (Read more about Rodríguez, the scion of a Marxist guerrilla who nevertheless built bridges with the business community.) Trump said she would hold power as long as she “does what we want.” He declined to support the accession of Venezuela’s opposition leader, María Corina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in October.
See also Timothy Snyder's post today:
https://snyder.substack.com/p/venezuela-the-precedents?publication_id=310897&post_id=183438302&isFreemail=true&r=8tdx4&triedRedirect=true