Donald J. Trump has finally achieved what no Silicon Valley billionaire, CERN physicist or Marvel villain could manage: he has dragged the 18th century kicking and screaming into the 21st. In one bold, historically illiterate swoop, he has colonised Venezuela. Not with redcoats and cannons, of course—that would be gauche—but with helicopter gunships, special forces and the moral certainty of a man who once thought windmills cause cancer.
This is gunboat diplomacy, British Empire vintage, upgraded to the deluxe American edition. Same arrogance, better hardware. Venezuela’s president and his wife have been scooped up, packaged like Amazon Prime parcels, and shipped off to New York to be charged with “narco-terrorism”—a wonderfully elastic crime that means we don’t like you and we have planes.
The US judiciary has form here. It previously performed judicial jiu-jitsu on Manuel Noriega of Panama, folding international law into a neat paper crane and sentencing him to 40 years without first establishing jurisdiction—under international law largely written by the United States itself. It was legal because America said so. Which, in fairness, has always been the strongest legal argument available.
Trump never hid his intentions on Venezuela. This was never about democracy, human rights or freeing the Venezuelan people. This was about oil, gas, lithium, vibes—whatever resource happens to be shiny this week. The people of Venezuela, meanwhile, were invited to whistle politely while applauding the removal of the devil they knew, in exchange for a Trump they definitely didn’t.
Let us also not forget that Trump previously described Venezuelans seeking asylum in the US as having been released from mental institutions. In short, he thinks they’re mad. Nothing says “liberator” like invading a country whose people you already regard as escaped patients.
The lessons of Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and assorted other geopolitical face-plants have been carefully misplaced somewhere between Trump’s Twitter password and his golf scorecard. Institutional memory—normally the brake pedal on presidential impulses—has been dismissed as “Deep State nonsense”. Trump does not do brakes. He does accelerators, cliffs and confident post-crash interviews.
While George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan cautiously tested the waters with Grenada and Panama—tiny hors d’oeuvres of imperial adventurism—Venezuela is a main course. A big fish. The kind that fights back, attracts attention and disrupts the entire aquarium. The medium-term consequences are already queueing politely: evaporating support for Ukraine, China eyeing Taiwan like a takeaway menu, and allies quietly checking the expiry dates on their US security guarantees.
Domestically, this adventure sits well beyond the law. Congress, constitutionally meant to be centre-stage in matters of war, has been reduced to an innocent bystander—mouth open, popcorn in hand. A helpful Supreme Court ruling declaring presidents effectively immune for “official acts” has only emboldened Trump. When you tell a man he is legally untouchable, don’t be shocked when he starts touching everything.
The prelude—killings on the high seas without legal justification—was merely the trailer. The full movie is now playing. America can no longer lecture China on Taiwan or Tibet, Russia on former Soviet states, Israel on the Middle East, Rwanda on the DRC, or North Korea on South Korea. The moral megaphone has been pawned for spare change.
As the old Chinese warning goes: may you live in interesting times. Donald Trump has not only ensured that we do—he has taken out a long-term lease on “interesting” and sublet it to chaos.
History will not be kind. But then again, Trump has never read history. He prefers to make it up as he goes along.
Centre for Nigeria Progress 