The Trump administration’s naked demonstration of international lawlessness over Venezuela invites other rogue states to follow suit, but Michael Pascoe argues it also provides an opportunity for China to go high.
There’s nothing new about the United States replacing governments it doesn’t like, especially in Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine in its various interpretations is two centuries old.
The Trump gang’s Venezuelan adventure though is particularly brazen and comes at a precarious time in international relations. I suppose adding kidnapping to existing crimes of murder, piracy and extortion is a small step for Donald Trump but a big one for other despotic rulers seeking precedents.
A New York Times investigation a little over a week ago laid bare the machinations and motives for the three key players in attacking Venezuela. For Secretary of State Marco Rubio, it was Venezuela’s support of Cuba, for Homeland security adviser and “prime minister” Stephen Miller, it was drugs and migration and for Trump it was, of course, oil.
It was never because the thrice-elected President Nicolas Maduro successfully stole an election (was Trump jealous?) and was a despicable dictator oppressing his people. Heavens, some of Trump’s most feted allies are feudal sectarian murderers.
Whatever the motives, the kidnapping, bombing, murdering and piracy were all illegal. The United States Government saying otherwise is just making shit up however much media stenographers repeat it.
Yale Law School professor and president-elect of the American Society of International Law, Oona Hathaway, spelt it out in a New Yorker interview:
“The dangerous thing here is the idea that a President can just decide that a leader is not legitimate and then invade the country and presumably put someone in power who is favoured by the Administration.
(1900 Louis Dalrymple cartoon)
What’s to stop Russia, China?
If that were the case, that’s the end of international law, that’s the end of the U.N. charter, that’s the end of any kind of legal limits on the use of force. And if the President can do that, what’s to stop a Russian leader from doing it, or a Chinese leader from doing it, or anyone with the power to do so? We’ve been supporting Ukraine, and its war against Russia, and Putin has been making very much the same argument about Zelensky.”
In the “deal” he is pushing on Ukraine, Trump has already approved Putin’s world view that might is right, that invading and occupying Ukrainian territory entitles Russia to keep it.
Putin is the immediate winner from Trump’s Venezuelan foray. *
Worryingly for our region and particularly for Australia having invested its strategic future in being a vassal cog in America’s military deterrence of China, is what licence Xi Jinping might see in Trump’s precedent.
As previously reported here, the world, the international order, has shifted under our feet while our government dumbly plods along with a 1960s mindset. The Trump gang has said the quite bit out loud: America owns the Americas, Europe is to be left to itself and/or Russia, and China’s military rise is acknowledged and accepted in Asia.
Australia’s security abandoned to the folly of declining US empire
The squadrons of China hawks might squawk that if China did want to attack Taiwan, it can claim to have more “legal” entitlement to do so than the US has in Venezuela. The US, Australia and nearly everybody else officially agree that Taiwan is part of China; the one-China policy. If China invaded Taiwan, it would theoretically be a domestic matter.
But this is where Trump’s America is again gifting China opportunity. Every American attack on the old international order, its abandonment of treaties, its retreat from global aid engagement, its climate denialism, its contempt for the UN,
makes China look stable and reliable by comparison.
China’s “Wolf Warrior” period was brief and realised to be a mistake. The economic coercion Beijing attempted to exert over Australia backfired. Trump’s tariff mania and haphazard extraterritorial penalties and sanctions have subsequently made the wolf warriors look like labrador puppies.
A boon for China
China particularly gained as the Gaza war turned genocidal and America’s support for Netanyahu remained total. Not for the first time in this space, it’s important to remember that most of the world is not in the American camp as we are or the Chinese camp as North Korea is.
Most countries have a healthy suspicion about the dangerous nature of big powers throwing their weight around, flexing their power.
Modern China is unique for having a relatively peaceful rise as a superpower. The odd border skirmish with India, some elbowing in the South China Sea, nothing like the rivers of blood spilt by every other major power.
The Sinophobes’ warning that Xi might think, “if Trump and Putin can do it, I can too”, needs to be balanced by the opportunity provided to prove superior and gain by not doing it.
Taiwan and Greenland
Besides, a war killing fellow Han Chinese would be expensive and damaging with no upside. The Taiwan issue remains a useful domestic tool for rallying nationalism, a problem that doesn’t necessarily need to be solved.
A war that trashes China’s rising international standing, well, that’s the sort of stupidity a Trump might indulge in.
Meanwhile, I wonder how comfortably the people of Greenland sleep at night.
*The Russian Foreign Ministry’s response to Trump’s attack is, to say the least, bemusing if you’re an observer of hypocrisy:
“This morning, the United States committed an act of armed aggression against Venezuela. This is deeply concerning and condemnable.”
“The pretexts used to justify such actions are unfounded. Ideological animosity has prevailed over business pragmatism and the willingness to build relationships based on trust and predictability.”
“In the current situation, it is important, first and foremost, to prevent further escalation and to focus on finding a way out of the situation through dialogue.”