How the capture of Nicolas Maduro will upend the global order

How the unilateral action by the US against Venezuela, or more accurately by the Trump administration against President Nicolas Maduro, is assessed will depend entirely on what happens next. However clean an operation it may have been, in terms of capturing Maduro and his wife alive and destroying only military and related installations, it is the sequel, in Venezuela and further afield, that will determine, if not the fate of Donald Trump’s presidency, then his legacy and reputation.

If a new government can be installed smoothly in Venezuela, if the institutions of power remain intact, if new elections are held that can be judged free and fair (enough), if the likely backlash from Maduro supporters and those with a stake in his rule can be contained, and if gang chaos a la Haiti can be avoided, then Trump will be able to claim victory and any damaging regional fallout will be limited.

That is a tall order, but it may not be impossible. Trump’s boast to be pursuing a latter-day Monroe doctrine that reinforces US sway in what he would probably call its own backyard – in fact, an enormous north-south sphere of influence in the Western hemisphere. It would also send a warning to Greenland and Panama, two countries that Trump has his eyes on, that he means business when he warns against allowing the growth of hostile – specifically Chinese – money and influence in a part of the world the Trump USA regards as its own security zone.

If, on the other hand, there is no smooth transfer of power in Venezuela and the consequence of decapitating the governing apparatus is chaos in a greater or lesser form, then Trump will look very vulnerable; the allusions he himself has made to the failure of the Iraq and other wars will come back to bite him. The Republicans could suffer in this year’s mid-term Congressional elections, he would be left a lame duck president, and there will have gone his hopes of the Nobel Peace Prize as well.

Even with the best – or at least the most peaceful and most contained – outcome, however, there is bound to be wider fallout from this flagrant and, to all appearances, illegal application of US power. At least two, quite different, ramifications can be forecast.

The first may seem obvious, but is nonetheless significant and potentially a global game-changer. How many national leaders will be tempted to ask themselves why, if the US can mount such unilateral action against a sovereign country in pursuit of what it may justify in terms of its own national security, they should not do the same?

Why, Russia might argue, the condemnation of its invasion of Ukraine or its annexation of Crimea? Israel could claim additional justification for the devastation of much of Gaza. A Chinese attempt to take over Taiwan might be unrealistic and on a different scale, but how different is the principle? Might not China’s domination of Xinjiang or Tibet look a little different in the light of Trump’s swoop on Venezuela? And how many African countries might take the opportunity to justify trying to enforce regime-change in an uncooperative neighbour?

The message from the US – the richest and most powerful country in the world – would appear to be that if you have the means to reshape the security, economic or raw materials environment in your favour, just go ahead and do it. Any international arrangements based on legal precepts, ethics or indeed national sovereignty, are at least being called into question, if they have not actually been thrown out of the window.

That is the big-picture implication of Trump’s action in Venezuela, which is on a far larger scale than President George Bush’s kidnapping of Manuel Noriega, the de facto leader of Panama, in 1989. But there is a smaller, regional picture, too. There is one way in which the enforced regime-change in Venezuela could transform the region further, and a lot sooner than anyone, until now, imagined.

Venezuela has been one of a very few countries that have helped Cuba survive the loss of economic support after the Soviet Union’s collapse – support that has never really been replaced by Russia. Cuba, in turn, has never been the sort of strategic asset to Russia that it was to the USSR, when the stand-off over missile deployments came close to precipitating a superpower war and had the world holding its breath.

President Obama made the first post-Cold War overtures to Cuba, normalising relations in 2016, and making the first presidential visit two years later. This rapprochement was followed by a spurt of foreign investment interest, encouraging hopes among Cubans that they could have a better life. Those hopes were summarily dashed, however, when one of Trump’s early acts in his first term halted new investment in its tracks, left infrastructure projects abandoned, and threw Cubans back on their own very limited resources – and largely dependent for fuel on Venezuela.

When I visited in 2020, the effects were all around: limited private enterprise was in the doldrums; much public transport had ground to a halt, replaced locally by horses and carts. Basic commodities were rationed, and Soviet-style queues abounded.

As of last month, Mexico was replacing some of the oil that the US was blocking Venezuela from supplying to Cuba, but this is likely to last only so long, as the US ups pressure on Mexico to stop.

With hindsight, it is easy to wish that Trump had begun not with forcing regime-change in Venezuela, but by fostering peaceful change in Cuba. The result could have been a more benevolent security environment for all, with none of the “might is right” implications that flow from the ousting of Maduro. Alas, it is too late for that, and it is not Donald Trump’s way.