The people of Venezuela are exchanging one old tyrant for another

“We are going to run the country.” It was not that long ago that Donald Trump was campaigning – successfully – on a pledge of “America First” and never to involve the United States in any further disastrous foreign adventures.

Now look where we are. The people of Venezuela may be freed of one old tyrant, but they are about to be ruled by another, whether they like it or not. This time he’s the ultimate Yankee, ruling via a “group” including Marco Rubio, secretary of state, Pete Hegseth, the tragi-comic defence secretary and a bunch of American generals. Not since the days of Teddy Roosevelt has an American president taken such joy in shamelessly colonising neighbourhoods to the south.

Do we have any reason to believe that Trump will be any better at nation-building than were George W Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden or, indeed, Trump in his previous term? That track record suggests that America is not up to the job. It is a lesson Trump is now unlearning for the sake of another “deal” – foreign policy driven entirely by commercial motives.

Trump has announced a policy not of blissful isolationism, as his Maga movement yearned for and expected, but of neo-imperialism. America will not only “run” Venezuela, but make the Venezuelans pay for it from their own oil wealth.

The American oil companies kicked out of Venezuela over the decades will be returning to rebuild the industry’s infrastructure and America will be looking for restitution for the losses incurred by US interests over a considerable period of time.

Funnily enough, the last world leader to remind Trump about his past promises and the dangers of ignoring them was, as Trump might say, a gentleman named Nicolas Maduro. In August, Maduro was rash enough to tell the television cameras: “Come and arrest me, I will wait for you right here in Miraflores [his Presidential Palace]. Don’t delay, you cowards.” Trump may have found this just too insulting to ignore and made his mind up. We now know from the press conference that Operation “Absolute Resolve” has been months in the planning.

If anyone needed reminding, the plan partially to occupy Venezuelan territory – and it will have to be more than just the oil infrastructure – is proof that Trump’s America has gone another stage further on its journey away from international law, from UN conventions that preclude the use of armed force to resolve disputes. We’ve moved on from isolationism into the law of the jungle.

After Venezuela, would anyone be so shocked if America decided to do something similar and occupy Greenland? Or invade Cuba? Which was brought up in this extraordinary briefing. Or even intervene – again – in Iran, as Trump warns: “If Iran shoots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”

Well, at least Maduro didn’t get whacked. It has to be said that kidnapping the head of a rival family, plus wife, is the sort of thing that gangsters get up to, but in a way Maduro’s fate is now almost irrelevant. We’ve moved beyond the shocking bombing of the drugs boats and Caracas, past the enormity of abducting a foreign leader and we’re now contemplating American hegemony in the Western hemisphere and way beyond.

This is geopolitical gangsterism. Trump, in effect, put out a contract on Maduro, and the United States armed forces executed the heist of the decade with some aplomb. Audacious, for sure, and an unanswerable show of strength in a world that’s growing increasingly lawless, where might is right, and if you don’t pay tribute to the boss you and your outfit will be going on a one-way ride. Just ask Zelensky. It’s a powerful message and a warning to Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, the Ayatollah Khamenei, Kim Jong-un and any other gangsterish strongman that this new way of doing international business is indeed the norm, and Trump will be the baddest bully of all. It obviously leaves Europe, including Britain, divided and more vulnerable than ever to coercion.

To be fair, Donald Trump, head of the most powerful family in the world, did offer some media accountability and at least a veneer of legal respectability for his actions. And Maduro, a wise guy, for sure, is nobody’s idea of a saint – he headed a real criminal conspiracy to prey on the Venezuelan people, and profited from a drugs trade that spreads crime and misery worldwide. He’s no poster boy for human rights. In this example at least, Trump has chosen his enemy well.

But if Trump is serious about taking over his rival’s territory, the fiercely proud Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, he may find himself overreaching his powers. He could just be embarking on his very own forever war, his Iraq or Vietnam, a conflict that is explicitly all about money and oil. It might make everyone concerned rich, but it will cost American lives and it’s certainly not what he was elected to do. It could be Trump’s biggest blunder yet.