Trump, Venezuela And The American Empire

REUBEN ABATI

The received opinion in 20th century literature on America’s foreign policy process is that the United States, America as we know it, is not a colonizing power but a liberal society of men and women who are committed to the ideals of democracy, free trade and economic prosperity, human rights, humanitarian aid, and global stability. Indeed, successive US administrations, projected on a bipartisan basis, this dream and reality of America as the land of freedom, the bastion of liberalism, emphasized even more stridently during the Cold War era as a Grand Strategy against the seeming expansionist ambitions of communism and its promoters. American Presidents – George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Ronald Reagan and others made homeland defence and American exceptionalism the cardinal pillars of their efforts in addition. In more contemporary times, the challenges to American security have acquired new forms: it is no longer strictly a cold war against the rise of communism or socialism, rather new forms of threats have since emerged: the rise of rogue states, illegal migration towards the United States, cyber espionage and cyber-attacks, nuclear, chemical and ballistic missile threats, alternate nuclear autocracies, Islamic Jihadism, the menace of non-state actors and the great power rivalry with emergent centres such as Russia, China, North Korea and the Axis of Resistance led by Iran. Over time, the notion that America is a liberal country is diminished, the myth that America is not an empire-building power has been displaced.

The truth is that the notion of the American Empire has always been alive and well. The idea of America First has become only more urgent and strident in recent times. Donald J. Trump, the 45th and 47th President of the United States with his scarification of the traditional face of American diplomacy has upended the rules-based international order. His latest invasion of Venezuela and arrest of a sitting Head of a sovereign state reveals the underbelly of American diplomacy that goes back to the very past, the urge for expansionism and domination. America’s politics of dominance is framed around what America wants, not necessarily democracy. It is determined by what America considers as threats to it, and what it stands to gain. Self-interest. Trump is the apotheosis.  

America has always loved to use power and assert control beyond its borders. Long before the country came up with the idea of less threatening methods such as alliances, trade and cultural influence, America practiced the game of conquest.  In 1798, America was a relatively small country, still open to threats from overseas. By 1893, there was the James Monroe Doctrine which proclaimed the neutrality of the United States, and opposed colonization from Europe. Later, the Roosevelt Corollary of 1904 positioned the US as the policeman of the Western hemisphere to prevent European re-colonization of the newly independent countries of Latin America.  It is therefore not surprising that in the wake of the invasion of Venezuela, President Trump had to invoke the Monroe doctrine and the Theodore Roosevelt corollary as justification. He claimed that Venezuela’s Maduro had been hosting foreign enemies of the United States who could threaten America’s foreign policy “dating back more than two centuries”. But what we are faced with is not America protecting the world. We are dealing with what may be called for the want of a better term, “the Trump Corollary” or the “Trump Doctrine” which is simply a reversion to colonialism and American imperialism not just in the Western Hemisphere but elsewhere in the world. It is a genetic American impulse.

In the early 19th century, for example, the United States drove out the native Americans from their own land by force with the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Under the idea of Manifest Destiny, a reason for expansion, the US bought the state of Louisiana from France. The US later annexed Mexican territory from Texas to the Pacific Coast, and took Alaska from Russia in 1867. Other territories were acquired: Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the US Virgin Islands. America also established a colony in West Africa, Liberia. Cuba became independent in 1898, but Americans have always tried to own Cuba. America may have stopped acquiring more land since the early 20th Century, but it has not weaned itself of the compulsion to dominate. Its emphasis on the five pillars earlier identified has been exposed as mere pretence by the Trump Doctrine. Trump is the ultimate conqueror and the archetypal provincialist.  He has withdrawn the United States from whatever may be remotely interpreted as an attempt to engage with the outside world without a principal and superior benefit for the United States. President Trump has withdrawn the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Iran Nuclear Deal, the UN Human Rights Council, UNESCO. He has reduced funding and support for the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other UN agencies as well as treaties or programmes (e.g. USAID, UNRWA) that are beneficial to less developed countries of the world. Any country that seeks to assert itself is a threat to the US in President Trump’s America. He has imposed tariffs on every likely country in the world. He sees himself as the chief commander of the world, hence his interventions in Iran, Syria, Yemen, the Gaza Strip, Ukraine, Taiwan, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria and anywhere else in the world.

Trump is not essentially different from the American leaders who preceded him in terms of the fixed idea at the heart of American foreign policy. It is just that he is the most brazen along the line. He may have unilaterally withdrawn the United States from international treaties, but President Jimmy Carter did exactly the same, before him, when he withdrew the United States from its defence treaty with Taiwan in the 70s. Carter did so without Congressional agreement. Every aggressive American President who wages war against another country always has a hidden motive. US President George W. Bush led the coalition forces to Iraq (2003 -2011) in search of weapons of mass destruction which they never found. They were simply interested in seizing Iraqi oil.  Saddam Hussein had also made the mistake of saying he would sell Iraqi oil in Euros. As far back as 1974, Henry Kissinger had made a deal with Saudi Arabia that crude oil must be sold globally in US dollars. In 2009, Muammar Ghaddafi of Libya also started toying with the idea of a gold-backed African currency in a United States of Africa. He was taken out by 2011.  This time, Nicolas Maduro started a sturdy bromance with China and Russia. General Laura J. Richardson, former Commander of the US Southern Command (2021 – 2024) says such presence in America’s backyard is not in America’s national security interest. China, the arch-rival, in particular, gets 36% of its food resources from the region. It is No. I trade partner with Venezuela, with trade reaching nearly $450 billion – $750 billion per annum. Light sweet crude has been discovered off the coast of Guyana.

There is also a Lithium Triangle – lithium being important to emerging technology- 60% of the world’s lithium is in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile.  Besides, Venezuela is home to the world’s largest crude oil reserves – about 303 billion reserves of crude oil. It has now come to light that all the stories about narco-terrorism, sanctioned oil vessels and the declaration of Nicolas Maduro, and his wife Cilia Adela Flores being heads of the Cartel of the Suns (Cartel de los Soles) or possessing weapons are just cover stories for America to lay its hands on Venezuela’s oil and annex the country’s resources. It is simply a colonial, imperial conquest. It is unconstitutional. It is anti-constitutional. It violates international law. It sets a bad precedent. Other countries of the world should beware. Where Trump’s America shows interest, it is not about any altruism. It wants to put America first as seen in Ukraine where Trump is interested in. rare earth materials in exchange for American support, in the DRC which is heavily resource-rich, and of course Nigeria where the US has shown up in the garb of a benevolent Good Samaritan. Even in the Gaza strip, Trump wants to plant a real estate investment!

Article 2 (1) of the UN Charter states that all states are legally equal regardless of size or power. Trump treats other states with contempt and routinely violates their sovereignty. This is what he has done by invading and threatening Iran, by insulting Ukraine, South Africa and Nigeria, and by arresting Nicolas Maduro and treating him like a common criminal. Article 2 (7) of the same UN Charter frowns upon the use of force and interference in the domestic affairs of another state. Trump does not care. Article 51 of the same Charter recognizes every country’s right to self-defence. Any country that is attacked by a foreign force has the right to defend itself, but it must do so within the clear principles of international humanitarian law and report immediately to the Security Council. Venezuela did not attack or provoke the US. Yet the US deployed the biggest aircraft carrier in the world, the USS Gerald R. Ford to the Caribbean Sea, and the Eastern Pacific, along with 11 warships, three amphibious assault ships, two cruisers, Tomahawk cruise missiles, a Navy submarine, Air Force drones, 15, 000 military personnel. Before the January 3 invasion, 35 boats had been intercepted and bombed. About 100 persons were killed. The United States has shut down Venezuela’s airspace. The country’s coastline has been sealed off. The build-up was massive. The threat was overwhelming. It was foreseeable that Venezuela had been out-flanked and overwhelmed. On January 3, Nicolas Maduro who had been threatening that Venezuela will resist American colonialism was picked up from his own bedroom in the Presidential Palace, put in handcuffs, blindfolded and flown out like a common criminal to the United States. He was arraigned in a court in Manhattan, New York, yesterday. Oh, Ozymandias!

But on whose authority did President Trump act? His own authority. The capture of Nicolas Maduro has been likened to a similar invasion of Panama ordered by President George H. W, Bush in December 1989 which led to the capture of President Manuel Noriega. Incidentally, as in the Maduro case, Noriega was captured without congressional authorization. Noriega was also accused of drug-trafficking.  He was later classified as a Prisoner of War (POW), and he spent 20 years in US custody. This then is Noriega 2. In both Panama and Venezuela, America’s defence is its criminalization of sovereignty and the claim that it seeks to defend democracy and remove criminals from power. There is no basis for this intervention in international law. Democracy can only be enforced through the ballot box, and not through force. Only the people of Venezuela can choose their own leader, not America. Trump’s spin doctors claim that he has inherent powers to act under Article II, Section 1 of the US Constitution but inherent powers are not absolute, they are limited and must not violate the spirit of the Constitution. As expected, lawmakers in the US Congress are divided along partisan lines. The UN Security Council has summoned an emergency meeting, January 5, 2026, but it can only rant, it is helpless against the US and its veto power. 

What next for Venezuela and the Western Hemisphere? President Trump has threatened that Cuba, Mexico, Greenland, Iran and Colombia are his next targets. In the face of the instability, uncertainty and chaos in Venezuela, President Trump has assigned Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State, Marco Rubio to take over the supervision of the country until it is safe to install a President who will do what American wants, and surely, the choice will not be a Chavismo or a socialist, but most likely opposition leader, Maria Machado who has presented herself as a willing tool. Near-term risks may be limited for the energy market, but political chaos may affect the people of Venezuela in ways not yet imagined. The path to recovery will be long. The self-acclaimed “mightiest prophet of God”, Dr David Edward Owuor of Kenya had gone to Venezuela, the Miraflores Palace, to pray for President Maduro. He predicted victory for him over his enemies. Prophet Owuor is very lucky. If he had tarried awhile in Caracas, he could have been abducted by US forces, and put in handcuffs, along with the now embattled Maduro!