Bad Dance in Caracas

Chidi Amuta

The long anticipated US invasion of Venezuela has taken place. President Nicolas Maduro and his wife have been kidnapped and shipped off to the United States to face trial on long rehearsed charges bordering on drug trafficking and gun running.

President Trump and his key officials have beat their chest on what they consider a successful operation.

In Venezuela, the Vice president has assumed power and asked for the release of Maduro and his wife, a clear defiance of President Trump.

To the consternation of most observers, Mr. Trump has indicated that the United States will directly run Venezuela and manage its oil wealth for an indeterminate time. For Trump, it turns out that the major strategic interest in this invasion is Venezuela’s oil.

Underneath the drama of this invasion is a large number of legal and diplomatic complications.

The invasion of a country by another based on relative
muscle is a violation of the UN. Charter in the first place.

Underneath it is a large number of other violations of international law. The invasion of a sovereign state and the kidnapping of its citizen by an invading country is a crime. The rendition of the kidnapped person to face the law in the invader nation is yet another violation, not to talk of the implicit violation of the rights of those kidnapped.

The Venezuela situation is a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of the country and the rights of Mr. and Mrs Maduro.

Mr. Trump
has mounted an operation but may have started yet another war in the region whose trajectory and duration cannot immediately be predicted.

Questions abound as to whether the scope of the operation is not an overkill just to kidnapp one man and his wife in their bedroom in the dead of night.

The indication that the US could run Venezuela in the interim is fraught with dire implications. This leaves the remnants of the Venezuela government and the opposition in the lurch and ready to do battle among themselves and against the American invaders. Confusion and a vicious clash of interests could lead to a confusing state of neither war nor peace.

The proposition of the US running Venezuela exposes the country to the familiar calamities
of previous American attempts at nation building and regime change or regime engineering. Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya have all produced anarchy and failed states with intractable and nasty civil wars.

In most conceivable
directions, the future of Venezuela is up in the air. Even
more important and far reaching is the international implications of this messy situation. While admitting that Venezuela falls within the US sphere of influence, ideological allies of Venezuela’s left wing government like China and Russia are likely to kick against US domination of the oil industry in Venezuela. China is a customer of Venezuela’s heavy crude oil.

While Trump and his military and foreign policy establishment are entitled to a bit of chest beating on the Venezuela operation, they may have ignited a major foreign policy complication .

Arguments about the legality and political due process of this adventure may yet further erode Trump’s jagged reputation in Washington.

Whatever ugly outcomes arise from the Venezuela misadventure can only add to Mr. Trump’s catalogue of ego driven gambits.