It has been an accusation long levelled at certain US politicians that their brains might have been softened by a lengthy diet of television, Westerns, and the heroic triumphalism of the prattling cowboy. There was never going to be a break with this tradition regarding President Donald Trump, except for the fact that he claimed to be more restrained on the draw. Of late, that restraint has vanished. A buildup of US army personnel in the Caribbean; the bombing, on fatuous grounds, of vessels in the Caribbean Sea carrying fictional narco-cargo destined for the United States, and, just to top things, delirious notions about attacking the Islamic Republic of Iran in the early hours of the morning in the event protestors are shot.
It was clear after the release of the 2025 National Security Strategy that this administration was going to shred the inhibitions imposed by international law and opt for the more liberating costumery of gangsterism. In the Western Hemisphere, the United States would assert its muscle and dictate terms, as it has done previously, to countries in Latin America. Washington desired “a Hemisphere whose governments cooperate with us against narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations”, one “that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets, and that supports critical supply chains,” and ensured “continued access to key strategic locations. In other words, we will assert and enforce a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine.”
Venezuela has become the first target of this corollary. On January 3, a little after 2 am local time, US forces attacked Caracas and other sites in the country as part of Operation Absolute Resolve. By 4:21 am, Trump announced that the Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores had been captured. The Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, at a press conference held at the President’s Florida compound, spoke of, “An extraction so precise it involved more than 150 aircraft launching across the Western Hemisphere in close coordination, all coming together in time and place to layer effects for a single purpose, to get an interdiction force into downtown Caracas while maintaining the element of tactical surprise.”
Caine also revealed that US intelligence teams had been eyeing Maduro and his wife for months. With a thuggish flourish, the general explained that those teams had monitored the leader to “understand how he moved, where he lived, where he travelled, what he ate, what he wore, and what were his pets.”
Trump, in explaining the rationale behind the Venezuelan action, spoke ever immodestly about the “Don-roe Doctrine.” The Maduro regime had hosted “foreign adversaries in our region and acquiring menacing offensive weapons that could threaten US interests and lives”. This was “in gross violation of the core principles of American foreign policy, dating back more than two centuries”. The Monroe Doctrine had been “a big deal, but we’ve superseded it by a lot, a real lot. They now call it the ‘Don-roe Doctrine.’”
US Attorney General Pam Bondi swiftly announced that Maduro had been indicted in the Southern District of New York on a fruit salad array of implausible charges: “Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices against the United States.” As with previous, implausibly elastic categories of combatant hatched by the US Justice Department and White House – that of “unlawful combatant” or “unprivileged belligerent” conceived by the administration of George W. Bush comes to mind – a category has been invented to inspire a false resolution.
The invented category of narco-terrorism has revealed the limits of legal literacy of the Trump administration. Such a term, imputing links between government officials, organised crime and terrorism, supposedly vests war-making powers in the executive, along with, it transpires in the case of Maduro, abduction powers regarding the foreign leader of a state. The US Congress has again been roguishly sidestepped.
The dress rehearsal for this commenced on September 2 last year when Trump stated in a War Powers Resolution notification to Congress that military strikes on alleged narco-vessels operating in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean were “self-defense” measures motivated by “the inability or unwillingness of some states in the region to address the continuing threat to United States persons and interests emanating from their territories”.
In October, a presidential notice was issued turning those killed in alleged drug smuggling as “unlawful combatants”, thereby twinning this administration’s lexical imagination with that of George W. Bush. For Bush, that imagination extended to fictional weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) held by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq that might be used against Americans and their allies at any given moment. Furthermore, they might fall into the hands of non-state actors.
In Trump’s case, fantasies about Maduro as a wily drug chieftain hosting rebel groups proliferate. Much of this is sheer nonsense, given that the country has little to nothing to do with the flow of cocaine into the US. But there is oil to be seized and managed by US companies and the Don-roe doctrine to maintain.
In responding to this act of breezy criminality, countries programmed to emphasise the “rules-based” international order find themselves in a bind. The European Union, instead of spluttering and raging, proved meek, mocking Maduro’s status as Venezuela’s leader yet finding it hard to condemn Trump’s flouting of convention and the UN Charter. The EU high representative for foreign affairs, Kaja Kallas, was most indicative: “The EU has repeatedly stated that Mr Maduro lacks legitimacy and has defended a peaceful transition. Under all circumstances, the principles of international law and the UN Charter must be respected. We call for restraint.”
In Britain, Trump fanboy and leader of Reform UK Nigel Farage expressed that ecstatic confusion that comes with admiring an untutored, unrestrained bully in international relations. “The American actions in Venezuela overnight are unorthodox and contrary to international law – but if they make China and Russia think twice, it may be a good thing.”
The response from Roderich Kiesewetter, MP from Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union, was more tutored. “The coup in Venezuela marks a return to the old US doctrine from before 1940: a mindset of thinking in terms of spheres of influence, where the law of force rules, not international law.” The reaction from the Cuban government was much in the same vein, though more colourful: “This is a blatant imperialist and fascist aggression with objectives of domination, aimed at reviving US hegemonic ambitions over Our America, rooted in the Monroe Doctrine, and at achieving unrestricted access to and control over the natural wealth of Venezuela and the region.”
The kidnapping of leaders by bullying powers in the post-1945 world is not new. Hungary’s deceived Imre Nagy, seen as the figurehead of the Hungarian uprising of 1956, was seized by the Soviet Union for disciplinary action that culminated in his trial and execution. Czechoslovakia’s Alexander Dubček, leader of the crushed Prague Spring of 1968, was spared execution but faced similar ideological chastisement by the Soviet leadership for implementing reforms. Within their sphere of influence, the Soviets were keen to dissuade unruly contrarians that their leaders might, at any moment, be kidnapped, executed, or reprogrammed at will. Trump has, without knowing it, joined a most dubious club.