WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has not minced words about the larger message he is trying to send to the world with the U.S. military raid to capture Nicolás Maduro and bring the ousted Venezuelan leader and his wife to the United States to face federal drug-trafficking charges.
“American dominance in the Western Hemisphere,” Trump declared after Maduro’s capture, “will never be questioned.”
In the days after the daring raid, Trump and his team doubled down on the idea that the new focus on American preeminence in the hemisphere is here to stay. He also advocated capturing Maduro to make the case to neighbors to get in line or face the consequences.
Trump’s rhetoric harks back to the muscle talk of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when US presidents deployed the military for territorial and resource conquests, including in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Honduras, Panama, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
“There were periods, Vietnam and Iraq, that raised questions about a return to American imperialism, but the messages of American leaders during those periods were covered with talk of democracy. The way Trump talks about that is something we haven’t seen in a very long time.” said Edward Frantz, a historian at the University of Indianapolis.
Following the operation, Trump’s tough talk was directed at key allies Greenland — where he renewed calls for the U.S. to take over the Danish territory for national security reasons — and Mexico. Trump says America’s southern neighbor must “get its act together” in the fight against drug cartels.
Trump also warned that longtime adversary Cuba was “going downhill” now that Maduro, who has been supplying cheap oil to the economically isolated government in Havana, has been ousted. And the president raised anxiety about neighbor Venezuela, telling reporters that a military operation in Colombia — the epicenter of global cocaine production — “sounds good to me.”
The Republican president also said his administration would “direct” Venezuela’s politics and threatened the country’s new leader, interim President Delcy Rodríguez, with an outcome worse than Maduro’s if he did not “do what is right.” He made clear that he expected Caracas to open its vast oil reserves to US energy companies, further fueling speculation about an American glut.
“We’re going to have our very large oil companies in the United States, the largest in the entire world, come in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly damaged infrastructure — the oil infrastructure — and start making money for the country,” Trump said over the weekend.
The incursion in Venezuela has divided Latin America, with Trump-aligned leaders, mostly on the right, applauding the removal and non-aligned leaders condemning it on sovereignty grounds. There is growing concern that Trump might actually be serious about his desire to annex Greenland as well.
Leaning on the Monroe Doctrine, Trump puts neighbors on edge
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned on Monday that Trump would mark the destruction of the transatlantic military alliance, NATO, if he tries to follow through on his claim that the US must “absolutely” take over Greenland for national security reasons. The alliance, which includes the US and Denmark, was a linchpin of post-World War II security.
“If the United States chooses to militarily attack another NATO country, then everything stops,” Frederiksen told Danish broadcaster TV2.
In the early 20th century, American leaders repeatedly invoked the Monroe Doctrine, a seminal US foreign policy document written by the nation’s fifth president that aimed to oppose European meddling in the Western Hemisphere.
Now, Trump too is relying on the doctrine to justify US intervention in Venezuela and threaten actions around the hemisphere in the name of protecting the safety and well-being of Americans.
“Trump’s rhetoric conjures up images of Teddy Roosevelt and gunboat diplomacy. The rhetoric is a throwback to an era before the Great War,” Frantz said, referring to the 26th president’s interventions in the unstable economies of the Caribbean and Central America, as well as his support for the secession of Panama in the US national interest.
Just weeks before Maduro’s ouster, Trump released a long-awaited National Security Strategy that had several disparate elements that appeared to be at odds with one another.
On the one hand, Trump, who has long avoided America’s role in foreign wars, said the administration would have a “predisposition to non-interventionism”. But the strategy document also said the administration would work “to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.”
With Maduro ousted, the administration has clearly doubled down on the latter.
“This is the Western Hemisphere,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “This is where we live — and we will not allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operations for America’s adversaries, competitors, and rivals.”
Anger at the UN Security Council
Maduro’s capture and Trump’s rhetoric could certainly be a level-setting moment for world leaders as they consider what may lie ahead in the final three years of Trump’s second term.
At an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on Monday, Colombian Ambassador Leonor Zalabata Torres said the raid in Venezuela was reminiscent of “the worst interference in our area in the past”.
“Democracy cannot be defended or promoted through violence and coercion, nor can it be replaced by economic interests,” said Zalabata Torres, whose country requested the meeting.
At the same time, Democrats question whether Trump’s actions have created a permission structure for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who plans to seize more territory in neighboring Ukraine, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has vowed to annex the autonomous island of Taiwan.
“What the president did in this case essentially gave Putin and Xi Jinping a pass,” Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said in an appearance on CNN.
The Russians, for their part, condemned Trump’s action in Venezuela. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia, the country’s UN representative, said the world body “cannot allow the United States to proclaim itself as some kind of supreme judge” before the world.
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AP writers Jennifer Peltz and Farnoush Amiri at the United Nations contributed to this report.