Opinion Trump’s Venezuela operation clears the way for China and Russia to expand at will

Consider also that both targeted countries are rich in strategic resources: Trump has already said that American oil companies will assume control of Venezuela’s oil infrastructure, while Putin has publicly stated that Russia is ready to work with partners — including the US — to develop (read: exploit) critical minerals in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine.

If these points of comparison between the US operation in Venezuela and the Russian invasion of Ukraine feel too close, it is because they are both unilateral acts of aggression in brazen defiance of international law and post-War precedents.

Then look at the similarities in reactions. Moscow and Beijing have both expressed shock at Washington’s brazenness.

Russia called the US strike “an act of armed aggression against Venezuela,” describing it as “deeply concerning and condemnable,” even as, just a day earlier, a woman and a three-year-old child were killed in a Russian missile strike on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.

China condemned “the use of force by the US against a sovereign country” in the same week it fired dozens of rockets toward Taiwan and deployed a large fleet of warships and aircraft near the island. And get this: At the post-operation press conference, Trump said he was “not thrilled with Putin” because he is “killing too many people.”

The hypocrisy is baffling. With its illegal military operation in Venezuela, the US has handed Russia, China, and anyone else willing a ready-made blueprint for invading countries and removing unfriendly leaders. And by flouting established international rules, Trump has done Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping a huge favour: Both can now project themselves as defenders of sovereignty while justifying illegal acts of aggression.

China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own province and nearly all of the South China Sea, despite competing claims from Southeast Asian nations, because of its strategic value and trade routes. Should the People’s Liberation Army launch a strike against Taipei, replicating Washington’s “shock-and-awe” operation — targeting the central leadership using special forces and installing a friendly regime — Trump has already surrendered any ground the US could use to rally the world in Taiwan’s defence. The PLA may employ such tactics not only against Taiwan but also against other countries where it believes that the political leadership is hostile towards Beijing in order to consolidate its “sphere of influence.”

Trump appears all too accommodating to allow the world’s great powers to carve out their own territories. Evidence of this lies in both his words and the policies his administration pursues. The Monroe Doctrine, a foundational US foreign policy statement by former President James Monroe — which considered Latin America part of the US’s sphere of influence — argued for regional dominance in the Western Hemisphere and suggested that the US should respect other powers’ spheres of influence. After the Venezuela operation, Trump openly invoked what he has termed the “Donroe Doctrine.”

Further, the new guiding policy of US foreign affairs, the National Security Strategy released just weeks ago, elevated the Western Hemisphere as a dominant priority and called for a military posture to pursue it. If Xi decides to view a Taiwanese president as dangerous to Chinese interests, could he not then cite the Trump administration’s security doctrine to initiate military operations in what he sees as his own backyard?

Trump talks of Greenland as essential to US security, and his administration openly threatens Mexico and Cuba. Trump also said that Colombia was being “run by a sick man” and accused him of producing and selling cocaine to the US, and that military action was definitely on the table. Any realistic peace plan in Ukraine for the near future will have to concede the Donbas to Russia. China is increasingly escalating its war games across the Taiwan Strait.

The degeneration from a rules-based world to one defined by competing spheres of influence backed by the use of force is picking up pace. In Trump’s world, power and the willingness to use (read: abuse) it, and not the rules, have the final say.

The writer is deputy copy editor, Indian Express. saptarishi.basak@expressindia.com