When President Trump began threatening to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, here is how I ridiculed him in “Cry for Venezuela,” March 4, 2019:
Trump is offering [opposition leader Juan Guaido] little more than trademark bluster with his saber-rattling rhetoric. He clearly does not have the cojones to launch military intervention to remove Maduro; you know, like the ones former President George H.W. Bush showed when he removed Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega.
Then, here is how I staged the geostrategic brinkmanship the title above teases in “Maduro Defying (and May Outlast) Trump, Just Like Assad Did Obama (and Castro Did Kennedy),” May 6, 2019:
____________________
Just as he championed and enabled Assad’s defiance against Obama, Putin is doing the same for Maduro’s against Trump. And nobody should be surprised that Trump seems even less inclined to risk confrontation with Putin over Maduro than Obama was to risk it over Assad.
To be fair, Putin has far more vested in keeping Maduro than Trump has in seeing him go. This, not least because Trump couldn’t show less regard for (or knowledge of) quaint geostrategic principles like spheres of influence and the Monroe Doctrine.
____________________
And here is how no less an authority than US Senator Marco Rubio reinforced my take in a commentary for The Hill on February 10, 2020:
Under Vladimir Putin, Russia is increasingly working to exert its influence and undermine U.S. interests around the world, including in the Western Hemisphere. This is particularly clear in Putin’s efforts to prop up the brutal, illegitimate Maduro regime in Venezuela.
Just last week, Putin announced that he was sending his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, to Caracas to help validate Nicolás Maduro’s nonsense claim to legitimacy.
I share all of that to explain why this is more about Trump throwing a temper tantrum than overthrowing Maduro:
President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela was indicted in the United States on Thursday in a decades-long narco-terrorism and international cocaine trafficking conspiracy in which, prosecutors said, he led a violent drug cartel even as he ascended to the top of government.
The indictment of a putative head of state was highly unusual and a major escalation of the Trump administration’s campaign to pressure Mr. Maduro to leave office after his widely disputed re-election in 2018.
(The New York Times, March 26, 2020)
But I’d be remiss not to acknowledge the unprecedented show of support Trump gave Guaido during his annual State of the Union Address last month. Unfortunately, “show” was the operative dynamic at play, which I duly noted as follows:
Putin’s Russia is plying Maduro with as much military support as Xi’s China is with economic support. This, while Trump’s America continues plying Guaido with empty promises (i.e., providing comfort to this fool).
(“Trump’s SOTU Address: Comforting Fools, Notably Venezuela’s Guaido,” The iPINIONS Journal, February 5, 2020)
But I’d also be remiss not to acknowledge a personal perspective on this Maduro indictment. I referenced the US invasion of Panama to arrest Noriega in my opening quote. Well, here is how the New York Times reported on the indictment that led to that invasion:
The Justice Department said this was only the second time it had indicted the sitting leader of a foreign nation; the other was Norman Saunders, the former chief minister of the Turks and Caicos Islands, a tiny chain of islands in the Caribbean, who was convicted in 1985 on American drug charges.
(February 6, 1988)
The Turks and Caicos Islands, of course, is my mother country. More to the point, Saunders was caught not only on videotape committing his crimes but in Miami with no way to even put up a fight. Therefore, he had little choice but to throw himself on the mercy of the court. He got 8 years.
By contrast, Noriega fought – for 10 days. Remarkably, he managed to surrender alive in January 1990. But he knew better than to throw himself on the mercy of the court. He got 40 years. After extradition to France in 2010 and extradition back to Panama in 2011, he finally died from complications related to a brain tumor in 2017.
I am sure Maduro knows well the fate that befell Noriega. This is why, notwithstanding Putin’s protection racket, it behooves him to
- grovel for a NATO-style pact with Russia, which would legally warrant Putin playing Dirty Harry to protect him; or
- organize the kind of exile Noriega was negotiating with the United States before things fell apart.
Before Trump enabled Putin to become Maduro’s unchallenged Godfather, I urged Maduro to go while the going was still good in “Venezuela Finally Awakens from Chavismo Dream,” December 9, 2015. But playing Putin’s most-favored puppet in Latin America now seems his proverbial ace in the hole.
That said, Trump might see launching a wag-the-dog war as his best re-election strategy. Never mind that this would smack of a willful march of folly. After all, not only is the United States still trying to extricate itself from misguided wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, but it is now mired in an equally unwinnable war against the coronavirus.
Except that doing this would be consistent with so many other foolhardy things that have defined Trump’s presidency; you know, like
- destroying America’s reputation as leader of the free world;
- undoing Obama’s initiatives to protect the environment and reduce nuclear proliferation;
- making enemies of friends and friends of enemies; and
- building a wall to protect the country from problems that are festering within.
In a word: dumb. But that’s Trump.
Related commentaries:
Cry for Venezuela…
Maduro defying…
Trump’s SOTU…
Venezuela awakens…
puppet…
Legacy Note: With over 5,600 posts spanning 20 years, I am easily the most prolific blogger on the most eclectic array of topics on the web. That makes The iPINIONS Journal an unparalleled archive of informed political and cultural commentary. Visit the ARCHIVES section in the sidebar or search by topic. You won’t find a more consistent, independent voice on world affairs.