6

Jan

Trump’s Venezuelan intervention marks the return of the ‘might is right’ era?

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A close-up of a person with glasses AI-generated content may be incorrect.Naked aggression and armed intervention in Venezuela and capture of its elected President Nicolas Maduro with his wife Cilia Flores on Saturday, 3 January 2026, by America’s 47th President Donald Trump marked the return of ‘Might is Right' and jungle raj, establishing beyond doubt that the United States is a ‘rogue power’.    

Military action in Venezuela and threats to militarily intervene in Cuba, Colombia, Mexico and Iran are the telltale signs of the ‘Return of Ugly American’ as world at large watching developments with seething anger helplessly while powerful countries like China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa condemning the action but lacking a credible plan to action to stop the self-appointed Global Policemen from rampaging any further.

While experts and seasoned observers are debating about the motives of Trump’s move to abduct the elected Venezuelan head of state and whether the US action was justified or not, the Trump administration had told the world that Washington was returning to the Monroe Doctrine propounded by then-President James Monroe in 1823.

Declaring the Americas (US, Canada and Latin America) were off-limits to any further European colonisation, the Monroe Doctrine had asserted the US domination in the western hemisphere and promised the Americas’ non-interference in European affairs. Doctrine’s core principles were separate spheres for Old and New Worlds, no new European colonisation, and viewing European interference as a hostile act, which became a cornerstone of American policy.      

Later in 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt expanded the doctrine, asserting the US right to intervene in Latin American countries to allegedly stabilise them and prevent the intervention of European powers. It helped in asserting American hegemony, viewing any encroachment as a threat to US security. The doctrine remained the core defining principles of the US foreign policy, as under this, US interventions in Cuba, the Korean War, Vietnam, Libya, Iraq, Chile, Nicaragua, Panama, etc., were justified. 

The article argues that the US military intervention in Venezuela and the capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife under Donald Trump’s leadership marks a revival of “might is right” politics and exposes the US as a rogue power. It links the action to a renewed application of the Monroe Doctrine—dubbed the “Donroe Doctrine”—aimed at reasserting US hegemony amid global decline, protecting the military-industrial and petro-dollar systems, and securing strategic resources such as oil, rare minerals, and metals.
Wednesday Wisdom
By Satish Misra
 The intervention has drawn widespread international condemnation, including from key allies at the UN Security Council, who warn it sets a dangerous precedent for international law. The article highlights growing global opposition, NATO tensions over Greenland, and criticises India’s ambiguous stance as a departure from its traditional independent foreign policy.

Now under Trump, the doctrine to be rechristened as the Donroe Doctrine, the US seems to be moving to arrest its eventual decline from its position of eminence by flexing its military muscles, as nothing else seems to be working in its favour. Til now kept under wraps, the US neo-colonial and neo-imperialist character has come into the open.

The new US approach is trying to ensure the profit of the loss-making big military industrial complex, and at the same time is also aimed at restoring the hegemony of the big petro companies. The US deep state is also pushing Trump to aggressively ensure the supply of rare minerals and other strategic metals.

With this objective in focus, the Trump administration is manoeuvring to annex Greenland, which at present is part of Denmark, on Monday, January 5, 2025, said that the US "needed" Greenland - a semi-autonomous region of fellow Nato member Denmark - for security reasons. Though Trump is ostensibly citing security reasons to annex Greenland, the real motive behind the move is the abundance of mineral resources reserves there. 

Reeling under the US threat, six European allies rallied to support Denmark. "Greenland belongs to its people, and only Denmark and Greenland can decide on matters concerning their relations," the leaders of the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and Denmark said in a joint statement. If tension mounts further, there could be a serious question mark on the continuing relevance of the NATO alliance.  

Threat to the ‘Petrol Dollar’ system of payment, which was increasingly coming under challenge by BRICS in general and China in particular, while being the immediate factor that forced Trump to rush to Venezuela to end the Maduro regime, but there exists a sinister plot to shape the world as per the US desires.

Washington’s intervention came just a day after Venezuela said it was open to negotiating an agreement with the US to combat drug trafficking. Maduro also said in a pre-recorded interview aired this week that Washington was seeking regime change and access to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.

As clarity and evidence emerge over the Trump action, which was against all established norms of international behaviour and conduct, opposition against the United States is growing. The US was isolated at the UNSC meeting, where even its allies disapproved of its military intervention.

The 15-member bloc met for an emergency meeting on January 05, 2025, in New York City, where the Venezuelan pair were also due to face drug trafficking charges in a US federal court.

UN SC Members, including key US allies, warned that the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife by US special forces could be a precedent-setting event for international law.

Venezuela’s ambassador to the UN, Samuel Moncada, condemned the US operation as “an illegitimate armed attack lacking any legal justification, in remarks echoed by Cuba, Colombia and permanent UNSC members Russia and China.

“[The US] imposes the application of its laws outside its own territory and far from its coasts, where it has no jurisdiction, using assaults and the appropriation of assets,” Cuba’s ambassador, Ernesto Soberon Guzman, said, adding that such measures negatively affected Cuba.

Russia’s ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said the US cannot “proclaim itself as some kind of a supreme judge, which alone bears the right to invade any country, to label culprits, to hand down and to enforce punishments irrespective of notions of international law, sovereignty and non-intervention”.

Notable critics at the emergency session included traditional US allies, Mexico and Denmark, both of whom Trump has separately threatened with military action over the past year.

Only some right-wing regimes and countries like the UK, Argentina and some others made a tight-rope walk, taking refuge behind the undemocratic character of the Maduro regime, while the majority of countries univocally condemned Washington's aggression.

Lest we are not accused of overlooking rather than ignoring our country, India’s stand couched in ambivalence seems to be on the side of the US. Like Israel, India too is going to all extents to please its new US masters for want of any further imposition of trade tariffs on New Delhi.

By avoiding mentioning US military intervention in sovereign Venezuela and expressing “concern” over developments, India seems to have aligned its national interests with Zionism, abandoning the time-tested path of independent foreign policy. (Dr Satish Misra is a senior journalist and seasoned political analyst. He has been a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation.)

 

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