In my first reaction to the US military operation to extract President Maduro and his wife from Venezuela last weekend I noted that:
It is not unusual to make a dramatic step and then hope things will then work out. What was striking in this case was Trump’s confidence that the hard questions about the future have already been answered when they clearly have not.
I followed this up with an article for the New Statesman. With their kind permission, this is reproduced below as the first part of this week’s post. Since writing this there has been more talk from Trump about control over Venezuela’s oil supplies and indications about how the current regime is seeking to manage the situation – but these developments largely reinforce the broad thrust of the article that the administration currently has no viable plan for the aftermath that it can implement.
Trump’s meeting with oil executives confirmed the difficulty he faces convincing them to invest in Venezuela. Darren Woods, chief executive of ExxonMobil, told Trump ‘If we look at the legal and commercial constructs, frameworks in place today in Venezuela, today it’s uninvestable.’
Significant changes have to be made to those commercial frameworks, the legal system, there has to be durable investment protections, and there has to be change to the hydrocarbon laws in the country.’
Now we have the US advising its citizens to leave Venezuela immediately:
‘There are reports of groups of armed militias, known as ‘colectivos,’ setting up roadblocks and searching vehicles for evidence of U.S. citizenship or support for the United States.’
Which doesn’t quite sound like the US is in charge. The administration still appears to be making it up as it goes along and the improvisation is getting harder.
The second part of this post addresses one of the themes of the New Statesman article, particularly in the light of the talk about grabbing Greenland. How should governments (and commentators) respond to Trump’s loose and often provoking statements? He regularly boasts about what he is doing, and how well he is doing it, and what he intends to do in the future, and the ease with which he will do it, which are at best exaggerations and at worst delusional. But because they concern real places and people, and if followed through could have profound consequences, they cannot simply be dismissed.
Part One
At the extraordinary press conference at Mar-a-Lago celebrating the capture of Nicolás Maduro, Donald Trump’s subordinates spoke of how this operation showed that when the president said something he should be taken seriously. The Venezuelan leader had failed to respond with sufficient vigour to America’s offer of negotiations. Others tempted to defy Trump should take notice. “If I lived in Havana, and I was in the government, I’d be concerned – at least a little bit,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has long sought regime change in Cuba. If drug cartels are really the issue, then Mexico and Colombia should be nervous. Then there is Iran, where Trump has threatened to retaliate if the beleaguered regime fires on protesters. And lest we forget strikes were recently authorised against the Islamic State in Nigeria even though it is unclear if anything of significance was hit.
Trump’s fiercest critics draw the same conclusion though with a different political slant.