{"id":475753,"date":"2025-10-05T11:38:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-05T11:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/475753\/"},"modified":"2025-10-05T11:38:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-05T11:38:10","slug":"trumps-bullying-of-latin-america-isnt-part-of-any-plan-he-doesnt-have-a-clue-what-hes-doing-simon-tisdall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/475753\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s bullying of Latin America isn\u2019t part of any plan \u2013 he doesn\u2019t have a clue what he\u2019s doing | Simon Tisdall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Running for president in 2024, Donald Trump vowed to avoid costly, often disastrous overseas US military interventions like Iraq and Afghanistan. This was a key plank in his isolationist \u201cAmerica first\u201d platform. Yet within months of his inauguration, US forces were bombing Yemen<\/a> and Iran<\/a>. Looking south, Trump threatened to seize the Panama canal. Now, the Pentagon is gearing up for attacks on \u201cterrorist\u201d drug cartels deep inside Colombia and Mexico. Of most immediate concern is a possible renewed White House effort to forcibly impose regime change on Venezuela<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, Venezuela\u2019s hard-left authoritarian president, believes this effort is already under way. He says the US is waging \u201cundeclared war\u201d<\/a> on his country after several deadly strikes on Venezuelan vessels<\/a> in international waters. Trump notified Congress last week that the US is engaged in \u201carmed conflict<\/a>\u201d with drug cartels. He claims, without providing evidence, that the targeted boats were carrying US-bound illegal narcotics \u2013 and that Maduro is responsible. He has placed a $50m bounty on Maduro\u2019s head.<\/p>\n

Latin American governments are fretfully watching a big US military buildup around Venezuela<\/a>, including warships, F-35 fighter jets, an attack submarine and 2,200 marines. Such powerful assets are not much use in drug interdiction. But they could be used offensively, or to support special forces raids and airstrikes. On Thursday, Venezuela accused the US<\/a> of an \u201cillegal incursion\u201d by at least five F-35s. Maduro says he is readying a state of emergency<\/a> to \u201cprotect our people \u2026 if Venezuela [is] attacked by the American empire\u201d.<\/p>\n

What is Trump up to? Drug smuggling is a serious problem \u2013 but killing people on a whim on the high seas, while common and difficult to prosecute<\/a>, is still illegal. And anyway, the UN says, most of the cocaine entering the US comes from Colombia, Peru and Ecuador, and is mostly not trafficked through Venezuela. Draft-dodger Trump likes to act the tough commander-in-chief. He is now trying to deport<\/a> Venezuelan migrants, many of whom originally fled to the US to escape sanctions he himself imposed. Some analysts suggest he covets Venezuela\u2019s abundant oil, gas and mineral resources.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that Trump and John Bolton, his then national security adviser, hoped to replace Maduro in 2019<\/a> in what Caracas claimed was a regime change plot. It\u2019s also true that Maduro\u2019s 2024 re-election victory was widely condemned as fraudulent<\/a>. Given a free choice, Venezuelans would almost certainly sack him. And clashing ideologies are a factor, too. Maduro, unworthy heir to Hugo Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s Bolivarian revolution<\/a>, is an affront to Trump\u2019s imperial idea of a US-dominated western hemisphere, where the 1823 Monroe doctrine<\/a> rules again and neoliberal, free-market capitalism operates without restraint.<\/p>\n

Yet given his hapless blundering on other key foreign issues<\/a>, the most likely explanation for Trump\u2019s behaviour is that, typically, he hasn\u2019t got a clue what he\u2019s doing \u2013 in Venezuela or Latin America as whole. There\u2019s no plan. He throws his weight about, makes impetuous misjudgments, stokes fear of foreigners and bases policy on whether he \u201clikes\u201d other leaders. In 2019, with Maduro on the ropes, Trump blinked. Today, full-scale military intervention in Venezuela remains unlikely. More probable is an intensified pressure campaign of destabilisation, sanctions, maritime strikes, and air and commando raids.<\/p>\n

Far from weakening and isolating the regime, Trump may achieve the exact opposite. Maduro is already using the crisis to assume dictatorial \u201cspecial powers\u201d and rally public opinion behind patriotic calls for national solidarity. Trump\u2019s bullying of other left-leaning Latin American countries such as Colombia<\/a> \u2013 and presumptuous cheerleading for rightwing populists in Argentina<\/a> and El Salvador \u2013 is spurring a regional backlash<\/a>, too. Most governments abhor the thought of a return to the bad old days of Yanqui meddling in Washington\u2019s \u201cback yard\u201d.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s attempt to use punitive tariffs and sanctions to strong-arm Brazil<\/a> into pardoning its disgraced former hard-right president Jair Bolsonaro backfired spectacularly last month. Huge crowds took to the streets<\/a> of Brazilian cities to defend what they rightly saw as an assault on Brazilian sovereignty and rule of law. The popularity of Bolsonaro\u2019s successor, Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva, soared. \u201cWe are not, and never again will we be, anyone\u2019s colony,\u201d he declared. Lula told Trump, in effect, to get lost. Then, when they met at the UN general assembly, Trump backed off and played nice<\/a>. Keir Starmer, please note<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The perception of a great leap backwards in US-Latin America relations grows ineluctably. \u201cHis administration views Latin America primarily as a security threat, associating it with drug trafficking, organised crime and incoming migration,\u201d Irene Mia of the International Institute for Strategic Studies warned earlier this year<\/a>. \u201cThe US approach has become essentially negative, prioritising unilateral action and dominance rather than partnership,\u201d she said, adding: \u201cThe region is being treated less as an equal partner and more as a sphere of influence to be controlled in line with US strategic interests.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s hawkish advisers are part of the problem: notably Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff<\/a>, and Marco Rubio, a former Republican senator for Florida who is secretary of state and national security adviser. For Rubio, a longtime critic of leftwing rulers in Cuba and Nicaragua, Maduro is unfinished business<\/a>. Defending the boat attacks, he declared: \u201cInterdiction doesn\u2019t work. What will stop them is when you blow them up \u2026 And it\u2019ll happen again.\u201d Coming from the top US diplomat, this is quite a statement.<\/p>\n

skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n

Sign up to Matters of Opinion<\/p>\n

Guardian columnists and writers on what they\u2019ve been debating, thinking about, reading, and more<\/p>\n

Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s efforts to reprise the role of Latin American neighbourhood policeman, emulating former president Theodore Roosevelt \u2013 a big stick-wielding serial interventionist \u2013 are regressive, dangerous and self-defeating. Long-term, the big winner will most likely be Beijing<\/a>, an increasingly influential regional actor, investor and leading member of the Brics group of nations<\/a>. As the US burns its bridges across the world, Trump is making China great again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Running for president in 2024, Donald Trump vowed to avoid costly, often disastrous overseas US military interventions like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-475753","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115321366355247398","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}