A show of force that leaves many questions unanswered
Under normal circumstances, any democrat should rejoice at the fall of a dictator like Nicolás Maduro, but the capture and extraction operation carried out by the United StatesAside from being a show of force by the US military, it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Even more so after listening to Donald Trump's confusing and sometimes far-fetched press conference, where he bluntly explained that the United States intends to govern Venezuela until a transition is possible. The problem is that, at this moment, it's far from clear who holds power on the ground in Venezuela, since formally the Chavista ministers remain in their posts and haven't handed power over to the United States. Trump's appearance suggests there might have been some kind of agreement with the current vice president, Delcy Rodríguez. Even more surprising is the US president's sweeping dismissal of the Venezuelan opposition leader and recent Nobel Peace Prize laureate, María Corina Machado, whom he dismissed as lacking the authority and respect to govern Venezuela. We'll have to wait for the next few hours to see if any of these questions are answered.
The only thing that remains clear is Trump's ultimate goal, which, if anything, is transparent: the US president wants to regain control of Venezuelan oil, since he considers Hugo Chávez's nationalization of assets in the late 1990s to be one of the biggest "thefts" in history. Trump, therefore, wants to turn Venezuela into something akin to a puppet state controlled by Washington, similar to what Belarus is now under Moscow's control. This ambition is consistent with Trump's conception of international policy, which consists of a return to spheres of influence, a division of the world so that each power can do as it pleases without having to answer to anyone. In reality, Trumpism, like Putinism, means burying the multilateral world order that emerged from World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall, returning to the 19th century and, in practice, to a neocolonialism that seeks to seize energy resources and raw materials. From this perspective, the operation against Maduro is especially worrying, as it could set a very dangerous precedent.
The priority now should be to avoid a civil conflict in Venezuela. The Chavista authorities should resist the temptation to provoke bloodshed, which would only worsen the situation. Maduro's disappearance—he will be subjected to a sham trial in New York, like Noriega before him—should at least serve to advance the holding of free and fair elections in which the population can freely decide what government it wants and whether or not to accept becoming a kind of US protectorate.
