Might is right
Rashed Rahman
The world owes a vote of thanks to US President Donald Trump. If this sounds surprising given what Trump has been up to of late, bear with me. Not only has Trump abducted Venezuela’s elected President Maduro and his wife, he has threatened Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, Greenland and Iran with US imperialist intervention. The reason he needs to be thanked is that through his actions and daily bullying statements, he has stripped the veil from the smokescreen of ‘democracy’ ‘human rights’, etc., which Washington usually trots out to justify its interventionist adventures. But being Trump, he has not stopped there. He has had the audacity to proclaim that his power is restrained only by “my own morality” and “my mind”. These recent actions and words amount to nothing less than unrestrained bullying.
Trump has even trotted out his version of the Monroe Doctrine, enunciated by US President James Monroe in 1863, to keep former European colonial powers out of the Americas, in what may well be the prelude to a new chapter in the history of this infamous doctrine. The US has intervened in Latin America to bring about regime change and safeguard or promote its interests over 40 times in the last century and a half. Now, having captured Maduro, Trump blatantly declares the US will ‘run’ Venezuela, including extracting oil and keeping the revenues from it in Washington’s ‘safekeeping’. However, despite the fact that Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, the US and other multinational oil companies Trump invited for a meeting in Washington to discuss how this project would be handled expressed their deep reservations regarding the billions of dollars investment required for the task. Trump’s enthusiasm for usurping Venezuelan oil, therefore, may not be as easy as he thinks.
Venezuela and other countries on Trump’s interventionist radar seem to be responding in mild tones, presumably to prevent a military response from Trump’s overblown hegemonic ambitions. If Latin America is troubled by this possibility, Europe is aghast at Trump’s declarations of taking over Greenland without so much as a nod towards its people’s wishes. Denmark has warned any such move would mean the end of NATO. Europe is currently wrestling with the implications of being ‘dumped’ by Trump, whether in the case of Ukraine or dismantling the Western alliance without even a heart’s flutter. Iran’s current difficulties in facing a mass protest movement by its people can of course be traced to US sanctions, which have made the Iranian people’s lives unlivable economically. But there could be a grain of truth in the Iranian regime’s accusation that the US and Israel have a hand in the current agitation (a la the Colour Revolutions post-Soviet collapse). However, Trump’s bluff about military intervention in Iran will surely provoke resistance and blowback from Tehran, as stated by the Iranian regime.
As if all this was not enough, Trump has delineated his ‘philosophy’ in an interview to The New York Times, in which he says international laws, treaties and institutions apply only when he decides they do. Checks on power, considered necessary by modern political thought, are optional as far as Trump is concerned. In other words if international law serves US interests, it applies. If not, it can be ignored, redefined, brushed aside. Rivals, of course, are not allowed to use the same logic. Even the US Congress and internal laws must toe Trump’s line or be overridden. The danger is that the US will, as it always has, act forcefully but will stop explaining why force should have any limitations at all placed upon it. Trump therefore sees himself as King-Emperor of the world and has donned new clothes to prove it. While the world reels from the uncertainty and instability unleashed by Trump, some may wonder whether the Emperor’s new clothes actually exist or not.
Pakistanis should be able quite easily to discern the lessons to be learnt from this Trumpian display of bullying and arrogance, based on their own history. That history shows that when power claims to stand unfettered above the law in the name of stability, security or national interest, used by military and ‘hybrid’ regimes as justifications for their hold on power and policies, the result has been the weakening of institutions, blurred or missing accountability, and questions about legitimate authority. Trump could do worse than look at these lessons and desist from parading his ego on the world stage beyond belief. If not, as the debate in the UN Security Council on the Venezuela situation elaborated through widespread condemnations, the world has swing back to an era of lawlessness. But the US may well have bitten off more than it can chew, whether in the uncertainties surrounding its ‘takeover’ of Venezuela, its repeated threats against other countries, or the long term adverse implications for the US itself.
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