The Current Illegal Power Grab in Venezuela: Yet Which Nation Next? President Trump Speaks of Peace Yet He Remains a Man of War.

The toppling and reported capture by invading American military units of Venezuela's socialist president will dispatch a tremor of dread and alarm around the world. This power grab is unlawful, without justification, and destabilizing for the region and the world. It upends international norms, disregards national territorial sovereignty, and risks creating an state of anarchy within the country.

It is policy crafted from chaos. But this is the reality we currently inhabit – the universe as defined by Donald Trump.

A Remarkable and Dangerous Assertion of Unfettered US Power

The direct attack on Venezuela signifies an extraordinary, dangerous assertion of unfettered US power and arrives the same week that the President menaced military strikes against another unpopular government opposed to the West: the one in Tehran. It follows many months of escalating US military, economic and political pressure on Maduro, encompassing deadly naval strikes on boats of alleged drug traffickers.

Trump asserts he is acting to prevent illegal narcotics flowing into the US through Venezuelan routes and to halt an alleged influx of “criminal element” migrants. In an repetition of the American incursion into Iraq in 2003, he is also charged with desiring Venezuela’s huge petroleum and natural gas reserves – doubts strengthened by repeated, illegal US confiscations of Venezuelan petroleum carriers.

But Trump’s primary motives seem to be personal animosity directed at Maduro, and a wish to resurrect the 19th-century Monroe doctrine by establishing a American zone of control and dominance throughout the west.

Hemispheric Alarm and Global Repercussions

Regional leaders, including Colombia’s president, who has clashed with Trump in recent months, greeted the coup with outrage and alarm; not least, perhaps, because they worry they also could become targets of Washington’s newly aggressive dominance. Cuba’s socialist administration has particular cause for concern. It depends significantly on Venezuela’s regime for cheap energy and backing in politics and economics.

The US top diplomat has made no secret of his desire for a change in government in Havana. In Panama, too, anxiety levels will be running high. Trump has in the past menaced armed intervention there, over control of the Panama Canal. Indeed, the alleged apprehension of Maduro brings to mind the 1989 US incursion into Panama and the overthrow and detention of its then dictator.

Authoritarian, anti-democratic regimes around the world will be closely observing Trump’s next steps, as will Washington’s democratic allies. Iran condemned the coup. It has valid cause to be fearful. But Russia’s president might not be totally displeased by the removal of his Venezuelan ally.

A Perilous Benchmark for Global Conflicts

Trump’s unjustified turn to force is not so very different from moves during the invasion of Ukraine. Both have unlawfully assaulted a bordering nation and attempted to oust its leadership. For China’s leader, whose forces were recently conducting military exercises against the “separatists” of Taiwan, Trump has just set a precedent he may one day gladly follow.

Trump’s coup is of great concern to Britain, the EU and democratic Western nations. They ought to, and have to, clearly denounce it. It openly confronts the rules and principles of the international order they hold dear. The US has once again ignored the UN and conventional approaches of addressing inter-state grievances. And it is proceeding with apparently scant regard for the subsequent events in Venezuela.

Uncertain Aftermath and Potential for Chaos

The Caracas government has been decapitated, but remaining high-ranking figures of the regime seem to remain in place. They are calling for opposition and, possibly, reprisals against the US. There are unverified accounts of civilian casualties. If a power vacuum develops, civil stability might disintegrate, igniting civil war or a possible military coup. And it is uncertain whether the latest US military action has ended, or may escalate further.

The notion that banished dissident figures will swiftly return and that full democracy will now be restored is unrealistic. The coming days will be critical. And the responsibility lies entirely with Trump.

The Illusion of a Peacemaker

Trump’s imprudent move should finally lay to rest his always misleading self-portrayal as a “world peacemaker”. It’s past time that leaders in Europe publicly recognise him for who he is – a international provocateur of war, a worldwide threat.

Each time he stumbles clumsily into areas of dispute, setting deadlines, issuing ultimatums, picking favourites and monetising misery, the pursuit of fair and enduring peace is set back.

No surprise peace is elusive. And bizarrely, even while presenting himself as a neutral peace broker and non-interventionist, Trump concurrently conducts warfare on the world. The US conducted record numbers of air strikes in the Middle East and Africa last year, data indicates.

A Heritage Built on Violence

Since resuming the presidency a year ago, peace-loving Trump has launched strikes in Yemen, negligently causing the deaths of numerous civilians after relaxing combat protocols; attacked targets in Nigeria, to detrimental outcomes; struck locations in Somalia, Iraq and Syria; and bombed Iran, where he falsely inflated the effectiveness of American attacks on nuclear facilities. He even will not exclude bombing Greenland, a independent land of a Nato ally.

What’s going on in the President's mind? A benign interpretation is that in matters of war and peace, he has no conception what his actions entail – no strategy, no clue – and makes up policy on the fly, depending on how he feels.

The sinister interpretation says he is fully aware what he is doing, that more and worse are forthcoming. Like previous second-term presidents who exhausted options domestically, Trump finds the world stage offers greater possibilities for the exercise of power and self-importance. He is building a legacy through violence.

Trump’s irresponsible, dangerously erratic behaviour is getting noticeably more severe. His Venezuela “triumph” may embolden him to attempt more and bigger, unhinged outrages. He struts and preens, cries havoc! and unleashes the hounds of conflict.