Opinion: The US just increased global insecurity, again

The United States intervention in Venezuela has been described as setting a dangerous precedent with grave implications for global security and the ‘international rules-based order’. The danger for global security is not in this specific action, but in the erratic multidirectional nature of Trumpian foreign policy making.

Variations of use of force by the US have happened a number of times before. The ‘international rules-based order’ is largely an illusion which the US has openly perpetuated in rhetoric and ignored in reality.

In 1953, the US supported an invasion of Guatemala prompting a coup that overthrew its democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz. American commercial interests were disguised by a concern about a largely non-existent threat of communism and an illusionary prospect of Guatemala becoming a Soviet satellite. At around the same time, the CIA was neck-deep in the coup that overthrew the democratically elected president of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh. This was justified by similar concerns but was driven by the desire to control the country’s oil reserves. Multiple unsuccessful attempts were made to topple Fidel Castro in Cuba and in 1989, the US invaded Panama, arresting its leader General Manuel Noreiga for involvement in drug trafficking. The US also forced regime change in Haiti in 1994. And in case we have already forgotten, under a pretext of non-existent ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ in 2003, the US invaded Iraq and toppled its government.

To date, there is no publicly accessible evidence President Maduro is involved in drug cartels, or of a massive drug supply route through Venezuela to the US, despite these being the primary justifications for action.

There simply is no precedent-setting in what the US has done in Venezuela. It has previously acted with varying levels of force or proxy agents, overturned governments (democratic and otherwise) not unusually on false or fabricated evidence of either criminal wrongdoing or exaggerated threats to national security.

The implications for the ‘international rules-based order’ are therefore minimal. The notion of such an order is an illusion that survives largely because politicians, diplomats and academics keep saying it does, and because we tend to easily forget numerous flagrant US actions since World War II.

The fact the US has taken this kind of action before makes it no less of a threat to global security however. The greatest risk is the lack of focus in US foreign policy. Over the past two years, the US has constantly chopped and changed from one region and problem to another, negotiating in Gaza and Ukraine while attacking Iran (now threatening to do so again); and intervening in Venezuela while increasingly voicing a desire to annex Greenland. China is constantly represented as a foe, economically, politically and militarily. It is difficult to divine what draws these divergent strains of policy together.

Currently the US is a multi-tentacled nuclear-armed superpower that appears unable to maintain attention anywhere for very long and seems to concoct its plans on the hoof. It is not clear what it will do in Venezuela. There is no evidence of a clear objective or identified end state. Removing a problem without a clear vision for its solution will simply bring a new problem. Invading Iraq in 2003 gave birth to ISIS a decade later.

Happening in the background is the recurring Greenland question, coupled with stated intentions of standing back from NATO, while naming Russia as a US national security threat in the North Atlantic. Greenland has warned US action against the territory will end NATO. This is presenting a very confusing picture of how the US intends to approach security in Europe and the North Atlantic.

The underlying message in the Venezuelan action to Israel in Gaza, and Russia in Ukraine, is a standing contradiction to America’s claimed role as peacemaker, instead validating invasions, interventions and annexations. If the People’s Republic of China moves on Taiwan, what source of wisdom can anyone draw on to work out what US policy will be?

The recent events in Venezuela bring nothing new in US foreign policy, and no new precedent has been set. But they represent a new unstructured and unpredictable US foreign and security policy approach which has grave implications for global security. Who knows what Trump is going to do next?

Dr John Battersby is a Senior Fellow in the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University. He teaches and researches in intelligence and counter-terrorism and is Managing Editor of National Security Journal.