"The Donroe Doctrine"

Annexation of Venezuela

    

    

@RadioFreeTom

Maybe Russia and China Should Sit This One Out


Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are just shocked—
shocked!—by the American attack on Venezuela.

President Donald Trump has launched not a splendid little war, but perhaps a splendid little operation in Venezuela. He has captured a dictator and removed him from power. So far, Trump seems to have executed a bad idea well: The military operation, dubbed “Operation Absolute Resolve,” seems to have been flawless. The strategic wisdom, however, is deeply questionable. And the legal basis, as offered by the president and his team, is absurd. Some Americans, and some U.S. allies, are appalled.

Russia and China claim to be appalled, too, but to use a classic diplomatic expression, the leaders in Beijing and Moscow should be invited, with all due respect, to shut their traps.

“We firmly call on the U.S. leadership to reconsider this position,” the Russian foreign ministry said this morning, “and release the lawfully elected president of a sovereign country and his wife.” The Russians then shamelessly turned all the sanctimony knobs to supernova levels: “Venezuela must be guaranteed the right to determine its own future without destructive external interference, particularly of a military nature.”

You don’t say…

The more stinging irony here is that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping probably approved these public statements with a chuckle. The United States has now given Russia, China, and anyone else who wants to give it a try a road map for invading countries and capturing leaders who displease them, with a lawlessness that by comparison makes the 2003 invasion of Iraq seem as lawyered up as a bank merger...

Tom Nichols, PhD writes for The Atlantic. He is a Professor Emeritua of the U.S. Naval War College.

 

UPDATE

 

RICK WILSON CHIMES IN

 

...Here’s the part the MAGA fireworks brigade doesn’t understand: Snatching the bad guy is the easy part. The hard part is what happens next: when the cameras leave, when the speeches fade, and when reality shows up with the butcher’s bill. And this is where the danger starts, because the Trump administration is built to win news cycles, not outcomes. Regime change doesn’t work if you’re not offering something better. And a nation in Trump’s name and image isn’t selling anything that works... 

 Yeah...

 

In a telephone interview this morning, President Donald Trump issued a not-so-veiled threat against the new Venezuelan leader, Delcy Rodríguez, saying that “if she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” referring to Nicolás Maduro, now residing in a New York City jail cell. Trump made clear that he would not stand for Rodríguez’s defiant rejection of the armed U.S. intervention that resulted in Maduro’s capture.

During our call, Trump, who had just arrived at his golf club in West Palm Beach, was in evident good spirits, and reaffirmed to me that Venezuela may not be the last country subject to American intervention. “We do need Greenland, absolutely,” he said, describing the island—a part of Denmark, a NATO ally—as “surrounded by Russian and Chinese ships.” And in discussing Venezuela’s future, he signaled a clear shift away from his previous distaste for regime change and nation building, rejecting the concerns of many in his MAGA base. “You know, rebuilding there and regime change, anything you want to call it, is better than what you have right now. Can’t get any worse,” he said.

The severe tone he took with Rodríguez contrasted with the praise he had offered her yesterday, hours after U.S.-military forces attacked Caracas and captured Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, for criminal prosecution. Trump said in a news conference after the attack that Rodríguez had privately indicated a willingness to work with the United States, which Trump declared would temporarily “run” her country.
“She’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” he said yesterday.

Rodríguez rejected that suggestion moments later, declaring that the country is “ready to defend our natural resources” and that the nation’s defense counsel remained prepared to carry out the policies of Maduro, whose return she demanded. “We shall never be a colony ever again,” she said…

What a total mess.