I never cease to be amazed at how members of our political elite doggedly refuse to learn the lessons of history. Worse, some of them appear to have no knowledge of the past beyond the previous fortnight.
How else might we explain the support shown by certain voices for the decision by President Trump to bomb Venezuela, seize its sitting President, Nicolás Maduro, and effectively turn the country into a US colony?
Let me stress that, while I am on the Left, I am not blind to the socialist Maduro’s misdeeds. There is strong evidence that he stole the 2024 presidential election, and that crime alone would be reason enough for Venezuelans to want rid of him.
But who decreed that the White House should act as the planet’s law enforcement agency? What gives Trump the right to launch a military assault on another sovereign nation – one that posed no clear and present threat to the US – without consulting the United Nations, fellow world leaders or even his own Congress?
We’ve seen this movie many times. US-led interventions in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq became wars of attrition before ending up as military and political catastrophes.
Similarly, the 2011 US-backed Libyan escapade – almost entirely ignored by the political class these days – sparked a seismic migration crisis which plagued Europe for years thereafter.
The pretext for such interventions is usually the liberation of an oppressed population and the promotion of democracy and human rights.
The reality, however, is that the US has a grubby history of collaboration with despotic and corrupt regimes across the globe. It’s just that those regimes happen to serve their interests in a way that the Maduros of this world don’t. “Realpolitik”, they call it. Utter hypocrisy, I say.
We should, I suppose, at least commend Trump for not trying to fool us with guff about defending democracy and human rights in Venezuela. On the contrary, he was searingly honest in his admission that this intervention was all about oil and strategic advantage.
He is plainly willing to use the mighty war machine at his disposal in the service of a new American imperialism, and he doesn’t care who knows it.
Donald Trump just abandoned the one golden rule that stops society from hurtling into the abyss - Paul EmberyGreenland, an autonomous territory of NATO-member Denmark, is next on the hit list – and that’s when the balloon will really go up.
Trump’s aggression must be resisted. For if the philosophy that “might is right” were to take hold, our world would have taken a very dangerous turn. If powerful nations are permitted to make territorial grabs with no regard for the rules, then we are living according to the law of the jungle.
It is tempting, when it is our “allies” doing the pillaging and our “adversaries” on the back foot, to cheer it all on. But the jubilation and swagger will come with a price. Because, in the end, civilisation itself rests on the principle that the strong must not be given licence to attack the weak. Abandon that golden rule, and society hurtles towards the abyss.
If the West turns a blind eye to – or, worse, encourages – the trashing of international laws and customs by one of its own, it will have no moral authority when rebuking Putin for invading Ukraine or warning President Xi of China not to march into Taiwan.
Moreover, leaders of that ilk may well be encouraged by Trump’s actions, seeing them as a green light to go marauding and plundering themselves. Has anyone in the White House considered that possibility?
Many of my fellow Leftists went into meltdown on both occasions that Trump was elected, fearing it marked the dawn of a new authoritarian – even fascist – age. I rejected their alarmism.
Though I am no fan of the man and wouldn’t have voted for him if I were American, I felt that
Trump’s victory at least heralded a welcome blow against the liberal-progressive order that had dominated Western politics for so long and had wrought such devastation, in the form of diminishing economic and cultural security, throughout our communities.
Notwithstanding his very obvious character flaws and all-around oafishness, Trump was on the money politically in a number of ways.
He was, for example, right to champion the nation state, reindustrialisation and the war on wokery.
He also deserved credit for trying to break the deadlock in Ukraine and pledging to end US involvement in neocon-inspired “forever wars”. These things represented a much-needed recalibration in US and potentially international politics.
But his recent belligerence and recklessness on the global stage risk proving his detractors right.
Citizens of sovereign nations and their territories – particularly those, such as Greenland, which have never caused harm to anyone – are entitled to live in peace, free from the fear that they will be invaded and occupied by a hostile superpower.
For a man who likes to wax lyrical about his credentials as a “peacemaker”, Trump is sure stoking the flames of conflict. He needs to pull back. We’ve had years of international mayhem caused by ill-judged Western interventions. The last thing the world needs right now is a fresh slew of them.
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