Why Trump’s action in Venezuela is no surprise

0:02Sky News, the full story first.

0:08Coming up, Donald Trump said he was ending America's foreign adventures. Then he sent special forces to seize Nicolas Maduro from his home in Caracas. But should we be in any way surprised?

0:24Donald Trump once promised an end to American interventionism. No more endless wars. No more regime change. Less mess. How times have changed. Don't ask me who's in charge because I'll give you an answer and it'll be very controversial. What does that mean? Yes, we're in charge. That's the US president on board Air Force One, whilst the Venezuelan president was in handcuffs. Nicolás Maduro is now languishing in a US cell, facing charges ranging from narco-terrorism to ownership of a machine gun. It all looks, at best, extrajudicial. At worst, entirely illegal. Yet the criticism from the US's allies has been somewhat more muted than you'd expect from a group of countries who not only believe in international law, they actually wrote it.

1:11And in part, that's no doubt because Maduro was no friend of the West. Illegitimate and authoritarian, the words most commonly used to describe him since his incarceration. But it's also because US intervention in Venezuela is part of a long tradition. Donald Trump, as you'll hear, is less a break from the past than a reimagining of it. Dr Stephen Tufnell is Associate Professor of Modern US History at St Peter's College, Oxford, and an expert in American imperialism. What were your first thoughts when you heard about the taking of Nicola Maduro? I was very surprised at the rapidity at which we arrived at that point.

1:50I thought we were moving towards a regime change of some kind, but I honestly thought they would give the kind of oil embargo a little more time to take effect. I suppose in the end, there was a certain naivety on my part that the manoeuvring of that carrier group was about moving into position for exactly that type of surgical strike, perhaps much more so than an oil embargo. And it was clearly a long time in the planning. Some of the information that's come out recently about the US military had a mock-up of Maduro's compound and practiced the taking, that there was potentially a spy inside, and that there was hours and hours of drone surveillance has gone into establishing Maduro's movements as well.

2:27So I think they played a very clever game and that element of surprise was exactly what they were looking for. Let's talk then, Steve, about the rationale, or at the very least the stated rationale for what has been going on here. We've heard Donald Trump talking about something called the Monroe Doctrine, or actually, sorry, the Donro Doctrine, the president's now calling it. Just explain exactly what that is. So the Monroe Doctrine is centuries old now, dates back to 1824. And this is a message by the then president, James Monroe, in response to a threatened invasion of Latin America by an alliance of Catholic powers.

2:58The British Secretary of State then turns to the Munra administration and says, let's form an alliance to prevent the kind of Catholic recolonization of the Americas. The American president and his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, reject that, sensing quite rightly that Britain's going to oppose it anyway. We need not ally with Britain in that case. But he issues a message that the time is largely ignored, but has become the basis of understanding U.S. power in the Western Hemisphere in the 19th century. And it states sort of three things, really. One is the non-intervention principle that the US will not allow European powers to reinvade the Western Hemisphere and recolonize those territories.

3:34Second is the kind of non-transfer principle, so that they won't allow colonies to be transferred between European powers and the North American continent. And then finally, they say that they won't interfere in the affairs of the old world, which is very much of its kind of 19th century moment. And across the 19th century, that's interpreted and invoked in a number of different ways by American statesmen. So the first reinterpretation is in 1895, and a now very little remembered boundary dispute between Britain and actually Venezuela, as it happens. And the Secretary of State issues a kind of another hands-off.

4:05The second and most consequential is the Roosevelt Corollary in 1904, in which Theodore Roosevelt, the then president, states that the United States possesses an international police power. and it will guard and police its interests in the Western Hemisphere, which transforms into then dollar diplomacy, which we see under the Taft administration, so the controlling of foreign customs arrangements to exert a kind of informal empire. And it's been the basis for thinking about US-Latin America relations for some time, and it's become now the Don Rowe Doctrine, which is much more about that kind of, it's a reinvention of the Roosevelt Corollary, I think.

4:39Just to try and understand this a little bit better, From that point in the early 19th century, America has, in essence, been acting and acting quite strongly on occasion to defend its interests in this specific part of the world. I think that's right. In terms of geo-strategy, they've often considered the Gulf of Mexico or the Gulf of America as it's sort of American Mediterranean, that its primary set of interests are related to that region. US interests have been very much centered on the Western Hemisphere, and that the Eastern Hemisphere very much belongs to the old world powers, the West is the domain of the new world.

5:15By 1898, they use interest in pretext, there's some similarities, I think, echoing across time as a humanitarian intervention to put down the Cuban insurrection in 1898, and then take Puerto Rico as part of that war against the Spanish Empire. That's also about controlling access to the Panama Canal, the future Panama Canal. And so American geostrategy is very much formulated in the context of Latin American relations. Clearly, there was American expansionism, not necessarily taking over chunks of the world, but putting American assets and American influence there. I think that's right. The Monroe Doctrine is very much about ensuring domestic stability, first and foremost, and not increasing the United States foreign interventions per se.

5:53but it has been interpreted that way. And I think the 40 or so regime changes that the United States has participated in in Latin America in the 20th century, so much of that has been about an expansion of the sense of what counts as US national interest and what will protect US domestic interest. The invasions and the coups of the early and mid-Cold War, very much about containment, ensuring that domestic assets are not threatened by leftist governments. And then when we get to roll back the Reagan administration, you know, Operation Urgent Fury in Granada, Just Cause in Panama, which is the most direct parallels, perhaps, to what Trump did recently, very much again, it's about protecting domestic military assets and stability from foreign threats.

6:37And of course, the Trump version is that the foreign threat is a kind of what he's calling a kind of narco-terrorist organization. But it's still then, I think, still quite clear that he's framing this as a priority of national interest in domestic stability, much more so than about stopping foreign conflict or stopping turbulence overseas. You mentioned there 40 or so instances of US-sponsored regime change. Focus on one of those. What are the parallels between what happened with Panama and what's happening right now? Big parallels are around the idea of controlling the United States kind of strategic assets.

7:12And so the operation to remove Manuel Noriega was as much about securing the United States international trade under the guise of humanitarian intervention, protecting US power in that region. I suppose the parallels too come from the strategy involved in the Reagan administration, that diplomacy alone is not enough to secure your goals, and it must be backed up by military force. And I think that the parallel there is clear, and that the show of military force as a way of gaining, and Trump uses this word a lot, leverage, in his international relations is a kind of key part of this, I suppose, coup, if we can call it that, or the kidnapping of Maduro, that it's about demonstrating that hard power now has returned.

7:55And, you know, the kind of earlier forms of hybrid power that perhaps ruled in the early 21st century, now they've been cast aside in favour of a return to the use of military force. Is United States influence in its stated region, is it always exerted through displays of force? I think traditionally it has been. For much of the 20th century it has been. I think that what's interesting is how the lessons are not learnt from that. So there have been instances where shows of force have been used to shore up the stability of US interests, But almost invariably, it leads to the expansion of US interests in those regions and the sowing of greater instability.

8:35And I think this is the challenge that the Trump administration now has, that they've made their show of force. The next few days will be interesting to see what happens. I don't get the sense that there's much of a plan for the transition between one regime and the other, but they may not achieve the goals that they're seeking solely by the kidnapping of Maduro. If the end goal is indeed to stop the flow of drugs into the United States, which is the stated aim, it seems unlikely. If it's about the control of strategic resources such as oil, which has emerged actually as the probable cause, that's a long term aim.

9:14And I think we know that Venezuela is one of the world's largest oil reserves, but it will take a lot of investment and time to be able to realise that. And so what immediate aim they're hoping to achieve there is unclear and other objectives are much more long term. It feels like a degree of the fury that's been expressed at the United States actions has been in regard to the brazen nature of it. They seem almost to be speaking in terms of ownership. First, is that fair? And second, is that any different to any of the tones struck in the past by previous White House administrations? Yeah, I think the ownership rhetoric is really revealing, very interesting.

9:53I think it is slightly different to what we've seen before. I think, as you said, the brazenness of their claims to ownership are much more explicit. One could argue that in the Cold War, the United States was at least trying to maintain a sense that there would be independent sovereign powers. Though in many cases, we know the CIA and FBI were back in certain regimes. I think now the transactional nature of Trump's foreign policy is quite explicit. And I think we shouldn't be too surprised about it. We saw it in his dealings with Ukraine and the kind of minerals deal there. We're seeing it in the rhetoric around Greenland and in part around Canada.

10:34Part of the context, you know, sort of whisper it quietly, might be a sort of slight continuity with the Biden administration. And we saw under Biden an increasing use of the Defense Production Act, which is from 1950. which is designed to end the United States' reliance on critical minerals and substances that they get from foreign powers. Under Biden, it was about the transition to the kind of like decarbonized economy and so getting access to the necessary precious minerals there. And some of that under Trump, some of it is about the kind of oil craft that we've seen before and the kind of continuity of the kind of carbon economy.

11:10So I don't think we should be too surprised now that that's what he's at. I mean, lots of commentators have pointed out that Trump's view of the world is, you know, it's divided between the strong and the weak. And you're either a strong actor or a weak power to be preyed upon. And I think we're seeing that repeatedly now. He was meant to be the non-intervention president. What I think he meant there was the non-occupation president, because he has intervened directly, repeatedly and often. And his favoured weapon is a kind of surgical strike. Now, whether that would happen in somewhere like Greenland is a different matter.

11:44But I would be a lot more cautious now around only seeing that as rhetoric. I think one of the interesting effects of this might be that other powers will start to take seriously the threat of force and his use of force as leverage. And you may start to see more diplomacy around access to the minerals in Greenland and things like that. Denmark has got a tricky problem there. In the past, when America has flexed its muscles like this, how have Europe, China, Soviet Union slash Russia, how have they responded? Europe has always walked a sort of balancing act. Obviously, the transatlantic alliance has been very strong and important.

12:21Europe has not always been the weaker part of that equation. It's quite happy to co-opt US power when it's in its own interest to do so. And clearly, under the Cold War, having US military assets in Europe was of a great benefit. Things like the Marshall Program were essential to kind of post-war European recovery. And so Europe was very happy to take that. I think we saw under Thatcher Reagan's bombing of Granada, there was some shock that, you know, the United States didn't inform European powers and particularly Britain of what it was going to do there. So it's sometimes taken by surprise in these actions, but all it can do is protest diplomatically.

12:58I think it's true that that codependence has become sometimes a reliance on US military technologies. And I think that perhaps is a concern for the British military, that Trump's fickle and we can't always rely overly on them. I think it's interesting in terms of how Russia will respond to this. I think it plays into Putin's hands in the sense that the more that Trump magnifies the United States involvement in other parts of the world, the more he'll be inclined to continue to see Ukraine as a distraction. And he may just try and wash his hands of it. What comes next, particularly as regards Greenland, but also somewhere like Cuba, strikes me as being particularly interesting in the immediate future.

13:40Cuba's very vulnerable now. I would be worried if I was in Cuba. A little hot and cold, the difference in languages between Marco Rubio and Donald Trump at the minute on Cuba. Rubio is a bit more hawkish around it. And I think there are some elements of his background that perhaps explain that. He's much more of a Reaganite from that kind of faction of the Republican Party and is more comfortable with the kind of assertion of US power in its immediate backyard in that way. Trump did his usual thing of being quite bellicose on the one hand in a later interview, rowing back and sort of saying, it's a failed government, it'll fall on its own anyway.

14:13I think that it's likely they'll give it a prod if that's to happen. Quite what the end game there is, it is intriguing, but it's red meat to that wing of the Republican Party, especially in Florida. I'd be worried about Colombia, whether they'll attempt the same thing again, I'm not sure. The kind of element of surprise on that is gone now. But it might well be about manoeuvring the United States into a position to negotiate there. Greenland is curious. What I thought was happening at the beginning of the administration was a pivot towards a kind of polar diplomacy or a kind of Arctic diplomacy.

14:47It seems to become wrapped up in a much bigger geostrategic sense that Trump perhaps sees the world in terms of three great powers and it's Russia, China and the United States. And it's quite clear from the documents coming out of Washington that Europe is no longer viewed as a as a priority, perhaps no longer even the kind of ally that they want it to be. and that by hook or by crook, they're going to get something out of Greenland. Whether that's access to minerals or an expansion of US military capability there, I'm not quite sure that Denmark allows independence and then Trump uses that moment to kind of maneuver the United States into a more favorable position.

15:27It's a possibility. But I think his rhetoric is probably pushing Greenland a bit closer to that alliance with Denmark. And it may be kind of now counterproductive for Trump to keep kind of bringing Greenland up in the discussion. But I don't know. I find it hard to predict what exactly will be the outcome for Greenland. Let's just finish where we started with the Monroe Doctrine. When this doctrine was enacted, 1823-24, Monroe himself, a president, precious few people this side of the Atlantic will have heard of. But this was a time of westward expansion. It was the time of talking about manifest destiny.

15:59It was all these concepts that are so tied up with what it is to be American and the American dream and so on. And I'm wondering if that in part is playing a role in this desire for a return to the good old days where America was the dominant power. I think that's a powerful part of the appeal of America first and make America great again. Yeah, return to ideas of a kind of Christian republic, which might unite what happened in Venezuela with what happened in Nigeria over the holidays as well. A return to, if not unipolar kind of power, certainly kind of American hegemony over other great powers.

16:37A restoration of the esteem of American military power, which has taken some bruising hits recently and which Trump has been explicit about in terms of being dragged into kind of forever wars. has eroded the kind of cachet of American hard power and that this type of surgical strike, which is always pronounced successful, as it was in the case of Iran, which leads to few casualties, but seems to achieve a great deal. It might be one way of restoring esteem in that vision of America. And the appeal of the United States being dominant in the hemisphere, yeah, is an echo of that earlier period. Way back at his inauguration, he was talking about William McKinley, which at the time really surprised me.

17:18But we're back at that moment of high tariff diplomacy of America asserting itself in the hemisphere. So McKinley is the president in the wars of 1898 when the United States annexes the Philippines and takes Puerto Rico and occupies Cuba and takes Guantanamo Bay. So there is that sort of sense that the 1890s have become perhaps one of the touchstones in that make America great again. kind of rhetoric, which is sort of so frustrating in its vagueness, and so frustrating because it seems to have that power. But it's emerging that the 1890s, in terms of foreign policy, are seen as a kind of touchstone for Trump, which is intriguing.

17:55You might well be right that that's the appeal of the Monroe Doctrine. It establishes a continuity over time with values that are seen as uncontroversial to Trump and his allies. Steve, great to talk to you. Thanks so much for your time. No, thank you. thanks very much for listening you can find out the very latest on venezuela cuba greenland and the rest of it over on the website skynews.com we're back again soon