There is something of a déjà vu about Donald Trump’s brutal attack on Venezuela. It is a place we already know, we have been there before. A story we have heard before: in Afghanistan, to arrest Bin Laden and bring democracy (neither of which happened); in Iraq, to find weapons of mass destruction, which were never found; in Libya, the marines went in to protect civilians and ended up with 30,000 dead and the collapse of the Libyan state. They told us stories, the excuse for the plundering of oil, but they never fooled us. Will they do so now?
I declare my solidarity with the Venezuelan people in defence of their sovereignty, not only out of lack of empathy for the illegal and criminal aggression of the Trump administration against the Caribbean country, but also because failing to speak out against the violations and narratives of the American far right against Venezuela will take its toll on us, too, on this side of the Atlantic.
To argue this point, I draw on Walden Bello’s analysis of the American far right: “It is about rebuilding what Trump and his followers consider to be the damaged core of the empire. Trump considers Latin America to be within his sphere of influence. His comments on Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal and the Gulf of Mexico reflect this shift in priorities to focus on the American continent.” What the Filipino thinker highlights is already commonplace in the debate on geopolitics, namely that Trump and the MAGA movement consider Latin America and the Caribbean to be their colonies.
In the same report, Bello accurately describes Trump and the billionaire class to which he belongs as characters with a “Napoleonic complex”, whose mission is to repair “the damaged core of the empire” in a supremacist, authoritarian and appallingly egotistical manner. That is why I argue that opposing the illegal attack, the plundering of resources, the kidnapping of a head of state and the threats of invasion of Venezuela is an act that goes beyond solidarity. It has to do with the defence of reason, understood as our ability to say “no” to the status quo, as the power to imagine an order different from the existing one. It has to do with not accepting a return to “hard power,” which is all that remains for them in a world that questions and dethrones them.
The world Donald Trump is leading us into is a military dystopia without rules and without rights.
‘Hard power’ put into words is what we heard at the US president’s press conference to justify his attack on Venezuela: it crossed so many boundaries that a new word will be needed to define it. What Trump did at his press conference was to show contempt for international law; an outrage against the law in his own country; the sublimation of violence; acting as master of the world (via the military) by announcing that the US will intervene in any country it wants; announcing the plundering of another country’s resources by declaring them its own because it can; making accusations without evidence; defending his right to kidnap people if he wants to; threatening elected governors and mayors in his own country with sending in the National Guard; deciding who governs a country, making it clear that he does not care what the citizens think; threatening other countries (up to four other countries were threatened in his speech)…
How can this be described? Tyranny is the word used by the American left, and yet, in my view, the most frightening thing was the speech by his Minister of War, Pete Hegseth, who basically spoke of Donald Trump as the Supreme Leader, that is, someone whose word is law. What Trump did in his appearance was to legitimise a coup d’état in a sovereign country, announce a plunder, threaten other countries and the American people themselves, but what his Minister of War did was simply to render democracy and the law, both international and his own, irrelevant.
Does anyone believe that Trump bombed Caracas and kidnapped the president of Venezuela for democracy or peace? Does anyone believe that the Cartel de los Soles, a cartel that does not exist, was the reason for the brutal aggression? Of course not, no one believes it, and that is what makes it even more terrible: the proof that the acceptance of Trump’s discourse is not due to deception but is voluntary. Voluntary servitude, as Étienne La Boétie would say.
Even The New York Times has been harsher on the attack on Venezuela than the European foreign ministries; at least the New York newspaper described the attack as illegal and senseless, making it clear that it also violates the US Constitution itself. In the height of voluntary servitude, Trump has just reiterated his desire to annex Greenland, and European protests are so timid that they remain mere whispers. Perhaps they do not want to cause any trouble.
What the European elites are doing is learning to play by new rules, keeping quiet, nodding or looking the other way, as they do with the genocide in Gaza, to see how to position themselves and seek profits. But there are none. They are wrong. The world Donald Trump is leading us into is a military dystopia without rules and without rights.
That is why we must firmly oppose the attack on Venezuela, because if we let Trump win, the message he sends is that there is no international law, that there is no democracy and that all we are left with is vassalage. What I mean is that this is not only against Venezuela, it is against all of us.
I defend solidarity with Venezuela because I know that when imperialism talks about rights, it is misusing the word.
Marga Ferré is President of transform! europe and Co-President of The Foundation for Critical Studies / Fundación de Estudios Críticos FEC (Formerly Foundation for a Citizens’ Europe / Fundación por la Europa de los Ciudadanos), Spain.
transform! europe is a network of 38 European organisations from 22 countries, active in the field of political education and critical scientific analysis, and is the recognised political foundation corresponding to the Party of the European Left (EL).
This cooperative project of independent non-profit organisations, institutes, foundations, and individuals intends to use its work in contributing to peaceful relations among peoples and a transformation of the present world.
