YOU have to hand it to President Trump. Where other presidents have exercised power in the world discreetly, he grabs a bullhorn and boasts of the US’s capacity to do what it likes in the world.
Barack Obama, you may be surprised to know, during his term in office conducted wars in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in Libya. He used air strikes and ‘special forces’ in Syria and Yemen; drones were used to strike parts of Pakistan and Somalia.The US assisted counter terrorism in the Philippines and Uganda during Obama’s time.
Trump has gone one better. He has applied sanctions on Venezuelan oil exports and blocked Venezuela’s access to banking and international finance.There are many who consider this kind of intervention a breach of international law – which means Trump like his friend Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal.
But in recent days Trump’s brazenness has been off the chart. You don’t need a degree in political science to know that the arrest and removal of President Nicolás Maduro was a war crime. What else could you call it? Imagine if China or Russia were to seize the Irish President, or the French President, or the Italian, and bring them to a Chinese or Russian jail – we would all be appalled, and rightly. This is international kidnapping which violates state integrity and human rights law.
It’s not as if we didn’t see the Trump move coming. In late 2025, strikes by the US military on Venezuelan boats resulted in the death of at least 95 Venezuelans. Trump brushed aside criticism of these killings by insisting the boats were carrying drugs.
But present events are rooted in events decades back. When Hugo Chavez was elected president in 1998, it was seen as the start of a ‘Bolivarian Revolution’. The new President formed alliances with Cuba, Russia, China and Iran. Between 2003 and 2012 the poverty rate dropped from 50% of the population to less than 30%. He used oil money to open free clinics, to provide food subsidies. He expanded literacy programmes, especially in poorer areas.
After Chavez’s death, Maduro was elected by the Venezuelan people. Unfortunately, oil prices fell, he hadn’t the funding to continue what Chavez had begun, and so Venezuela’s situation worsened.
How did the US react to all this? It was hostile to Venezuela, as it has always been hostile to any South American country which would dare to manage its own resources and which looked to Russia or China rather than the US for alliances.
Trump’s followers in the US were delighted by the US President’s recognition of the leader of the Venezuelan opposition, rather than Maduro, its elected president. They were delighted when the US in recent days kidnapped Maduro and his wife and brought them to a detention centre in Brooklyn. They have been further heartened by Trump’s declaration that he/the US would "run" Venezuela and hold power in Venezuela until a “judicious transition” can happen. Oh, yes – and the US will seize Venezuela’s massive oil reserves.
I want to thank President Trump for having come clean. He sees a South American country acting in ways that don’t suit the US, so he moves in and removes the country’s president and jails him in Brooklyn, where he will be judged on whatever sins the US figures he’s committed.
If you disliked your neighbour and broke into his house, kidnapped the owner and his wife, and declared you were going to run his house and seize all his possession and make them your own, what would you call that? Well, that’s what Donald Trump has done on an international stage. The reaction to these international crimes by other states, including the South of Ireland, will show whether international law is worth two balls of roasted snow.
