Barely a week after President Donald Trump sent the US military to launch air strikes in Nigeria on Christmas Day last year, he dispatched US forces to Venezuela to capture President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cicilia Flores, both handcuffed, blindfolded and shipped to the US. President Trump justified the air strikes in Nigeria on the need to protect Christians against Islamist-led genocidal attacks and defended the invasion of Venezuela on the imperative to end state-led narco-terrorism. Indeed, the US government later charged President Maduro in a New York court for drug-trafficking, which he denied.
Both the military intervention in Nigeria and the invasion of Venezuela were widely condemned as blatant violations of international law, particularly the Venezuela invasion because it involved regime change. However, what the condemnations omit is that such interventions have become the new normal in the international system. And, truth be told, there are circumstances where they are right, but there are circumstances where they are utterly wrong. In that respect, we can view America’s invasion of Venezuela from “right” and “wrong” perspectives. But where would that analysis lead us?
Well, let’s start with the “right” perspective! The basic rule on sovereignty is that no country should forcibly interfere in the internal affairs of another. Every sovereign state should respect the independence of every other sovereign state. Under the act of state doctrine, the government of one country should not sit in judgement on the acts of the government of another done within its own territory. Taken to its logical conclusion, the doctrine implies that even if a country is massacring its own people, other countries should not interfere simply because the brutal act “is done within its own territory”. But that defies moral logic and is thus utterly untenable.
Indeed, the untenability of the act of state doctrine became indisputable after the Rwandan genocide of 1994 when the Hutu extremist-led government oversaw the massacres of nearly one million Rwandan Tutsis in a genocide perpetrated by the majority Hutus, while the international community looked on and did nothing. After that heart-wrenching genocide, a scar on the conscience of the world, the international community became sensitive to any whiff of humanitarian catastrophe in any country and foreign intervention became justified to prevent or stop such acts of barbaric dehumanisation.
For instance, in 2015, amid apocalyptic predictions that the high-stakes presidential election could lead to widespread violence and possible disintegration of Nigeria, the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom actively intervened in the election, ensuring it was relatively free and fair, and prevailing on the two leading candidates, President Goodluck Jonathan and General Muhammadu Buhari, to rein in their war-mongering supporters. The world simply couldn’t watch Nigeria descend into a conflagration in 2015, especially having seen how, four years earlier, during the 2011 presidential poll, nearly 1,000 people died in post-election violence. It would be naïve to invoke the act of state doctrine to argue against direct foreign involvement in those circumstances.
“Whatever the “right” of foreign intervention discussed above, the unlawful capture of Venezuela’s natural resources and the colonisation of the country, turning it into a US vassal state, make the invasion utterly wrong.”
Which brings us back to Venezuela. Hardly anyone should shed tears for Maduro. He presided over a despotic regime, plundered his country and destroyed its polity. In 2023, he banned Maria Machado, recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, from running for president even though she won a sweeping victory in an opposition primary. Machado then endorsed Edmundo Gonzalez, a retired diplomat, to run in her place. But although Gonzalez won a landslide victory, Maduro claimed he was the victor. With the security forces under his control, and the subordination of the courts giving him legal domination, Maduro had absolute power and was brutal. Under him, opposition leaders fled the country as did millions of Venezuelans. Sovereignty and the act of state doctrine can’t justify keeping him in power: the Venezuelan people are better off without him!
Of course, for legitimacy, foreign military interventions should be UN-authorised rather than undertaken unilaterally. However, the UN would never authorise the forcible removal of a despotic leader, simply because China and Russia, two of the five veto-carrying members of the UN Security Council, would veto such authorisation. For instance, China and Russia would never have supported the forcible removal of Maduro, their long-standing ally, despite his chronic villainy.
But that leads us to the anther doctrine, the Monroe Doctrine, invoked in the Venezuela invasion. In 1823, President James Monroe warned Europe not to interfere in America’s “backyard”, referring to the western hemisphere, a metonym for the Americas. The Monroe Doctrine implies that the US would exert exclusive influence over countries in the western hemisphere, as stressed in the US national security strategy of 2025. But, let’s face it, the Monroe Doctrine is not limited to the US. Every regional power practises it in one form of another.
For instance, when President Tinubu tried to send Nigerian soldiers to reverse a military coup in Niger Republic and when he actually sent the military to abort a coup in Benin Republic, he was invoking a version of the Monroe Doctrine. Put simply, Tinubu was saying that Niger and Benin are Nigeria’s neighbours and that Nigeria, for its strategic stability, would not allow certain things to happen in those countries. Thus, based on the Monroe Doctrine, President Trump is entitled to protect America’s “backyard”, where failing to do so could harm the US’s national security.
However, the foregoing is where the “right” ends and the “wrong” begins. President Trump’s invasion of Venezuela is utterly wrong for two fundamental reasons. First, the invasion was not to stop narco-terrorism or to pursue moral causes, such as preserving democracy in Venezuela and protecting the human and civil rights of Venezuelans. Rather, it was mainly to capture Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world. Second, it smacks of retro imperialism for President Trump to say that America would “run” Venezuela for the foreseeable future. Whatever the “right” of foreign intervention discussed above, the unlawful capture of Venezuela’s natural resources and the colonisation of the country, turning it into a US vassal state, make the invasion utterly wrong.
Think about it. President Trump said: “US oil companies would take over Venezuela’s oil sector” and “oil sales would be done by the US government and proceeds deposited in bank accounts controlled by the US government.” He then added: “We are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.” Really? In the 21st century?
That’s not the Monroe Doctrine, it is, as Trump cavalierly dubbed it, the “Donroe Doctrine”, naming it after himself. Unlike the Monroe Doctrine, the Donroe Doctrine is about hemispheric hegemony, aimed at capturing other nations’ natural resources and territories. Trump himself put it thus: “The future will be determined by the ability to protect commerce and territory and resources that are core natural resources.” As a result, many countries are in Trump’s crosshairs, including Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark. “We need it,” he said, threatening to annex it by force.
This might be the right world, and Trump sees countries as either strong or weak: He respects and tolerates strong countries but patronises and bullies weak ones. Yet, in a Trumpian world governed by force, America will only be feared but not loved, and its coercive and self-seeking foreign interventions will always be wrong. That’s why Trump’s invasion of Venezuela is wrong, despite the rightness of Maduro’s capture and removal from power!
