Irony of ironies, I was re-reading Hans Morgenthau’s “Politics Among Nations,” a classic text of international relations realism, when the United States snatched Nicolás Maduro from his living quarters. Morgenthau famously asserts that the national interest is defined in terms of power, which is control over others. The pursuit of national interest, then, is the pursuit of power: keeping it, maintaining it and displaying it.
Certainly the “display” part was on full exhibit during the raid, with a wide variety of military instruments used in the brief extraction, from the Delta Force to Sentinel drones to the USS Iwo Jima, and everything in between. While billed as the new Monroe Doctrine, or “Don-roe Doctrine,” it was actually more a resurrection of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which Teddy Roosevelt articulated in 1904 to justify U.S. intervention in the domestic affairs of its Latin American neighbors. This corollary was used often during the mid- to late-20th century, and, arguably, did not achieve more than short-term gains accompanied by immense misery for the populations involved.
Trump has put a new twist on such intervention, however. In the 20th century, the United States would undermine and try to depose regimes it felt were ideological enemies. Trump, on the other hand, may have cut a deal with those under Maduro; various sources are asserting that Delcy Rodriguez, the vice president, and her powerful brother, Jorge, had been in talks with the Trump administration for months to oust Maduro. Noteworthy is that for decades Rodriguez, now sworn in as acting president, has been part of the Chavez/Maduro regime, which can only be described as authoritarian socialist in its political orientation. A Rodriguez government is still a Chavista government.
But it’s a new world, I guess, and such ideological differences are no longer as important to a transactional leader like Donald Trump. If Delcy Rodriguez toes the line, she can apparently stay in power despite her full participation in an anti-capitalist narco-state regime. More to the point, as Morgenthau would tell you, was a vivid and impressive display of national power that reasserted the status quo of American policy in Latin America. That status quo had certainly been slipping in Venezuela over the years, and drugs and criminal migrants headed to the United States were, arguably, not the main worry. We can see this by counting the number of actors discomfited by Trump’s strike, including China, Iran, Russia and Cuba. Morgenthau, the arch realist, would approve of lessening or even severing Venezuela’s ties to all of these countries.
Maduro’s personal security detail was manned by Cuban soldiers. In fact, 32 of the reported 40 soldiers killed on the ground during Maduro’s capture were Cuban. This type of security support, as well as medical support, was offered in return for effectively free oil from Venezuela; about half of Cuba’s oil imports are from that country. Given that a condition Trump must have imposed on Rodriguez is a cessation of that tie, Cuba finds itself in a very bad position. It was in sad economic shape before Trump acted, and now it’s unclear how the regime will survive what follows.
As for Russia, its small military training contingent is likely to be sent packing. All that Russian military equipment Venezuela owns, including Sukhoi fighter jets and air defense systems, now look like yesterday’s news. And given there was virtually no air defense during the raid, that’s also a blow to Russia’s prestige as an arms dealer of choice for countries like Venezuela: those were Russian air defense systems that went silent.
What Venezuelan oil was under contract to go to Russia at the time of the raid is now, of course, in limbo. On the bright side, Russia will no doubt make hay with the Trump Doctrine of “spheres of influence” now on display in Venezuela, which justifies Russia’s own intervention in its near abroad, such as in Ukraine.
Iran currently has bigger problems than its loss of Venezuela as an ally, but even so, the move by Trump must hurt. Iran actually constructed a drone production facility in Venezuela and sent fast-attack boats and anti-ship missiles for coastal defense against the U.S. to the Maduro regime. Iran also brought Hezbollah with it, and that terrorist organization has set up shop in the inland border regions, as well as Margarita Island. All of these assets are now under threat of removal.
China has several levels of regret. It, too, suffered a blow to its prestige, as an official delegation of the Chinese government was in Caracas at the time the raid went down. More significantly, the United States has been frustrated by Chinese monopoly of Venezuelan rare earth minerals; their extraction and refinement have been controlled by the Chinese to date. Venezuela has sizable deposits, and with the U.S. facing Chinese export restrictions on these minerals, the new modus vivendi between the U.S. and Venezuela will sever Chinese ability to control America’s access to the minerals it needs to power its defense and tech industries.
While China is less dependent on Venezuelan oil than it was in the past, any crimp in that flow will still hurt in terms of the past loans-for-oil deals it struck with Venezuela, though it must be noted that Trump promised that current contracts would be honored. Future contracts, on the other hand, will no longer look useful to either country.
But there’s also another source of dismay for China. Trump’s raid reinvigorates the dollar basis of the global economy in a way China had not been anticipating. With Venezuela holding the largest oil reserves in the world, even surpassing Saudi Arabia, its choice to sell its oil for the Chinese currency, the renminbi, was an immense threat to the dominance of the dollar as a reserve currency. If Venezuela could function without the dollar, China would be able to establish an alternative currency market that does not privilege the power of the United States, which would shift global power decidedly in China’s favor. After Trump’s raid, however, expect Venezuela to return to dealing in dollars; China’s move has been checked for the time being.
Legal scholars are currently embroiled in fierce debates over whether Trump’s raid violated international law or not. If the rule-based international order is dead, however — and I’d argue it died in 2014 with the Russian invasion of Crimea after decades of near-death — then the issue is moot. We are firmly ensconced back in the world of Realpolitik, where the assessment of a foreign policy does not depend on its moral or legal standing, but rather whether it serves the pursuit of the national interest in terms of power.
Morgenthau, at least, would approve of what he would see as a master stroke against four enemies by the United States. The rest of us simply hope the people of Venezuela will actually benefit from the ouster of Maduro. Realists, including Morgenthau, are notoriously silent concerning the ramifications of realist foreign policy for human welfare.