Why Trump’s Venezuela action is criminal
Published
by
Richard Kuper
JVL Introduction
David French writes in the New York Times on 5th Jan that “Trump Is Unleashing Forces Beyond His Control”.
This view from the centre right is clear about the illegality of Trump’s abduction of Nicolás Maduro, arguing that this return to gunboat diplomacy “violated every principle of just war”.
Thanks to MJ Rosenberg for picking this up and reposting extracts in his Substack column.
RK
This article was originally published by MJ Rosenberg's Substack on Mon 5 Jan 2026. Read the original here.
The best argument I've seen on why Venezuela action is criminal
From a conservative NY Times columnist
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The USA and Israel should be excluded from the UN, and the UN reconstituted. And I am sick to death of people extolling a western notion of ‘democracy’ that excludes Russia and China, and falls for the propaganda that ‘the west’ always indulges in when it is preparing for ‘regime change’ operations.
This seems to me self-congratulatory bunkum. The West – and the US in particular – pays lip-service to just-war theory and has found any number of pretexts to attack other countries, from Korea and Guatemala to Iraq and Libya. On the other hand, the theocrats in Iran have never waged an offensive war, and China has not bombed anyone since the late Seventies. In what respects do the US and its vassals, Britain and France, comply with the UN Charter and international law and Russia and China do not? (And if you point to Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, fine – but at least it had a plausible claim that Ukraine’s accession to Nato would have posed an existential threat. The US illegally invaded Iraq 19 years earlier, on the most specious of pretexts, it trashed the country – and still refuses to remove all its troops!)
“This argument recognizes that the world order doesn’t depend on every great power for its existence, but it does depend on the greatest power: the United States. Put another way, our national commitment to Aquinas keeps Clausewitz at bay.”
USA national commitment to Aquinas! what a complete load of b******s. ‘The gunboat diplomacy of the Gilded Age’, the dithering and procrastinating over ‘boots on the ground’ in both world wars, the illegal wars in Vietnam (Cambodia, Laos) Afghanistan, Iraq… covert missions in Central/South America
I think that if Trump opts to ‘strike’ Colombia, Cuba… his back yard, the ‘international community’ will suck it up. If he threatens Greenland/Denmark with use of military force for ‘strategic’ reasons i.e. to deter to Russia and its ambitions in the same theatre… he will have gone too far and Congress will demand a say, and will vote against armed incursion. Which leaves Trump to negotiate with Denmark/Greenland over access to their rare earth/minerals, and significantly expand the US military base presence on Greenland as a deterrent to Russian overtures in that ‘theatre’. That is the most likely outcome IMHO. By the time the ink dries on this Reply Russia will have comprehensively said Nyet to any ceasefire with Ukraine, and repeated its NYET to any ‘NATO’ boots on the ground. Trump will resile from his agreement to ‘back up’ the ‘coalition of the willing’. US support to Ukraine in terms of military intelligence will take a knock, maybe a knock-out blow, with the odious Musk back in favour with The White House. China is keeping its powder dry; it will be underwhelmed by the US snaffling the crude oil output that Venezuela had earmark for them. It will have to source oil from… Russia? Middle East? The oil Majors in the US are not falling over each other
[cut to our limit of 300 words – admin]