Venezuela: the old world order falls apart

The abject refusal of prime minister Keir Starmer to offer even the mildest of criticism of the unprovoked attack on Venezuela by US special forces, confirms the rapid descent into international lawlessness, where might is right and anything goes.  

A human rights lawyer earlier in life, Starmer is essentially Donald Trump’s lapdog. He doesn’t even have to be told what to do – the PM simply knows that upsetting the US president by referring to established international law the UN charter, is simply not on.

So, out of the window go sets of rules, agreements and laws that have held bourgeois democracy together since the end of World War II. In comes the takeover of sovereign states by the world’s most prominent capitalist power.

Trump now says he ‘runs’ Venezuela and that US oil companies will decide what happens to that country’s resources. Other countries, including Cuba and Colombia, as well as Greenland, have been threatened with the same fate. As to the US Congress, they weren’t consulted about Venezuela as they were supposed to be under the constitution, which Trump has trampled under foot.

This is proto fascism in action, pure and simple.

Nicolás Maduro ran a brutal, authoritarian, corrupt regime, supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and using false flag ships to export oil to unsavoury regimes. A US-led blockade worsened conditions for many. But his rule was always Venezuela’s problem, first and foremost.

For Starmer to imply that Maduro’s abduction was OK because he was an ‘illegitimate’ president, is a denial of Venezuela’s right to self-determination, to sort out its own future without foreign intervention. Some might consider Starmer lacks legitimacy, for example, but that cannot be made into an excuse for his forcible removal by a foreign power.

Maduro’s appearance in a New York court charged with ‘narco-terrorism’ is equally hypocrisy of the first order. Trump has just pardoned the former president of Honduras, who was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 45 years in jail by a US court.

The US has rejected any plans for new elections in Venezuela and imposed its own viceroy in the shape of Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state. Opposition leaders have been studiously ignored. The abduction of Maduro, therefore, has nothing to do with restoring democracy in Venezuela and, instead, resembles a corporate takeover, with most of the old board of directors in Caracas remaining in place to do the White House’s bidding.

Starmer is not alone in his mealy-mouthed comments which indicate he is awaiting the “full facts” about Trump’s abduction of Maduro. Other European leaders have also sat on the fence, not wanting to enrage Trump.

While Starmer and his cabinet run scared of their own shadows, Emily Thornberry, chair of the foreign affairs select committee and a former human rights lawyer,  who was kept out of Labour’s cabinet after the 2024 election for being too independent, said the UK and its allies should collectively say “we cannot have breaches of international law like this. We cannot have the law of the jungle.” Thornberry added: “We condemn Putin for doing it. We need to make clear that Donald Trump shouldn’t be doing it either. People just can’t do whatever they want. I mean, we really can’t have a kind of international anarchy.”

Oliver Stuenkel an analyst of international affairs at Fundação Getulio Vargas, a Brazilian university said it was a “completely new age”. He explained:  “Trump doesn’t say he wants to bring democracy. It’s petro imperialism. Latin American policy elites are slowly grasping that it would be a mistake to believe that just because Maduro is a dictator, that other countries that are democratic would be safe from the United States.”

Or Russia and China, we should add, who will feel emboldened by Trump’s adventure to continue the war against Ukraine and in Beijing’s case, to plot the forcible incorporation of Taiwan into an entity which is a ‘people’s republic’ in name only.

Driving the disintegration of the old world order and its replacement by arbitrary, authoritarian state rule on both sides of the Atlantic (the banning in the UK of Palestine Action as a terrorist group, for example), is a global economy in dire straits. A new financial crash is brewing, fuelled by unsustainable levels of state and corporate debt. Unemployment is growing quickly in the UK as the Labour government grows more unpopular by the day.

At the heart of Washington’s threat to Greenland and the cutting of oil supplies from Venezuela to China, are the rare minerals that are critical to the development of AI technology which is supposed to lead to a new golden age for capitalism. China has them in abundance and the world’s greatest reserves. It’s also stealing a march on the US in the development of AI. Blocking oil destined for China is, therefore, part of a US-led trade war aimed at disrupting Beijing’s economy.

You don’t need to be a genius to understand that the law of unintended consequences is now very much active. When does a trade war threaten to become a shooting war, for example? Will Putin act to defend shadow tankers? What happens when and if China attacks Taiwan? Will European states continue to defy Trump’s threat to annex Greenland? What will Trump do if the Republicans look like losing Congress to the Democrats in the mid-term elections later this year?

Imposing dictatorships and neo-colonial land/resources grabs will not simply go without a reaction from masses of people in both the major capitalist states and developing nations as the new world disorder unfolds with dire consequences for living standards and democratic rights.

The ‘new age’ referred to by Vargas clearly embraces the breakdown of the process and practice of ‘liberal democracy’, where states and governments of all stripes were expected to do their best for their citizens, abide by the rule of law and international treaties. Corporate and political power are now all but indistinguishable, giving rise to the emergence of right-wing led populist parties like Reform cashing in on widespread discontent and rejection of traditional politics.

No amount of voting for this or that party can, by itself, halt what is clearly an irreversible trend and  a new period of world history. We desperately need to consider alternative forms of power that are truly democratic, with control over resources and the direction of the country in the hands of ordinary people organised in bodies such as popular assemblies in place of shareholders and hedge funds. Time is of the essence as the old order is collapsing before our eyes and cannot be put back together again.