For years before becoming president, Donald Trump publicly criticized the George W. Bush administration over its decision to start the Iraq war. Nevertheless, today, in his second term as president, he finds himself presiding over a military debacle reminiscent of the Bush administration.
Under flimsy claims of national security, President Trump ordered military intervention to remove a hostile foreign leader for access to the country’s oil. In both cases, there is a naive confidence that the United States can easily achieve its goals through regime change. The US intervention in Venezuela has a whiff of the same hubris surrounding the invasion of Iraq two decades ago.
However, there are also important differences to consider. The most important feature of the operation in Venezuela is the lack of a comprehensive vision. After President Trump finished an hour-long press conference with his defense and state secretaries on Saturday, it was unclear what plans he had for Venezuela going forward, or whether they even had any plans at all. His statements threatening further attacks in the days that followed also did not bring clarity.
Past examples of U.S.-led regime change fit into the larger ideological vision of the incumbent U.S. commander-in-chief. In 1823, President James Monroe declared the Western Hemisphere off-limits to European colonialism. As the United States strengthened its sphere of influence throughout the Americas over the course of the 20th century, the Monroe Doctrine justified various interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Cold War provided new justification for the United States to overthrow leftist regimes and establish friendly governments in the Americas.
After the Cold War ended, President George H.W. Bush sought to serve as steward of a “new world order” in which the United States emerged as the world’s sole superpower. When President Bush sent troops to Somalia in 1992 and his successor, President Bill Clinton, reversed a military coup in Haiti in 1994, they did so under the paradigm of “humanitarian intervention.” When George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, it was done under the umbrella of the post-9/11 “war on terror.” When President Barack Obama intervened against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s forces in 2011, he acted on the basis of the “responsibility to protect” principle regarding civilians at risk.
However, in the case of the US attack on Venezuela, there was no ideological justification. Mr. Trump and his team have haphazardly tossed around references to humanitarianism and counterterrorism to justify the attacks. The president even brought up the Monroe Doctrine. But when he appeared to base his foreign policy on a larger ideology, albeit one borrowed from two centuries earlier, he made fun of the concept.
“The Monroe Doctrine is a big problem,” President Trump explained Saturday. “But we’ve largely, significantly replaced it. They now call it the Don Roe doctrine.” Trump didn’t make up this pun. The term was used by the New York Post a year ago to describe President Trump’s aggressive foreign policy, including threats to annex Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal.
The president’s decision to adopt tongue-in-cheek language points to the disturbing reality of his foreign policy. The idea that the president is promoting an ideological vision is a joke.
The truth is that Trump is pursuing an increasingly aggressive and militaristic foreign policy in his second term, not because he wants to impose a grand vision but because he realizes he can get away with it.
Attacking various foreign “bad guys” with little ability to fight back, namely the Nigerian ISIL (ISIS) affiliate that is “persecuting” Christians and “narco-terrorists” in Latin America, appeals to members of Trump’s base.
After mentioning the Venezuelan gang Torren de Aragua at a press conference on Saturday, he spent several minutes bragging about US military intervention in the city. The president’s inability to stay on topic may be alarming to those who question his health and mental sanity, but at least as far as the president is concerned, this diversion into domestic politics had some connection to the intervention in Venezuela. The president’s increasing militarization of drugs and crime abroad justifies his increasing militarization of drugs and crime at home.
Presidents have used the power of the United States to pursue different ideologies and principles. President Trump appears to be paying lip service to past ideologies to justify the use of American force. Time and time again, the “good intentions” of past presidents paved the way for hellish outcomes for the people who were on the receiving end of US intervention. But these intentions at least created a degree of predictability and coherence in the foreign policies of various U.S. administrations.
Mr. Trump, by contrast, appears to be driven solely by immediate political concerns and short-term prospects for glory and profit. The silver lining to such unprincipled foreign policy may be the temporary nature of interventions carried out without an overarching vision. An unprincipled approach to military intervention does not foster the ideological commitments that have led other presidents to engage in long-term interventions such as the occupation of Iraq.
But it also means that President Trump could use military intervention to resolve international disputes or pursue ostensible interests, such as wresting control of Greenland from Denmark.
Last year, he decided that tariffs were a powerful tool to assert his interests and began applying them almost indiscriminately to allies and enemies alike. President Trump has become accustomed to using the U.S. military to achieve a variety of objectives, including profit, gunboat diplomacy, and distraction from domestic scandals, and the danger is that his use of force will be similarly haphazard.
This does not bode well for the United States or the rest of the world. At a time when multiple global crises such as climate, conflict, and poverty are converging, the last thing the world needs is a trigger-happy superpower without a clear strategy or plan for the next day.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
