Trump and the law of the jungle

Donald Trump’s unilateral decision to strike Venezuela and capture the country’s president is wrong because it makes a mockery of international law.

It is only an international rules-based order that keeps the powerful in check, recognises the sovereignty of nations, and protects everyone from the chaos that can ensue if that barrier is breached. It has been a precept of the international world order since after the Second World War that power must be restrained by rules otherwise it degenerates into tyranny. When rules are disregarded; when checks and balances are neutralised; when it becomes OK for the powerful to do as they please; when violence becomes an acceptable first line of attack; it is the defenceless and the weak who end up on the losing end. Unfortunately, what we have been witnessing over the past years is a world order being torn up with relative ease by the powerful.

We’ve witnessed Vladimir Putin invade Ukraine and we’ve seen Israel perpetrate genocide in Gaza. We’ve seen China increasingly carrying out menacing military exercises around Taiwan. We now have Trump joining this coterie of misfits.

This should be of concern for Europeans, who have always considered the US a key ally and cherished the ideal that the rule of law is a basic tenant of democracy and a measure of basic decency.

This is what informs this leader’s deep concern over the US strikes on Venezuela and the subsequent capture of President Nicolas Maduro. We harbour no sympathy for the Venezuelan president and his oppressive regime, which has put millions of Venezuelans in misery.

But irrespective of whether Maduro is a dictator, the rule of law should not be applied selectively. No country has the right to unilaterally decide who governs or who should not govern another sovereign state without first submitting itself to lawful processes such as seeking a UN mandate or seeking an extradition. Indeed, Trump even ignored his own congress.

The justifications being floated for the US action are feeble, to say the least. Trump did not intervene in Venezuela’s affairs because he cares about freedom or democracy there. Indeed, Maduro may have been removed but the rest of the regime’s infrastructure remains intact. This was not about liberating the Venezuelan people but an act of bullying to decapitate the snake but leaving its body alive. It was a move to ensure that who comes after Maduro plays to Trump’s tune, giving the US access to the country’s massive oil reserves.

The official justification that Maduro is a narco-terrorist and was wanted by the US for aiding and abetting drug trafficking, falters on the altar of credibility. Maduro may truly be all that the US is accusing him of, even though a US intelligence report last year found no evidence linking Maduro to drug traffickers, but his capture is hypocritical in light of the decision Trump took just a few weeks ago to pardon the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez.

In 2024, Hernandez was found guilty by an American court of conspiring with drug traffickers and using his position in government to support the shipment of cocaine into the US. Hernandez was sentenced to 45 years in prison by an American judge on charges that were pretty much the same as those Maduro is facing.

But 18 months later, Trump pardoned Hernandez and justified his decision by stating that the former Honduran president was “treated very harshly and unfairly.” So much so for consistency in the battle against narco-terrorism.

This is not how democratic societies are meant to behave and if we normalise it and accept it, we might as well dump international law and embrace the law of the jungle instead. At that point what would stand in the way of Trump attacking Mexico and Colombia because they are major producers of cocaine; or annex Greenland on the pretext that it is required for national security? Or, for that matter, China invading Taiwan and Russia reclaiming the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia as its own.

The law of the jungle is premised on the survival of the fittest and for a small, defenceless country like Malta that should be a matter of great concern.