Deciphering Trump’s gangster method

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was kidnapped by US forces and taken to the United States to face trial on drug-trafficking charges.

This came just weeks after Donald Trump pardoned Orlando Hernández, the former Honduran president between 2014 and 2022 and was serving a 45-year jail term in a US federal prison after being found guilty of drug trafficking and weapons charges.

The contrast in the fate of these two presidents alone suggests that drug trafficking is not what is at stake. Moreover, previous US intelligence assessments did not find solid evidence that Maduro personally directs or controls cocaine trafficking.

Nor was the restoration of democracy and freedom the motivating factor for the American military operation that captured Maduro.

While insisting that he will effectively be “running Venezuela,” Trump has made it clear that interim president Delcy Rodríguez—a loyal deputy to Maduro—is best positioned to maintain stability in the country. He even went as far as suggesting that, despite being “a nice lady,” opposition leader María Corina Machado lacks the support and authority needed to govern.

Unlike previous US presidents, who sought to justify interventions through lofty rhetoric, Trump has been unusually frank about his motives: Securing access to Venezuela’s oil reserves for US companies. He has framed this openly within the Monroe Doctrine—a cornerstone of US foreign policy first articulated in 1823—first applied to ward off European intervention in the newly independent continent and then applied to turn the entire American hemisphere into the United States’ backyard.

This suggests that, unlike his predecessors, Trump is not particularly interested in justifying foreign wars and interventions through flimsy or deceptive claims anchored in universal values, democracy, or global security. Of course, this is hardly the first time the US has intervened to remove a government deemed non-compliant with its interests.

In this sense, Trump’s intervention is explicitly articulated as an expression of ‘America First’.  This exposes a contradiction in Trump’s rhetoric about peace.  For Trump peace is nothing but submission to the national (and personal) interest.

The most disturbing aspect, however, is the emerging pattern in US foreign policy—one that increasingly resembles the methods of a mafia boss strong-arming other leaders into submission. If you refuse to play his game, you are doomed; if you comply, you might just survive.

In Venezuela, Trump appears to have calculated that Maduro—too difficult to tame or too embarrassing to accommodate—was expendable. It was preferable to abduct him and then strong-arm a weakened regime, backed into a corner, into doing Washington’s bidding, rather than embark on full-scale regime change that would inevitably require American boots on the ground.

To achieve this, Trump reportedly threatened Delcy Rodríguez with paying “a very big price”—perhaps even bigger than Maduro’s—if she failed to comply. The message was unmistakable: Submit, or face elimination.

This raises an obvious question: Why did Trump not go a step further and install a far-right government in Venezuela? The answer likely lies in his fear of backlash. Despite rampant corruption, incompetence, and human-rights abuses, Chavismo—named after former Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez—remains a force to be reckoned with, particularly within the armed forces and among segments of society that experienced upward mobility between 1999 and 2013. During that period poverty fell from 49.4% to 23.9% due to the redistribution of oil revenues.

What followed was undoubtedly a tragedy, for which Maduro bears heavy responsibility. But even within the Venezuelan opposition, not everyone would accept a total surrender to US interests.

All this suggests that Trump wants to get what he wants at the lowest possible cost. Whether this will be sustainable in the long term remains very doubtful.

In the long term, this approach is bound to generate greater instability not just in Venezuela and Latin America but in the entire world. The “new world order” engineered by Trump is one in which might is right; where the US can use force with impunity to achieve its objectives. But this also grants implicit licence to other strongmen and powers to do the same in their own backyards—particularly those powerful enough to deter US intervention. Having toppled Maduro, Trump can hardly expect China not to impose a friendly regime in Taiwan, or Russia to act similarly in Ukraine.

To complicate matters further, Trump has also suggested that Greenland—currently under Danish sovereignty, and thus part of both NATO and the EU—belongs within the American sphere. This makes a recent US State Department post on X declaring “this is our hemisphere” even more disturbing.

One reason we have reached this point is the eagerness of politicians worldwide, including in the EU and the UK, to appease Trump by showering him with praise and honours. Malta’s foreign minister even went so far as to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize despite Trump’s direct complicity in genocide in Gaza. Faced with the travesty unfolding in Venezuela, most EU leaders, including European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, have played along, refraining from criticism and retreating into vague platitudes about international law instead of jointly condemning its blatant violation. This has also been the stance of both the government and Opposition in Malta.

Some argue the EU must now, more than ever, unite and speak with one voice to protect its own interests. Yet this remains implausible as long as Europe remains tethered to Washington and continues policies—such as unconditional support for Israel—that alienate the global south. If the EU is to assert itself on the world stage, it must cultivate broader alliances, particularly with regional powers such as Brazil, Mexico and South Africa. It has also to learn to deal with China and Russia on its own terms.

In this respect, Spain has shown leadership by signing a joint declaration condemning US military action in Venezuela alongside five Latin American countries: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay.

This is undoubtedly the harder path forward amid doubts whether the current generation of career politicians is either willing or capable of pursuing it. Perhaps they will only grasp the absurdity of their platitudes when Trump sets his sights on Greenland. But even then, some may still argue that this is a price worth paying to keep the gangster president satisfied.