The Indian Panorama

Tag: Nicolás Maduro

  • Trump sets a perilous precedent

    Trump sets a perilous precedent

    The use of force by the US in Venezuela raises doubts about the legitimacy of its actions

    “The fact that the US action flouts international law related to state sovereignty and humanitarian rights protocols has been highlighted worldwide and even within the US — but to little avail. The Trump doctrine (Donroe is specific to Latin America) boils down to bludgeoning any interlocutor who does not toe the “Donald line”, and the use of tariffs as a weapon is all too familiar.”

    By C Uday Bhaskar

    The outcome of the UN Security Council’s emergency meeting on the US military operation, which resulted in the outrageous abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, was predictable. Strategic timidity in the face of the intimidation unleashed by US President Donald Trump is the dominant orientation of the global community. The famed horseshoe table did not issue any statement. Given that the spotlight was on the US, with its veto power as a permanent member of the UNSC, Washington would not have allowed any censure of its Operation Absolute Resolve.

    Panama was subjected to a similar action in 1989. There are notable parallels between the US capture of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega on January 3, 1990, and the kidnapping of the Venezuelan President on the same day in 2026. The latter is the most direct US military intervention in Latin America since the Panama operation.

    In both cases, heads of state — sitting (Maduro) and de facto (Noriega) — have been indicted on federal drug trafficking charges; Noriega for racketeering and cocaine smuggling, and Maduro for narco-terrorism and related conspiracies that were deemed inimical to US national security. This action is being interpreted as the first step to implement the new doctrine unveiled by President Trump that builds on the 1823 Monroe doctrine and has been dubbed the Donroe doctrine.

    However, notwithstanding Trump’s assertion that Latin American affairs are now a top US security priority and that he would authorize military action and intervention at will, rumblings of dissent were evident at the UNSC’s January 5 meeting.

    The deliberations reflected the widespread international condemnation of the US action as a violation of international law, sovereignty and the UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force against a state’s territorial integrity or political independence. Despite the distinctive backdrop, UN Secretary-General António Guterres was not present at the meeting; his statement, which was read out by an official, emphasized that “the power of the law must prevail” and called for inclusive democratic dialogue respecting human rights and Venezuela’s sovereignty. To his credit, Guterres was the first to condemn the US action and voiced the overwhelming global shock and anguish.

    At the UNSC meeting, two of the permanent members, Russia and China, along with Brazil, Colombia (which made a request for the meeting), Cuba and Mexico denounced the operation as an act of aggression, armed attack or “imperialist” intervention. Some demanded Maduro’s immediate release and rejected unilateral actions.

    Even US allies such as France and Denmark criticized the move for undermining the principles of international order, though some acknowledged Maduro’s repressive rule and the need to address drug trafficking and human rights issues through lawful means.

    In response, Mike Waltz, US Ambassador to the UN, defended the action as a “surgical law enforcement operation” against indicted “narco-terrorists”, not an act of war or occupation, and stated that the US had no plans to occupy Venezuela. This was not accepted by the global community. It is instructive that no nation, except Argentina and Ecuador, has unambiguously endorsed the belligerent US action against Maduro.

    The fact that the US action flouts international law related to state sovereignty and humanitarian rights protocols has been highlighted worldwide and even within the US — but to little avail. The Trump doctrine (Donroe is specific to Latin America) boils down to bludgeoning any interlocutor who does not toe the “Donald line”, and the use of tariffs as a weapon is all too familiar.

    Hence, most nations have chosen prudence in response to the US military operation. India, Japan and many other countries have issued anodyne statements that do not directly condemn the US action or uphold any normative principle of international law.

    The operation has raised disturbing questions. If the US arrogates unto itself the right to abduct/kidnap the head of another state for perceived transgression of American laws, is any global leader safe from such predatory action? Will leaders attending the UN General Assembly meeting in New York be sanguine about their own safety?

    The use of force by the US in Venezuela raises doubts about the legitimacy of its actions. At least 115 deaths were reported from US military strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats (including go-fast boats and semi-submersibles) in the months leading to Operation Absolute Resolve.

    These strikes were part of a campaign that began in early September 2025 and targeted vessels primarily in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. A total of 36 vessels were struck on the suspicion of carrying drugs. Should the US military have been part of such an operation against unarmed small vessels? The January 3 operation itself reportedly caused 70-80 fatalities, mostly Venezuelan and Cuban personnel tasked to protect Maduro.

    There is little doubt that the US has an impressive array of trans-border military capability that includes delivery of lethal precision-guided ordnance, pinpoint surveillance accuracy, strategic airlift and overwhelming cyber capabilities. All this was demonstrated both in Abbottabad (the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011) and in the audacious capture of President Maduro. But Trump’s resolve to discipline Venezuela will remain tainted for blurring the Weberian dictum about the legitimacy of the use of military force.

    More such resolute actions have been mooted — Colombia, Cuba, Iran and even Mexico have been threatened by Trump. Fall in line or else face US ire. Greenland may provide the ultimate Alice in Wonderland scenario. If the next Trump move is to ‘acquire’ Greenland, and Denmark invokes Article VI of the NATO provisions, it is possible that troops of the US military will defend a NATO ally against the occupying US forces!

    Welcome to Trumpland, and all hail Emperor Donroe!

    (C Uday Bhaskar is Director, Society for Policy Studies)

  • Venezuelan Regime Issues Decree to ‘Search and Capture everyone involved in the Promotion or Support of the US Operation

    Venezuelan Regime Issues Decree to ‘Search and Capture everyone involved in the Promotion or Support of the US Operation

    NEW YORK (TIP): The Venezuelan regime, now led by interim President Delcy Rodriguez following the capture of Nicolas Maduro, issued a decree ordering police to “immediately begin the national search and capture of everyone involved in the promotion or support for the armed attack” by the Trump administration.

    Reuters noted that the decree has been in effect since Saturday but was published in full on Monday.

    The decree comes even as Rodriguez called on the U.S. to “work jointly on a cooperation agenda” and appealed for peace and dialogue after assuming the role following the capture of Maduro.

    In a message published Sunday, January 4, on her official social media channels, Rodríguez said Venezuela’s priority was to pursue “balanced and respectful international relations” with the United States and other countries in the region, based on “sovereign equality and non-interference.” She said the government is prepared to collaborate with Washington on an agenda “oriented toward shared development, within the framework of international law.”

    “President Donald Trump: our peoples and our region deserve peace and dialogue, not war,” Rodríguez wrote, adding that Venezuela “has the right to peace, development, sovereignty and a future.” She described peace as essential not only for Venezuela but for regional and global stability.

    Rodríguez’s statement came a day after Venezuela’s Supreme Court ordered her to assume the presidency on an interim basis following the aforementioned operation that captured not only Maduro but his wife, Cilia Flores, and included airstrikes in Caracas and nearby states.

    Her call for cooperation also followed sharp warnings from Washington earlier on Sunday. Trump said in an interview with The Atlantic that Rodríguez would “pay a very high price, probably higher than Maduro,” if she failed to act in line with U.S. expectations. He later said she was “willing to do what we consider necessary,” but stressed that U.S. pressure would continue if American interests were not respected.

    Secretary of State Marco Rubio, on his end, has said the administration will judge Rodriguez based on her actions.

    The administration has so far not propped up opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, with The Washington Post claiming that it is because she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, which Trump has long wanted for himself.

    One person close to the White House told The Washington Post that Machado’s acceptance of the award was the “ultimate sin” for Trump. “If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” the person added.

  • A multipolar world with bipolar characteristics

    A multipolar world with bipolar characteristics

    The three great powers understand that the world is no longer organized around a single center of authority

    By Stanly Johny

    As 2025 draws to a close, a highlight is that the United States has undertaken its largest troop mobilization in the Caribbean in decades. Its Navy has deployed its most advanced aircraft carrier, along with fighter jets, amphibious vessels, attack submarines and tens of thousands of troops, as it intensifies its pressure on Venezuela in an effort to force President Nicolás Maduro from power.

    The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS), released in early December 2025, identifies Latin America and the Caribbean as a strategic priority. Reviving the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, the document asserts that the U.S. must deny influence or control by outside powers (read China) in Latin America and ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains under American political, economic and military influence.

    The push to reinforce American primacy in Latin America coincides with U.S. President Donald Trump’s waning interest in Europe, another long-standing U.S. sphere of influence. Since the end of the Second World War, the U.S. has served as Europe’s primary security guarantor. If Washington kept western Europe together through a tightly knit alliance during the Cold War, it expanded this security umbrella to eastern Europe after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, creating a large transatlantic bloc. Under Mr. Trump, however, the U.S. is no longer interested in shouldering the burden of European security — a position explicitly articulated in the NSS. Why is America, at a moment when Russia and China are seeking to overturn the U.S.-built and U.S.-led security and economic order, stepping back from Europe while moving to consolidate its influence in the Western Hemisphere?

    It is difficult to discern a cohesive doctrine in Mr. Trump’s foreign policy, marked by the President’s impulses and unpredictability. Yet, even these impulses, this unpredictability and his ideological orientation rooted in Christian nationalism and America’s might cannot ignore the structural shifts reshaping the international order. Mr. Trump is not the ‘President of peace’ that he claims to be — he has already bombed six countries, even if he has stopped short of a full-scale war.

    At the same time, Mr. Trump, despite his rhetoric about American military and economic dominance, recognizes that he no longer lives in a unipolar world. His reluctant aggression and strategic recalibration are reflections of the changes now taking shape in the global balance of power.

    Three great powers

    When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, a new order emerged with the U.S. at its center. There was no other great power positioned to challenge American primacy. The unipolar moment, however, has since passed. While future historians may better identify the precise point of rupture, one such moment was Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. The ensuing conflict in eastern Ukraine, the tepid western response, and Russia’s ability to endure despite sanctions reinforced the limits of the ‘rules-based order’.

    The end of unipolarity, however, does not mean the end of American dominance. The U.S. remains, and will remain, for the foreseeable future, the world’s pre-eminent military and economic power. What has changed is that Washington is no longer the sole great power shaping geopolitical outcomes. China and Russia now occupy that space as well, deepening what Realist thinkers describe as the inherently anarchic nature of the international system.

    During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was America’s principal rival, and in the 1970s, Washington reached out to China to exploit fissures within the communist bloc. Today, the U.S. identifies China as its principal and systemic challenger. This, in turn, leaves open the possibility of a reset in ties with Russia — an idea embraced by Mr. Trump’s MAGA (Make America Great Again) ideologues, who frame Russia as part of a shared ‘Christian civilization’.

    The reigning power versus the rising power

    The U.S. faces a unique challenge in China. The Soviet economy, in its prime in the early 1970s, reached about 57% of the U.S. GDP, before it began slowing down. China’s economy, now the world’s second largest, already amounts to about 66% of the U.S. economy. China continues to grow at a faster pace, steadily narrowing the gap.

    As China’s economic power expands, it is being converted into military capability (it has already built the world’s largest Navy, by number of ships). Like other great powers, Beijing is seeking to establish regional hegemony and global dominance. So, a prolonged contest between the U.S., the reigning power, and China, the rising power, appears unavoidable. The situation is comparable to 19th century Europe, when a rising imperial Germany threatened to upstage Britain during Pax Britannica, unsettling the ‘Concert of Europe’.

    Russia is the weakest link among the three powers. It is a relatively smaller economy with a shrinking sphere of influence. But Russia’s nuclear arsenals, expansive geography, abundant energy and mineral resources and its demonstrated willingness to use force to achieve its strategic objectives keep it in the great power constellation. From Moscow’s perspective, the country drifted into the wilderness in the 1990s before announcing its return in 2008 with the war in Georgia. Since then, it has sought to rewrite the post-Soviet security architecture in Europe. As the West, having expanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into the Russian sphere of influence, responded to Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine with sweeping sanctions on Russia and military support for Kyiv, Moscow moved ever closer to China. Russia and China have found common ground in opposing the western ‘rules-based order’ — Russia thinks that the order denies it its rightful place in the world and seeks to revise it accordingly, while China, by contrast, as Rush Doshi argues in The Long Game, wants to replace it with a China-centric order. 

    Fluid multipolarity

    All three great powers today understand that the world is no longer organized around a single center of authority. In that sense, the world is already multipolar. But unlike the post-Second World War and post-Cold War transitions, the structures of the new order have yet to fully emerge. During the Cold War, the world was divided into two ideological blocs and two largely separate economic systems. Today, China lacks the kind of satellite state networks that characterized the 20th century superpowers, while the U.S. is reassessing the sustainability of its alliance frameworks, including its commitment to Europe.

    Russia, with its own great power ambitions, is wary of being seen as a Chinese ally irrespective of its close strategic partnership with Beijing. This opens a window for a Washington-Moscow reset. But the war in Ukraine remains a stumbling block. Russia may not want to challenge America’s global leadership, but it certainly wants to re-establish its primacy in its sphere of influence.

    Thus, there are three great powers with divergent interests that are pulling the global order in different directions, rendering the emerging multipolarity fluid rather than as a structured system akin to the post-Second World War order. This also means that middle powers, including superpower allies such as Japan and Germany, and autonomous actors such as India and Brazil, would continue to hedge their bets.

    Mr. Trump wants Europe to shoulder greater responsibility for its own security, reset relations with Russia and reassert American primacy in its immediate neighborhood even as Washington prepares for a prolonged great power competition with China. The idea is to return to the classic offshore balancing. Even if Mr. Trump fails in executing it, future American Presidents may not be able to ignore the shifts that he has initiated. Russia, for its part, seeks to carve out a sphere of influence. China aims to preserve its close strategic partnership with Russia to keep the Eurasian landmass within its orbit, while establishing regional hegemony in East and Southeast Asia — moves that would cement its status as a long-term superpower, much as the U.S. did by asserting its hegemony in the Western Hemisphere in the 19th century, and across the Atlantic in the 20th century. In this fluid landscape, Russia has emerged as the new ‘swing great power’ between the two superpowers, paradoxically lending the emerging multipolar order a distinctly bipolar character.

    (Stanly Johny is editor with The Hindu. Article republished courtesy The Hindu)