The Venezuela Crisis: Australia needs to do much more than issue a general “Get-Well” card

The insertion of US special forces into Caracas and the abduction of President Maduro and his wife was a precision tactical operation. We are told that it was months in the planning. In fact, it has been in the US imagination for over two centuries. 

What you need to know:  

• The abduction and subsequent arrest of the President of Venezuela is a dramatic re-statement of America’s dominance of the western hemisphere and its willingness to do whatever it takes – including defiance of international legal norms – to protect and promote its interests. 

• The strategic objective of the move to control Venezuela and its oil reserves is to deny China and Russia freedom of manoeuvre in central America and the Americas more generally. 

• Australia’s security and prosperity are best protected in a world that operates by rules and norms. America’s raid puts that world further at risk. 

When President Monroe declared in 1823 that any foreign interference in the politics of the Americas was potentially hostile to the US, it became clear that the US alone would determine the political and strategic dynamics of the western hemisphere.  

President Trump has taken the Monroe Doctrine a step further: any situation in the Americas, whether domestic or foreign inspired, that arouses the interest of the US will be dealt with by the US. 

President Maduro is a scoundrel. He “stole” the last election because he was seen as a better bet by the Venezuelan military, and was able to secure their support. He has worsened the plight of Venezuela’s citizens, continuing over a quarter of a century’s hardship and poverty.  

Venezuela’s annual inflation rate has exceeded 100 percent per annum for the past decade, reaching an astonishing 65 thousand percent per annum in 2018. The country is in continual crisis. 

With the world’s largest oil reserves, the solution might seem obvious: do a Norway or a Saudi Arabia, sell prodigious amounts of oil and establish a sovereign wealth fund. If it were only that simple.  

Given its endemic criminality and systemic corruption, Venezuela’s wealth has long been distributed well before it is actually earned. And at the centre of a web of complex commercial and financial relationships are the US oil majors. 

So, what is Trump up to?  

First of all, the threat of narco-terrorism is essentially non-existent. Like Iraq’s chemical and nuclear weapons, it is a pretext for the abduction of President Maduro.  

US strategy – and this returns directly to the Monroe doctrine – is one of denial. It aims to deny China and Russia access to an oil rich but vulnerable country where US economic, political and strategic interests are at stake. And that means that the US controls Venezuela’s oil and its oil exports. 

But this is exactly where Trump faces problems, because the historical pattern of US military interventions around the world – Korea, Vietnam, Cuba (Bay of Pigs), Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan – is either a stalemate (think Korea) or a strategic failure (think Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan). 

The reason for this is pretty clear. The US is good at determining what it does not like. It is good at determining what it sees as threats. Hence, its default strategic tool is military force. The US is rarely able to determine what it does like. It is slow to recognise opportunities, and even slower to turn its military failures into advantage.  

As Maslow put it, if all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. 

Accordingly, the prospects for Venezuela are dire. Just as President Maduro ruled Venezuela at the discretion of the Venezuelan military, so too does his successor, Vice-President Rodriguez.  

She may be totally supine to the whims of the Venezuelan military and the wishes of the Oval Office. If so, she will survive. If not, the military will take over on terms set for it by the US. 

The implications for Australia and the rest of the eastern hemisphere are profound. Trump’s intervention in Caracas has normalised extra-legal and illegal action, thereby effectively legitimising Russia’s actions in Ukraine, Israel’s actions in Palestine and any potential action China might consider with respect to Taiwan.  

All of this is to replace the so-called “international rules-based order” with “might is right”, international law with lawlessness. It is what Durkheim called anomie.  

For Australia, the nations of Europe and Asia, indeed for the entire global community, a state of general international anarchy is a very substantial threat, since it attacks the very foundations upon which prosperity, security and stability are based.  

The Australian government cannot just sit on its hands, issuing a kind of global get-well card hoping that everything ends as best it can.  

Australia has power and agency, and now is the time that the government needs to exercise that agency in the interests of our own security and that of the many other nations that base their domestic political structures and their international activities on the rule of law.  

There are precedents here. Just as Australia addressed fundamental international problems in the trade of agricultural products by forming the Cairns Group in the mid-80s (it still operates, by the way) and responded to the Asian Financial Crisis and the inadequacy of APEC by initiating the G20, we need once again to initiate a return to agreements and rules as the basis of constructive international conduct. This would be an excellent task for a skilled Foreign Minister.  

Given that we actually have one, Senator Wong might be well advised to embark upon early consultations with like-minded countries to bring together a concerted regional response to the destruction of international legal norms and codes of behaviour.