LAST UPDATE | 8 Jan
NICOLÁS MADURO AND Hugo Chavez who preceded him, destroyed Venezuela. Twenty years ago, Venezuela’s economy and living standards were comparable to those of many European countries. Today, its economy is in ruins and up to eight million people, almost a quarter of its population, have left.
Most fled to the United States, Europe and other parts of Latin America, resulting in both a brain drain and capital flight from the country. The population increase from this migration has put real pressure on some Spanish-speaking countries in a way we can understand.
Revolutionary socialism, once implemented fully and faithfully, often turns to oppression to survive. And bit by bit, people’s rights and freedoms in Venezuela were taken away. Most Venezuelans boycotted the last congressional elections, and the presidential elections are widely accepted to have been rigged, with Maduro beaten 2:1 by his opponent Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia in independent counts. He was the candidate of the opposition, as Nobel Prize winner María Corina Machado was barred from running.
I, for one, am glad that Maduro has been deposed. But how it happened matters.
The US has form
This is not the first time that the US has overthrown or captured a foreign leader. Grenada was invaded by Reagan following a communist coup, prompting a rare tussle between the UK and the US. George HW Bush invaded Panama and arrested that country’s leader, Manuel Noriega. In both cases, democracy was quickly restored.
Saddam Hussein was toppled by an international coalition led by George W Bush, and Gadaffi removed from power in Libya with the help of NATO warplanes ordered by Obama. Regime change in those countries did not turn out so well, resulting in civil war, death, destruction and millions of refugees.
What’s different this time is how blatant it is. There is no claim that military action is necessary to protect the world from weapons of mass destruction. No attempt to seek a UN mandate or approval from Congress. No international coalition. No promise to restore democracy. Rather, we are told that the US will ‘run’ Venezuela and the US oil companies will be brought in to exploit its resources.
On the ground, the old regime appears to be holding, and its security establishment remains in place. Venezuela’s new president, Maduro’s former Vice-President, Delcy Rodriguez, has promised co-operation. Indeed, it’s been reported that the US had help from the inside in completing its successful operation to capture Maduro. Exile not being acceptable, some in the regime might simply have made the decision to save themselves.
Machado doesn’t have popular support to become president, according to President Trump. Presumably, the same view is taken of Gonzalez, who is recognised as the legitimate president by many, including the European Parliament.
I believe that only the people of Venezuela should decide who runs Venezuela, and only they should decide how its resources are used and its economy developed. There is no reason why fresh, free and fair elections could not be held within months observed by the UN or the Organisation of American States (OAS). This looks unlikely, but it is what should happen and should be demanded by democratic countries.
A new global reality
The events of the past few days make the world a more dangerous place. Yes, there are upsides. Iran’s failing Islamic regime will take seriously President Trump’s threat to use force if it fires on demonstrators. Trump made his threat of intervention last week, after protests erupted in Iran, saying the US was “locked and loaded and ready to go”.
If Trump can restore democracy to Iran, he will be undoing a great wrong. Iran’s democracy was stolen from her people in a US-orchestrated coup in 1953, which allowed the Shah to become an absolute monarch. His brutality and disregard for the wants of his people created widespread social and political discontent, helping set the stage for the 1979 Islamic Revolution that has ruled Iran for 37 years and all its sequelae.
But the downsides of recent days are greater. What Trump did in Venezuela will embolden dictators like Putin to be more brutal. He might step up efforts to kill or capture Ukrainian President Zelenskyy or decide to arrest another leader of a country Russia believes to be in its orbit.
China will doubt America’s resolve on Taiwan. Could the US even apply this approach to democratically elected leaders like the president of Colombia, who has also been threatened?
In Europe, there is heightened concern, even panic, that the US might take military action to seize some or part of Greenland. This has not been ruled out. Quite the opposite. Denmark and its European allies, including Ireland, have no hope of defending Greenland against America’s unparalleled military might.
It’s unlikely they would try. But Europe would rally to Denmark’s side politically, and both NATO and the 75-year-old Atlantic Alliance between Europe and America, forged out of the horrors of the Second World War, would be over. The impact on trade, the movement of people and normal relations between the two continents would be devastating.
The importance of Europe
To date, the response from European leaders has been muted. It has to be. They are in a bind. They fear losing the remaining American military and intelligence support for Ukraine. This is something Europe’s democracies cannot replace. Once done with Ukraine, Putin will turn his gaze to Moldova or the Baltic States, all formerly part of the USSR and the Russian Empire. Open opposition to Trump would bring war closer to home.
Europe has a population at least three times that of Russia and greater than that of America. The eurozone’s economy is the third largest in the world, rivalling that of China and the US (especially when adjusted for purchasing power), while Russia’s economy is no bigger than Italy’s. However, Europe strategically and militarily is weak and is no match for the United States, Russia or China, despite spending more than the latter two combined. For decades, we’ve prioritised social progress over strategic security. As a result, we live longer, healthier lives than Russians, Chinese or Americans. We are more educated. And we are more equal. By almost every measure, we are more free. Our countries are much safer. It wasn’t the wrong choice to make, but that world is over now.
If we don’t want to take orders from the president of Russia or the president of America in ten years, whoever they might be, we need to change our approach. To be able to make our decisions about our own countries’ future, to be able to defend our homelands and to be able to protect our liberal democracies and our way of life, we need to come together as Europeans.
We need to achieve true strategic autonomy, as the French call it, or more simply ‘independence’ in the words of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. We need to re-arm Europe and recharge our economic model for growth.
We need to form close political and trading alliances with other willing democracies that share our values, like Canada, Australia, Japan, Korea, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico, among others. Absent that, our options are limited to appeasement or obedience masked by the occasional performatory protest.
We need to make Europe Strong Again.
Leo Varadkar is the former Taoiseach of Ireland.