The in­va­sion of Venezuela by the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, the cap­ture of Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro and his wife, and the de­ci­sion of the US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump “to run Venezuela un­til…” are sharply il­lus­tra­tive of the core con­tention of my pre­vi­ous col­umn ti­tled: “A world con­sumed by the vi­o­lence of pow­er-grab­bers”.

As ev­i­denced, wide­spread, greedy, and vin­dic­tive vi­o­lence to achieve con­trol­ling pow­er is fling­ing na­tions, those with eco­nom­ic and mil­i­tary might, in­to a dizzy or­bit to ac­quire the re­sources of the world. Will­ful­ly, they in­tend to ac­com­plish their ob­jec­tives through naked and boast­ful vi­o­lence against the pow­er­less and, in the process, brazen­ly break na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al laws.

Pres­i­dent Trump has all but dropped the fic­ti­tious claim of his in­ten­tion to clean up drug traf­fick­ing, giv­en his re­lease of a for­mer Hon­duran leader con­vict­ed of drug traf­fick­ing crimes in an Amer­i­can court. The ob­jec­tive and in­tent of the in­va­sion of Venezuela have there­fore be­come patent­ly clear.

To ac­com­plish his mis­sion, Pres­i­dent Trump has made his in­ten­tion known to “run” Venezuela and to di­rect Amer­i­can transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions to re­turn to the South Amer­i­can coun­try, said to hold the largest quan­ti­ty of pe­tro­le­um re­sources any­where in the world, to re­vive the oil in­dus­try, the rev­enue from which will help “Make Amer­i­ca Great Again.”

The re­cent in­va­sion and more is yet an­oth­er il­lus­tra­tion of one of the nu­clear pow­ers, the USA, us­ing its eco­nom­ic, po­lit­i­cal, and mil­i­tary “force, strength and pow­er to as­sert our­selves,” said Stephen Miller, one of the ma­jor ar­chi­tects of Trump’s in­ten­tion to ex­pand its hege­mo­ny in the hemi­sphere and else­where.

In keep­ing with the theme of the columns on the ex­er­cise of pow­er by the pow­er­ful over the weak, the Venezue­lan in­va­sion and kid­nap­ping are close­ly linked to in­ter­na­tion­al trade and an emerg­ing di­rect chal­lenge to the US dol­lar as the pre­dom­i­nant in­ter­na­tion­al cur­ren­cy.

Pres­i­dent Maduro, through in­creas­ing multi­bil­lion-dol­lar sales of oil to Chi­na in the petroyuan as op­posed to the US dol­lar, has an­gered Pres­i­dent Trump. More so, Chi­na, be­ing one of the BRICS (Brazil, Rus­sia, In­dia, Chi­na, and South Africa), has been hav­ing its ren­min­bi – the yuan, used in trade amongst the group­ing.

Fur­ther, as the BRICS part­ners gain as­sur­ance and trust in each oth­er, the coun­tries are us­ing their na­tion­al cur­ren­cies as pay­ment amongst them­selves. Nige­ria is said to have al­so been a vic­tim of US in­ter­ven­tion, re­port­ed­ly for ac­cept­ing pay­ment for its oil in cur­ren­cy oth­er than the US dol­lar.

“Pres­i­dent-elect, Trump threat­ened he would put 100% tar­iffs on BRICS coun­tries un­less they com­mit­ted to nev­er cre­ate a new BRICS Cur­ren­cy, nor back any oth­er Cur­ren­cy to re­place the mighty U.S. Dol­lar,” said Pres­i­dent Trump as he re­peat­ed his warn­ing on CNN.

“Ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund, the US dol­lar con­tin­ues to cede ground to non­tra­di­tion­al cur­ren­cies in glob­al for­eign ex­change re­serves, but it re­mains the pre­em­i­nent re­serve cur­ren­cy,” Ar­slanalp et al, 2024.

Over the last 20 years, “there has been a shift away from to­tal US-dol­lar trade de­clin­ing from 67 to 60 per cent,” BRICS Jour­nal of Eco­nom­ics.

The night­mare of Venezue­lan oil en­ter­ing the BRICS trad­ing bloc and in the yuan and or the na­tion­al cur­ren­cies of mem­ber states must have been a rea­son be­hind the seizure of the oil tankers bound for Chi­na. Will such a de­vel­op­ment re­sult in ad­di­tion­al vi­o­lence?

One ma­jor is­sue fraught with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of wide­spread vi­o­lence is whether the Amer­i­can demon­stra­tion of might be­ing right can re­sult in a re­turn to coloni­sa­tion by those coun­tries with armies which can in­flict vi­o­lence in the man­ner of the Amer­i­can demon­stra­tion against Venezuela. “These de­vel­op­ments con­sti­tute a dan­ger­ous prece­dent,” a warn­ing from UN Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al An­to­nio Guter­res.

A pos­si­ble out­come of the US in­va­sion and cap­ture of Pres­i­dent Maduro is an in­crease in vi­o­lence by coun­tries with the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to en­hance their weapons sys­tems, in­clud­ing nu­clear weapons, to meet the chal­lenge of match­ing the vi­o­lence dis­played by the US army. Al­ready, Pres­i­dent Trump has is­sued an in­struc­tion to the army he com­mands to re­turn to up­grad­ing the coun­try’s nu­clear weapons.

On the oth­er side of the threat of the all-en­com­pass­ing vi­o­lence, Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin has said he will use nu­clear weapons if the sit­u­a­tion aris­es, and Kim Jong Un in North Ko­rea is al­ways ready to show off his coun­try’s ca­pa­bil­i­ty, in­clud­ing an ac­quired nu­clear ca­pac­i­ty.

The at­tack on Venezuela al­so de­creas­es what­ev­er moral au­thor­i­ty Pres­i­dent Trump had to be an hon­est and in­flu­en­tial bro­ker in the Rus­sia-Ukraine war. Can he per­suade Pres­i­dent Putin to back off from tak­ing ad­di­tion­al por­tions of Ukraine?

“Amer­i­ca needs Green­land for its se­cu­ri­ty,” in­sists Pres­i­dent Trump, and he has promised to take it one way or the oth­er. “First of all, we take the Amer­i­can pres­i­dent se­ri­ous­ly when he says he wants Green­land,” says Den­mark’s Prime Min­is­ter Mette Fred­er­ick­son. “If the USA choos­es to at­tack an­oth­er NA­TO coun­try mil­i­tar­i­ly, then every­thing stops,” she says, re­mind­ing that the King­dom has the sup­port of the Eu­ro­pean Union.

(To be con­tin­ued.)

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er – free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and News Di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona and St Au­gus­tine – In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.