What Trump’s actions in Venezuela mean for Canada
The U.S. says they want security. But what they will get is fewer friends and more chaos.
As I write, we have just learned that Donald Trump has captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, following several weeks in which American forces had been destroying seagoing vessels in the Caribbean on the pretext that they were shipping contraband drugs to the United States.
This is the latest development for an administration that has threatened NATO allies Canada and Denmark, the latter over Greenland. The President’s motivations appear overtly imperialistic, but they are couched in the language of greater security. The United States needs Greenland as a bulwark against Russian incursions in the Arctic. It needs to control Canada because it occupies a crucial swath of North America. Venezuela is in the western hemisphere and thus within the U.S.’s declared sphere of influence. And, of course, it possesses huge oil reserves.
The end of friendship
In Trump’s worldview, there can be no genuine allies, and no one deserves to be treated as a friendly neighbour with interests worthy of consideration. The world consists of nations locked in cutthroat competition for its scarce resources. Raw power meets raw power, with moral suasion and neighbourliness playing little if any role in constraining nations in their mutual relations. If other nations refuse to cooperate with the U.S.’s declared national interests, armed force might be needed to bring them into line.
One is reminded of the late nineteenth-century scramble for Africa, a project that saw European nations treating an entire continent as a theatre for great power rivalry at the expense of its inhabitants. Seizing colonial possessions would presumably enhance their power and thereby make them more secure. As we know, however, this rivalry led to scores of millions of casualties on the battlefields of the Great War. Seeking national security effectively destabilized two continents, making everyone enormously insecure.
The United States seems bent on repeating the mistakes of the past, unilaterally seeking a type of security that can only alienate friends and enemies alike.
In this second quarter of the twenty-first century, the United States seems bent on repeating the mistakes of the past, unilaterally seeking a type of security that can only alienate friends and enemies alike, thereby paradoxically making the country less secure than before. One hopes that saner heads will eventually prevail and that decades of efforts to build solid international ties, especially among Western nations, will not be quickly undone.
Wise words
What would the late Christian political economist Bob Goudzwaard say about all of this? More than four decades ago, he wrote a short book titled Idols of Our Time, whose method of analysis I would later use in my Political Visions and Illusions. There, Goudzwaard discussed not the traditional ideologies, but concrete goods of which our polities have made too much. One such idol is that of guaranteed security. Goudzwaard argues that seeking security in the wrong way, especially by minimizing the genuine power of friendly relationships among nations, can only make the world less safe for everyone. Although written during the Cold War, Goudzwaard’s observations remain relevant today under different circumstances.
And now the decision over which fighter jets to buy has more implications. Shall Canada by the US Lockheed jets, as many pilots want, and stay entangled in US military operations, or the Swedish SAAB jets in order to align with the rest of NATO, and also provide more jobs.
It is long past the time since our Australian Government should have joined with Canada in repudiating such lawless language of a man who is wanting to hold onto office, trying to bend all its various responsibilities to cover up his own sins and foolishness. He speaks loudly nad clearly: “You can be my friend if you allow me to bully and violate you!” For our part as responsible citizens of the international order we should be doing all we can to signal our own ongoing adherence to the rule of law and the keeping of treaties, vows and promises (Pacta sunt servanda), both public and private, and in particular for international relationships between states.
Hence, we need to urge our Government here in Australia to depart from our hitherto obsequious religious devotion to the “guaranteed security” idol of AUKUS, (and the bipartisan political decision to bankrupt the Australian economy for the next 50 years in the purchase of nuclear-powered submarines). To do so would mean that we would join with other SWP Governments and publicly announce our joint recognition that the USA has now in practise left ANZUS despite what double-speak may come from the White House.
The Governments of the South Pacific should issue a joint declaration with Canada, inviting the Government of the UK and other Commonwealth Governments to join us in saying so under a banner that declares:
“We are Canada and Greenland!”
Bruce, what do you think of CANZUK, that is, the proposed union or close alliance of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom? We are of course already in a personal union under King Charles.