“The military operation to arrest Maduro is the first visible implementation of the Trump administration’s U.S. security strategy to contain the expansion of Chinese influence in South America.
The USA declared the Western Hemisphere its sphere of influence and made the fight against drug cartels and irregular migration the top priority. The restrained reactions of China and Russia demonstrate these two powers’ acceptance of the USA as the order-shaping power on the American continents.
From a power-politics perspective, the operation stands in the tradition of U.S. military interventions without a UN mandate, such as Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989, Yugoslavia in 1999 and Iraq in 2003, or Libya in 2011.
Domestically, the action will be presented as a success in the fight against illegal migration and drug smuggling.
In the context of these military interventions, the reaction of CDU foreign-policy politician Kiesewetter, who describes the arrest as the ‘final end of the rules-based order,’ is particularly ridiculous.
Also noteworthy is the reaction of the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, who in a statement calls on all actors to ‘remain calm and exercise restraint.’ We missed such a statement in the case of the Ukraine–Russia war, which the EU fueled with ever harsher rhetoric and further means of war.”
