Another View: Under Trump, US is again the world’s policeman
Donald Trump has a bit of Barney Fife in him. Armed with a badge and bullet ― and lots of guns ― he’s hell-bent on locking up all the bad guys in town.
The president who promised to always put America first and decried foreign interventions that lead to nation-building is now standing astride the globe with the ambition of bending it to his will. CNN calculates that over the past year, Trump has either threatened or attacked one of every 15 nations worldwide.
In 2019, Trump declared, “Our policy of never-ending war, regime change, and nation-building is being replaced by the clear-eyed pursuit of American interests. It is the job of our military to protect our security, not to be the policeman of the world.”
Yet look at him now. Trump joined Israel in dismantling Gaza and the Hamas terror network ― a worthy mission ― but then crafted a plan that would put himself in charge of rebuilding and governing the Palestinian territory and commit American troops to keeping order.
Last year, he dropped bombs on Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.
Trump began the new year with a nighttime raid on Venezuela, where American troops and law enforcement personnel snatched President Nicolas Maduro and his wife from their bed and hauled them to New York to stand trial on drug trafficking and other charges.
And he’s not done, apparently. Our friends in Europe have their knickers in a knot over renewed rumblings from the White House about annexing Greenland to secure the North Atlantic. His top aides are leaking that Cuba may be next on the regime change list.
For a guy who swore off foreign entanglements, Trump has the United States as tangled as a cheap fishing reel.
A case can be made for nearly all of Trump’s interventions. The targets got exactly what they deserved. And America may well be more secure because the president acted.
Or maybe Trump was right in 2016 when he said, “toppling regimes with no plan for what to do in the day after only produces power vacuums that are filled simply by terrorists.”
As for Trump’s latest mission as the world’s top cop, what happens in the coming days is murky. At the post-raid press conference, Trump said the United States would run Venezuela until it was once again a prosperous, functioning democracy.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has since tempered that pledge, saying the U.S. would simply point big guns at Caracas to assure they do what we tell them to do. But it still sounds as if the United States is committed to policing Venezuela long-term.
Maduro was just one corrupt guy on a roster of thousands, just like him, embedded in every aspect of Venezuelan life, from politics to business to the military.
The drug gangs that pulled Maduro’s strings are not going to dissolve because Trump has captured their puppet. There’s too much money at stake. Stabilizing Venezuela will require rooting the gangsters out of the jungles, executive suites and capitols. Ultimately, that risks American lives and resources.
The pro-democracy opposition in Venezuela is also weak. Notably, Trump left Maduro’s Number Two, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, as the titular head of the country, rather than elevating Nobel Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, who was cheated out of the presidency in the rigged 2024 election. This, even though Machado gushed about Trump as if she were a member of his cabinet. Flattery got her nowhere.
Trump’s scheme for building a new Venezuela commits American oil companies to investing billions in restoring the country’s broken-down petroleum industry. But despite the lure of vast oil reserves, they aren’t rising to the bait. With crude oil hovering at around $57 a barrel, the return on investment doesn’t justify the risk. And if American workers do go into Venezuela’s oil fields, American troops will have to go with them.
We know from experience that toppling a bad dude isn’t necessarily the first step toward peace and prosperity. Look what’s happened in Iraq since we ran off Saddam Hussein. Or in Libya, after we joined an international coalition to oust Muammar Gaddafi. Or in Afghanistan, after we subdued the Taliban. No one can argue that those interventions worked out as we had hoped.
Maybe Venezuela post-Maduro will turn out better. There are 8 million Venezuelan exiles who, if they could be persuaded to return, might make a difference.
But Venezuela has the makings of a classic quagmire. The very thing Trump promised to avoid in swearing off America’s role as the world’s policeman.
Nolan Finley writes for the Detroit News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.