Paul Buckingham - Blog Philosophy and life in general

The White House denies that it is occupying Venezuela, although quite how that fits with their claim to control the country is a bit of conundrum. Trump however believes that he can control it through a proxy, the vice-president. Until of course she proves to be unreliable. As she will.

Trump is still obviously smarting from not having been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this time round and so is dissing the actual winner of the prize, the opposition leader who just happened to have won the last Venezuelan general election with about 70% of the votes. Mr Trump though doesn’t think that she has much ‘popular support’. And in the new world order, what he thinks is enough to determine the fate of nations.

We normally expect some veneer of respectability to be applied to actions such as kidnapping a head of state, such as Maduro and installing another person as president in his place. Usually there would be some sort of appeal to international law as justifying such an action or even an attempt to get retrospective consent from Congress. This time, nothing, zilch, nada. Why? Because apparently the 150 aircraft and the thousands of troops who were involved were simply arresting someone wanted in the USA for narco-terrorism and for having a gun, all based on an indictment from 2020.

As head of state, he should have immunity from prosecution in all other countries around the world. The White House lawyers though say not, because he is not rightfully the President of Venezuela. He stole the last election. Trump failed in his attempt in 2021. But then irony is not Trump’s strong point.

For Latin America and the Caribbean, Washington’s power is a familiar reality. In 1990, George Bush Sr brought down the Panamanian dictator President Manuel Noriega, taking him from the Vatican’s diplomatic mission in Panama City, again on drug-trafficking charges. He served almost 30 years for the offence. In 1983, Ronald Reagan invaded the tiny island of Grenada, fearful of its young left-wing leaders’ leanings towards Castro’s Cuba.

Further back, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is said to have remarked in 1939 that the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza was “a son of a bitch — but he’s our son of a bitch”. In 1963, President John F Kennedy, authorised the CIA to destabilise the leftist government of the socialist leader Cheddi Jagan in what was British Guiana (now Guyana), as independence approached. By the time independence arrived in 1966, Jagan had been deposed in an election many regarded as fraudulent. In his place, an (initially) American-friendly government was installed.

And the reaction to all of this? China and Russia now claim to own the moral high ground. In Europe, there have been expressions of support for the removal of a dictator combined uneasily with calls for the respect of international law.

Mme Le Pen openly criticised America for its actions – she obviously doesn’t have financial support from America at the moment. Our own PM has refused to say, even though very familiar with the rules of international law, whether they have been broken. He prefers to take the line that we have first to ‘establish all of the facts’. A good lawyer’s avoidance manoeuvre. And so we saw Keir Starmer wriggling on Saturday, hailing the fall of a dictator but insisting that he stood by international law.

The Conservative leader said that Maduros removal was a moral act but warned against attacks on the rules-based world order. Farage said that the US move in Venezuela goes against international law but "may be a good thing". My head is spinning.

Evidently they are afraid to say openly what they really fear - that the American president is dismantling the rules-based international order in favour of a strong-man approach to self-declared zones of interest.

But the weak reaction is actually in part a result of the problematic nature of international law. The truth is that the rules-based order has the inherent weakness of not being the product of any real democratic process. It was always a fiction that lawyers tried to will into being against the realities of political power.

Trump’s personal fantasy involves imagining that he really is the character he played on 'The Apprentice': a master of the Art of the Deal. And so it’s easy to see how he interpreted some conciliatory conversations with the now acting-President Rodriguez as a signal that she would be his obedient puppet. But then it all turned itself on its head, with Rodriguez declaring Maduro still to be President and Trump threatening retribution if she didn’t do what he said.

Trump’s self-image as the ultimate dealmaker explains why he was so ready to believe, falsely, that he controlled Venezuela. It also explains his insistence that by, as he imagined, taking over Venezuela, he had gained a valuable prize in the form of its oil. “We’re going to be taking a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground.”

According to the Economist, the Oil companies are not so convinced. They see dilapidated infrastructure that would cost more than $100bn in capital expenditure in order to bring the country’s output back to where it was 15 years ago - twice the amount America’s oil majors combined invested worldwide in 2024.

And while Venezuela has large oil reserves – bigger than Saudi Arabia - much of it is “extra heavy, making it polluting and expensive to process.” All that against an unstable political environment both in Venezuela and also the USA. So it’s going to be difficult to justify to their shareholders the expense of playing what would be a fantasy oil business.

So, apart from the imagined financial gain, why did Trump have Maduro abducted? The excuse of stopping drug-trafficking is lame. Relatively little originates in Venezuela although some is transhipped, mainly from Columbia. There would instead have been numerous other motivations.

As Paul Krugman said in his latest Substack piece this week, “Fantasies of dominance and control and dreams of oil-soaked riches played their part. So did ego. The snatch gave Trump an opportunity to strut, and assuage his Obama envy: Trump’s minions set up a “war room” at Mar-a-Lago that looks as if it was designed to let him emulate the famous photo of Obama and his officials tracking the killing of Osama bin Laden.”.

And now Marco Rubio (origin Cuban) and others are saying that Cuba is in such a state that they could just walk in and take it over. Columbia is not in a good position and, as it too is in the American self-declared zone of influence, it is on the short-list for action. Greenland seems to have come back on the agenda and no doubt Canada will be reinforcing its borders.

What is certain is that Trump has no interest in restoring democracy in Venezuela. Out of peak, he’s already rejected the candidate who actually won last time and instead installed as his presumed puppet a person who was as much involved as Maduro in the stealing of that last election. At the same time, we see his disregard for all democratic principles in his actions in the United States. The United States has become a mafia state, one in which the constitution is apparently unable to provide the bulwarks needed against such conduct. The United States Congress and Supreme Court have largely abandoned their constitutional roles.

Arguably, the rot set in when the expression ‘fake news’ was first used. It was an attack on objective truth, one which descended rapidly into farce during the Covid pandemic, but then became the go-to defence against any attacks on his presidency. The January 6th attempt by Trump to ‘do a Maduro’ was stopped, just, but following his re-election last year, he has shown his true colours by aligning himself with the other ‘strongmen’ in the world. There is now no more pretence: Trump is explicitly following in their footsteps.

5th January 2026

Paul Buckingham

	Might is Right

	The White House denies that it is occupying Venezuela, although quite how that fits with their claim to control the country is a bit of conundrum. Trump however believes that he can control it through a proxy, the vice-president. Until of course she proves to be unreliable. As she will. Trump is still obviously smarting from not having been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this time round and so is dissing the actual winner of the prize, the opposition leader who just happened to have won the last Venezuelan general election with about 70% of the votes. Mr Trump though doesn’t think that she has much ‘popular support’. And in the new world order, what he thinks is enough to determine the fate of nations. We normally expect some veneer of respectability to be applied to actions such as kidnapping a head of state, such as Maduro and installing another person as president in his place. Usually there would be some sort of appeal to international law as justifying such an action or even an attempt to get retrospective consent from Congress. This time, nothing, zilch, nada. Why? Because apparently the 150 aircraft and the thousands of troops who were involved were simply arresting someone wanted in the USA for narco-terrorism and for having a gun, all based on an indictment from 2020. As head of state, he should have immunity from prosecution in all other countries around the world. The White House lawyers though say not, because he is not rightfully the President of Venezuela. He stole the last election. Trump failed in his attempt in 2021. But then irony is not Trump’s strong point. For Latin America and the Caribbean, Washington’s power is a familiar reality. In 1990, George Bush Sr brought down the Panamanian dictator President Manuel Noriega, taking him from the Vatican’s diplomatic mission in Panama City, again on drug-trafficking charges. He served almost 30 years for the offence. In 1983, Ronald Reagan invaded the tiny island of Grenada, fearful of its young left-wing leaders’ leanings towards Castro’s Cuba. Further back, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is said to have remarked in 1939 that the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza was “a son of a bitch — but he’s our son of a bitch”. In 1963, President John F Kennedy, authorised the CIA to destabilise the leftist government of the socialist leader Cheddi Jagan in what was British Guiana (now Guyana), as independence approached. By the time independence arrived in 1966, Jagan had been deposed in an election many regarded as fraudulent. In his place, an (initially) American-friendly government was installed. And the reaction to all of this? China and Russia now claim to own the moral high ground. In Europe, there have been expressions of support for the removal of a dictator combined uneasily with calls for the respect of international law. Mme Le Pen openly criticised America for its actions – she obviously doesn’t have financial support from America at the moment. Our own PM has refused to say, even though very familiar with the rules of international law, whether they have been broken. He prefers to take the line that we have first to ‘establish all of the facts’. A good lawyer’s avoidance manoeuvre. And so we saw Keir Starmer wriggling on Saturday, hailing the fall of a dictator but insisting that he stood by international law. The Conservative leader said that Maduros removal was a moral act but warned against attacks on the rules-based world order. Farage said that the US move in Venezuela goes against international law but "may be a good thing". My head is spinning. Evidently they are afraid to say openly what they really fear - that the American president is dismantling the rules-based international order in favour of a strong-man approach to self-declared zones of interest. But the weak reaction is actually in part a result of the problematic nature of international law. The truth is that the rules-based order has the inherent weakness of not being the product of any real democratic process. It was always a fiction that lawyers tried to will into being against the realities of political power. Trump’s personal fantasy involves imagining that he really is the character he played on 'The Apprentice': a master of the Art of the Deal. And so it’s easy to see how he interpreted some conciliatory conversations with the now acting-President Rodriguez as a signal that she would be his obedient puppet. But then it all turned itself on its head, with Rodriguez declaring Maduro still to be President and Trump threatening retribution if she didn’t do what he said. Trump’s self-image as the ultimate dealmaker explains why he was so ready to believe, falsely, that he controlled Venezuela. It also explains his insistence that by, as he imagined, taking over Venezuela, he had gained a valuable prize in the form of its oil. “We’re going to be taking a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground.” According to the Economist, the Oil companies are not so convinced. They see dilapidated infrastructure that would cost more than $100bn in capital expenditure in order to bring the country’s output back to where it was 15 years ago - twice the amount America’s oil majors combined invested worldwide in 2024. And while Venezuela has large oil reserves – bigger than Saudi Arabia - much of it is “extra heavy, making it polluting and expensive to process.” All that against an unstable political environment both in Venezuela and also the USA. So it’s going to be difficult to justify to their shareholders the expense of playing what would be a fantasy oil business. So, apart from the imagined financial gain, why did Trump have Maduro abducted? The excuse of stopping drug-trafficking is lame. Relatively little originates in Venezuela although some is transhipped, mainly from Columbia. There would instead have been numerous other motivations. As Paul Krugman said in his latest Substack piece this week, “Fantasies of dominance and control and dreams of oil-soaked riches played their part. So did ego. The snatch gave Trump an opportunity to strut, and assuage his Obama envy: Trump’s minions set up a “war room” at Mar-a-Lago that looks as if it was designed to let him emulate the famous photo of Obama and his officials tracking the killing of Osama bin Laden.”. And now Marco Rubio (origin Cuban) and others are saying that Cuba is in such a state that they could just walk in and take it over. Columbia is not in a good position and, as it too is in the American self-declared zone of influence, it is on the short-list for action. Greenland seems to have come back on the agenda and no doubt Canada will be reinforcing its borders. What is certain is that Trump has no interest in restoring democracy in Venezuela. Out of peak, he’s already rejected the candidate who actually won last time and instead installed as his presumed puppet a person who was as much involved as Maduro in the stealing of that last election. At the same time, we see his disregard for all democratic principles in his actions in the United States. The United States has become a mafia state, one in which the constitution is apparently unable to provide the bulwarks needed against such conduct. The United States Congress and Supreme Court have largely abandoned their constitutional roles. Arguably, the rot set in when the expression ‘fake news’ was first used. It was an attack on objective truth, one which descended rapidly into farce during the Covid pandemic, but then became the go-to defence against any attacks on his presidency. The January 6th attempt by Trump to ‘do a Maduro’ was stopped, just, but following his re-election last year, he has shown his true colours by aligning himself with the other ‘strongmen’ in the world. There is now no more pretence: Trump is explicitly following in their footsteps. 5th January 2026 Paul Buckingham
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