TORONTO – Now that the United States has extracted Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela and detained him in New York, with U.S. President Donald Trump early on claiming that the U.S. would “run” the country, while shocking as all that is, nothing about this calamity is new: it recalls four precedents that can help us see elements of the present that otherwise may be shrouded by propaganda or emotion.
For starters, there is the long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America, based on an implicit, if self-proclaimed, right to choose the region’s leaders. During the Cold War, installing a leader or government approved by U.S. officials was typically dressed up as a pro-democracy crusade, with the logic being that America’s main motivation was to stop communism, which was anti-democratic.
This time around, there is no pretense that democracy is the goal. Maduro and his allies stole Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election. But instead of punishing him for that very real crime, the Trump administration prefers the essentially fictional charge of “narco-terrorism.” And while Venezuela has a legitimately elected president, Edmundo Gonzalez, there has been confusion as to whether he, or the opposition more generally, will figure into the U.S. administration’s plans.
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