The tragedies of small states..

The “United Nations,” established after the Second World War, set rules precisely to prevent actions like what Trump did to Venezuela. Today, however, we are living in a period in which the rules-based, liberal international legal order has lost its function. The impunity enjoyed by genocidal Israel, and the U.S. military intervention in Venezuela—during which the country’s president and his wife were openly seized and abducted from their bedroom—have become the final nails in the coffin of this order.

I had likened the U.S. intervention in Venezuela to the intervention of the “Athenian Empire” in 416 BC against the small city-state of the island of Melos, which had refused to submit. The idealistic, naïve Melian people hoped that Athens would treat them justly and fairly. For the Athenians, however, the issue was brute force—the crude reality of the big fish swallowing the small fish. The late Cemil Meriç pointed to this truth in one of his books when he wrote, “For Europeans, law has been, since ancient Greece, a spider’s web that the big flies tear through while the small ones get stuck.” Today, the world stands on the very threshold of a return to the law of the jungle.

Impunity is provocative. Confidence in going unpunished allows the worst traits of human beings to grow and flourish. Israel’s decades-long disregard for UN rules, and the helplessness of the so-called international legal order’s Western patrons in response, ultimately led Israel to commit genocide. This sense of “impunity” has now reached the borders of the West itself. Trump is threatening NATO and G7 member Canada, as well as Greenland, which belongs to Denmark—a member of both the EU and NATO.

Yet the U.S. is allied with both Canada through NATO and the G7, and Denmark through NATO. Trump expects Canada and Denmark to submit to the United States, whether through consent or through force. Just like what happened to the people of Melos nearly 2,500 years ago, these modern situations are examples of the tragedies faced by small states. The Nobel Prize–winning American novelist William Faulkner’s words—“The past is never dead. It’s not even past”—capture this reality.

The mainstream media of the U.S. and the Western world even portray the blatant abduction of Venezuelan President Maduro and his wife in distorted ways. It has emerged that BBC staff were instructed not to use the term “abducted” for Maduro. Instead of “abducted,” they use expressions such as “captured” or “seized.” Just as they cannot call Israel’s actions in Gaza “genocide,” they cannot call the abduction of Maduro and his wife an “abduction.” There seems to be no limit to the shamelessness of Western media.

The headline of an article published by the editorial board of *The Washington Post* on January 3 was “Justice in Venezuela.” The article stated that what happened to Maduro was an important message to small dictators in Latin America and around the world. It also included the following remarks: “Trump offered Maduro several exit ramps. He could have retired to a luxurious life in Moscow or Minsk. Instead, he will likely die in prison. This is one of the greatest miscalculations of all time.” It was effectively admitted that the so-called “narco-terrorist” Maduro would have been rewarded rather than punished had he submitted to Trump.

Everyone knows that the issue has nothing to do with drugs. The *Washington Post* article described Maduro as having symbolized for years the false warmth of “Latin American collectivism,” adding that “now he should spend the rest of his life in a humane American prison.” This sentence is a confession that the U.S. has declared war on Latin American collectivism. While Trump advocates protectionism in the U.S. under the slogan “America First,” the exact opposite is demanded from Latin America. In other words, Latin America is expected to remain a pariah of the neoliberal economic order.

Trump and the politicians who support him openly say that after Venezuela, it will be Cuba’s and Iran’s turn. This shows that the “Monroe Doctrine,” transformed into the “Donroe Doctrine,” is no longer limited to the Western Hemisphere. If the U.S. sees itself as the world’s most powerful state or as “the world’s policeman,” why should it limit itself to the Western Hemisphere at all?

Trump digs with a bayonet, and it appears he will keep digging as long as he does not hit solid rock. His actions since his first term show that he prefers low-risk interventions. Trump seems to believe that short and violent confrontations, or short and violent strikes carried out at the lowest cost, will enhance his political standing. Yet military history is full of examples showing that such attacks can also escalate into full-scale wars.