After the recent seizure of Venezuelan president Nicolas Muduro and his wife, Cilia, by US Special Forces from their supposedly secure hiding place, Donald Trump spoke in his own typically idiosyncratic way about international law. The bottom line? He doesn’t really believe in it.
As soon as the capture happened, experts and political leaders rightly wondered about the state of international law when one country can capture the leader of another almost out of the blue and then start the process of putting him on trial.
Maduro was a dictator without doubt, and in 2024, suppressed the result of an election that the opposition had won. He, and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, have reduced what ought to be a prosperous country to financial ruin. Venezuela has the biggest oil reserves in the world, more even than Saudi Arabia, but the oil industry is so ruined by mismanagement and underinvestment, it is not making Venezuela and its people the money it ought to be.
The Maduro regime is also deeply corrupt and in league with ultra-violent drug gangs who smuggle narcotics into America and elsewhere. To make things even worse from an American point of view, Venezuela has become an ally of China, Russia and Iran.
Chaos
So, you can see why the US Government would not like the Maduro regime, but if America feels it can capture the leader of any country it dislikes, any time it likes, haven’t we a recipe for international chaos and disorder? Hence the concerns about the state of international law in a Trumpian world.
Asked by The New York Times if he places any limits on his power, Trump’s answer was very revealing. He said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me. I don’t need international law. I’m not looking to hurt people.”
Let’s tease out what’s going on here. Trump regularly speaks off the cuff, often making things up as he goes along, and is constantly bragging and exaggerating, so it can be tough to work out what he really means from one day to the next, but let’s try anyway.
He despises the United Nations, for instance, considering it to be very corrupt and ideological biased against the West, including America”
What he seems to be saying is that he doesn’t need international law as a guide because he has his own sense of right and wrong, “my own morality”. He seems to be saying, in other words, that he is not completely unconstrained. He says, “I’m not looking to hurt people”.
He clearly doesn’t include anyone he considers enemies in that sentence. After all, he regularly orders the US armed forces to bomb foes of the United States whether in Iran, Yemen, Venezuela or elsewhere.
Trump probably doesn’t trust the arbiters of international law anyway. He despises the United Nations, for instance, considering it to be very corrupt and ideological biased against the West, including America.
When he hears a term like ‘international law’, he probably interprets this to mean giving people who dislike the United States the power to veto its actions. In practice, almost no American president has ever done that.
The difference between Trump and many of his predecessors, is that he isn’t even pretending anymore.
Critique
The Vatican does believe in international law. After the capture of Maduro, Pope Leo said that Venezuela’s sovereignty had to be respected.
He insisted on the need to “overcome violence” and called for “embarking on paths of justice and peace, guaranteeing the country’s sovereignty.”
Trump, meanwhile, has said the US would be running Venezuela. In practice this is not happening, because Maduro’s vice-presidency, Delcy Rodriquez has taken over. She might be forced into policy-changes by American military and economic pressure, but for America to actually run the country, it would have to send in tens of thousands of troops, and even then, it would not be guaranteed.
If you replace an unjust order with chaos and anarchy, you can make things much worse for ordinary people”
The ironic thing is that Trump is a long-term critic of ‘regime change’, that is, overthrowing the government of a given country and replacing it with another as America, with other Western powers did in Iraq, Syria and Libya with mainly disastrous effects.
It is all very well to say a given regime is evil – Saddam Hussein’s certainly was – but if you replace an unjust order with chaos and anarchy, you can make things much worse for ordinary people.
It is possible Venezuela will slide into further chaos if no-one is in charge, and the same thing might happen in Iran.
Now Trump has set his sights on Greenland. But Greenland is not Venezuela. It is a democratic country which is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Denmark colonised it in the 18th century, and has a historic connection to Greenland through the Vikings.
American presidents before Trump have tried to buy Greenland from the Danes and make it part of the United States. They bought Alaska from Russia in the 19th century, after all.
Rationale
Trump thinks Greenland, with its tiny population of 55,000 people, is vital to American security because it faces Russia on the opposite side of the Arctic Circle, a region China is now operating in and apparently is important to the efficient operation of satellites from satellite stations.
He thinks that if America is going to invest heavily in the Greenland economy and its security, then America and not the Danes should have it. Ultimately, of course, it should be up to the people to Greenland, who are overwhelmingly Inuit (known once upon a time as ‘Eskimos’).
If Trump was simply to seize the country from a NATO ally, that truly would spark a crisis in international law and show that America really is acting in an almost totally constrained way, subject to the whims of Donald Trump. We would then have to wait and see what Congress, or the US courts, or American voters would do.
Pope Leo must play a very careful hand here. If he alienates Trump, Trump won’t listen to a word he says”
Trump is, in fact, a very old type of leader. It is easy to imagine him in Medieval or Renaissance Italy leading one of the rich and powerful families and vying for control of the papacy, and maybe trying to put one of his own family members on the Throne of St Peter. He would be thinking in those times, ‘If I don’t do it, someone else will’.
Today he looks out on the world and seems to see only rivalry between big powers like the US, Russia, China, in which Europe is increasingly only a pawn. He wants America to remain top dog.
In this context, the moral leadership of the papacy, insofar as it will be listened to by anyone, will be extremely important. Pope Leo must play a very careful hand here. If he alienates Trump, Trump won’t listen to a word he says. But if the pope can somehow become even slightly trusted by Trump, then perhaps he can become even a mild restraining influence, although I wouldn’t hold out much hope.
Living in the Trumpian world of ‘might is right’
After the recent seizure of Venezuelan president Nicolas Muduro and his wife, Cilia, by US Special Forces from their supposedly secure hiding place, Donald Trump spoke in his own typically idiosyncratic way about international law. The bottom line? He doesn’t really believe in it.
As soon as the capture happened, experts and political leaders rightly wondered about the state of international law when one country can capture the leader of another almost out of the blue and then start the process of putting him on trial.
Maduro was a dictator without doubt, and in 2024, suppressed the result of an election that the opposition had won. He, and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, have reduced what ought to be a prosperous country to financial ruin. Venezuela has the biggest oil reserves in the world, more even than Saudi Arabia, but the oil industry is so ruined by mismanagement and underinvestment, it is not making Venezuela and its people the money it ought to be.
The Maduro regime is also deeply corrupt and in league with ultra-violent drug gangs who smuggle narcotics into America and elsewhere. To make things even worse from an American point of view, Venezuela has become an ally of China, Russia and Iran.
Chaos
So, you can see why the US Government would not like the Maduro regime, but if America feels it can capture the leader of any country it dislikes, any time it likes, haven’t we a recipe for international chaos and disorder? Hence the concerns about the state of international law in a Trumpian world.
Asked by The New York Times if he places any limits on his power, Trump’s answer was very revealing. He said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me. I don’t need international law. I’m not looking to hurt people.”
Let’s tease out what’s going on here. Trump regularly speaks off the cuff, often making things up as he goes along, and is constantly bragging and exaggerating, so it can be tough to work out what he really means from one day to the next, but let’s try anyway.
What he seems to be saying is that he doesn’t need international law as a guide because he has his own sense of right and wrong, “my own morality”. He seems to be saying, in other words, that he is not completely unconstrained. He says, “I’m not looking to hurt people”.
He clearly doesn’t include anyone he considers enemies in that sentence. After all, he regularly orders the US armed forces to bomb foes of the United States whether in Iran, Yemen, Venezuela or elsewhere.
Trump probably doesn’t trust the arbiters of international law anyway. He despises the United Nations, for instance, considering it to be very corrupt and ideological biased against the West, including America.
When he hears a term like ‘international law’, he probably interprets this to mean giving people who dislike the United States the power to veto its actions. In practice, almost no American president has ever done that.
The difference between Trump and many of his predecessors, is that he isn’t even pretending anymore.
Critique
The Vatican does believe in international law. After the capture of Maduro, Pope Leo said that Venezuela’s sovereignty had to be respected.
He insisted on the need to “overcome violence” and called for “embarking on paths of justice and peace, guaranteeing the country’s sovereignty.”
Trump, meanwhile, has said the US would be running Venezuela. In practice this is not happening, because Maduro’s vice-presidency, Delcy Rodriquez has taken over. She might be forced into policy-changes by American military and economic pressure, but for America to actually run the country, it would have to send in tens of thousands of troops, and even then, it would not be guaranteed.
The ironic thing is that Trump is a long-term critic of ‘regime change’, that is, overthrowing the government of a given country and replacing it with another as America, with other Western powers did in Iraq, Syria and Libya with mainly disastrous effects.
It is all very well to say a given regime is evil – Saddam Hussein’s certainly was – but if you replace an unjust order with chaos and anarchy, you can make things much worse for ordinary people.
It is possible Venezuela will slide into further chaos if no-one is in charge, and the same thing might happen in Iran.
Now Trump has set his sights on Greenland. But Greenland is not Venezuela. It is a democratic country which is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Denmark colonised it in the 18th century, and has a historic connection to Greenland through the Vikings.
American presidents before Trump have tried to buy Greenland from the Danes and make it part of the United States. They bought Alaska from Russia in the 19th century, after all.
Rationale
Trump thinks Greenland, with its tiny population of 55,000 people, is vital to American security because it faces Russia on the opposite side of the Arctic Circle, a region China is now operating in and apparently is important to the efficient operation of satellites from satellite stations.
He thinks that if America is going to invest heavily in the Greenland economy and its security, then America and not the Danes should have it. Ultimately, of course, it should be up to the people to Greenland, who are overwhelmingly Inuit (known once upon a time as ‘Eskimos’).
If Trump was simply to seize the country from a NATO ally, that truly would spark a crisis in international law and show that America really is acting in an almost totally constrained way, subject to the whims of Donald Trump. We would then have to wait and see what Congress, or the US courts, or American voters would do.
Trump is, in fact, a very old type of leader. It is easy to imagine him in Medieval or Renaissance Italy leading one of the rich and powerful families and vying for control of the papacy, and maybe trying to put one of his own family members on the Throne of St Peter. He would be thinking in those times, ‘If I don’t do it, someone else will’.
Today he looks out on the world and seems to see only rivalry between big powers like the US, Russia, China, in which Europe is increasingly only a pawn. He wants America to remain top dog.
In this context, the moral leadership of the papacy, insofar as it will be listened to by anyone, will be extremely important. Pope Leo must play a very careful hand here. If he alienates Trump, Trump won’t listen to a word he says. But if the pope can somehow become even slightly trusted by Trump, then perhaps he can become even a mild restraining influence, although I wouldn’t hold out much hope.
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