Some more observations

• The kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife solidifies America’s role as a gangster state. Violence does not generate peace. It generates violence. The immolation of international and humanitarian law generates a world without laws, a world of failed states, warlords, rouge imperial powers and perpetual violence and chaos.
• Let’s strip away the euphemisms: this is invasion, not enforcement. There was no imminent threat to American soil that justified the use of force under international law.
• [The understatement of the century] . . The abrupt removal of Maduro raises difficult issues.
• [A statement of what we Brits call the bleedin’ obvious] The country’s future is unlikely to be plain sailing. 
• The US record of interventions in Latin America and beyond does not bode well.
• The milquetoast response from the UN and the EU suggests that neither knows how to handle the situation. 
• Trump clearly does not care much about what allies and international bodies think of his conduct. But dismissing the rules-based order sets a precedent that he might regret.
• Other authoritarian regimes will look at the events of the weekend with apprehension — none more so than Iran.
• This year is only a few days old but no one can dispute that Trump has already reasserted himself as the dominant figure on the world stage. [Via the classic authoritarian move to distract from domestic problems – a ‘special operation non-war’.]

More questions arising

• Is the next target really Colombia, as Trump has said? And then Canada??
• Does Trump want to be emperor of all North and South America? [His ‘back garden’] ?
• What next madness will be added to this one?
• What will be the reaction of the US voters to all this? Can Trump’s approval rating fall even lower? Or will it now rise??
• Will we all have a Happy New Year? Or just the demented US President, his crooked cronies and his mendacious, sycophantic acolytes?