The World according to Trump: 19TH CENTURY GUNBOAT DIPLOMACY WITHOUT DIPLOMATS

US President Donald Trump has thrown a wrecking ball at the rule-based international order and brags about it.

- Ranga Jayasuriya

However, unlike his previous action, the cost of the latest misadventures is hard to undo, and it has set the template for the other great powers to follow suit at their own volition.

The international order that would emerge from the smouldering of American action in Venezuela would mimic the international system harking back to 19th-century great-power politics, when each great power carved out a sphere of influence.

The US military raided Caracas' presidential compound and captured President Nicolás Maduro and first lady Cilia Flores, ostensibly enforcing a judicial order for arrest. Maduro and the first lady were indicted in New York yesterday for narco-trafficking— for which they pleaded not guilty.

However, coming in the wake of Trump’s pardon of another South American president, the former president of Honduras, who was previously serving 45-year sentence for similar charges, the American raid appears to do little with drug trafficking, Instead, it bears all the hallmarks of an act of predation to secure oil, of which Venezuela had the world’s largest reserves of 300 billion barrels.

The military raid, American plans to rule Venezuela, however whimsical they could be, and subsequent threats to a host of other regional countries, have now upended the international order, and risk dismantling for good the post-World II ruled and norm-based order, which the US itself has taken credit for structuring and defending.

While the post-World War II international order and, more importantly, the post-Cold war global order were not without violations, they reduced anarchy in the international system. They fostered an international system built on trade and the complex interdependence of states.

A crucial normative pillar of this system was that it guaranteed the survival of smaller states, reduced security risks, and enabled them to more actively integrate into international trade, supply chains, and international institutions.