President Donald Trump has launched not a splendid little war, but perhaps a splendid little operation in Venezuela. He has captured a dictator and removed him from power. So far, Trump seems to have executed a bad idea well: The military operation, dubbed “Operation Absolute Resolve,” seems to have been flawless. The strategic wisdom, however, is deeply questionable. And the legal basis, as offered by the president and his team, is absurd. Some Americans, and some U.S. allies, are appalled.
Russia and China claim to be appalled, too, but to use a classic diplomatic expression, the leaders in Beijing and Moscow should be invited, with all due respect, to shut their traps.
“We firmly call on the U.S. leadership to reconsider this position,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said this morning, “and release the lawfully elected president of a sovereign country and his wife.” The Russians then shamelessly turned all the sanctimony knobs to supernova levels: “Venezuela must be guaranteed the right to determine its own future without destructive external interference, particularly of a military nature.”
You don’t say. Perhaps we might generalize that principle to other nations, such as Ukraine, where Moscow’s forces are murdering people every week—in part because the Russians failed to kill or capture the “lawfully elected president of a sovereign country” four years ago.
The Chinese, too, are absolutely shocked that a great power is menacing a small neighbor and inflicting regime change by military force. China, the foreign ministry in Beijing said, “is deeply shocked”—at least they weren’t shocked and stunned—“and strongly condemns the use of force by the U.S. against a sovereign country and the use of force against the president of a country.”
Noble words. And then, like the Russians, the Chinese dared the world to laugh out loud: “China firmly opposes such hegemonic behavior by the U.S., which seriously violates international law, violates Venezuela’s sovereignty, and threatens peace and security in Latin America and the Caribbean. We urge the U.S. to abide by international law and the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and stop violating the sovereignty and security of other countries.”
Only two days ago, however, China engaged in military exercises that included surrounding Taiwan and then firing missiles in the waters around the island. A giant nation regularly running war games aimed at invading its tiny neighbor—and threatening Japan, for good measure—counts as “hegemonic behavior” that threatens the “peace and security” of a region, and China knows it.
The more stinging irony here is that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping probably approved these public statements with a chuckle. The United States has now given Russia, China, and anyone else who wants to give it a try a road map for invading countries and capturing leaders that displease them, with a lawlessness that by comparison makes the 2003 invasion of Iraq seem as lawyered up as a bank merger.
Let us all stipulate that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is a bad guy. He deserved to be driven from power, perhaps with American help. An operation rooted in support from the international community and approved by Congress would be a tough sell, because Venezuela presented no threat to the United States or anyone else, but it would have been the right way to go. (Drugs don’t count as an imminent danger.) Instead, the president declared the “Don-roe Doctrine,” another moment that will stand for ages as an embarrassment to the United States and raises the question yet again whether the commander in chief is cognitively stable enough to be ordering the invasion of other nations.
Trump and his team didn’t even try creating a coalition either at home or abroad. By simply landing troops in another nation and decapitating their leadership, Trump has done Russia and China a great service by trashing, yet again, guardrails that limit other nations from running amok. International law? Pointless. The United Nations? Never heard of them. The Congress of the United States? Well, they’re good folks, but according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, they couldn’t be told ahead of time for security reasons. (He said this while standing next to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a fountain of security violations.) Putin and Xi must have watched Trump’s presser while nodding and taking notes.
Hypocrisy, the French nobleman François de La Rochefoucauld once said, is the tribute vice pays to virtue. In this case, there is little virtue to be found; the Russian and Chinese statements are vice paying tribute to vice. They already know that the president of the United States is helping to clear the way for their adventures—and they should keep their faux-outrage to themselves.
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