Shock and awe
This is what I would describe what I felt when hearing the news that the #US invaded #Venezuela and took #Maduro as a #hostage. It is nothing short of something comparable to what happened when #Russia invaded #Ukraine with the same purpose - of triggering a regime change and turning it into a #puppetcountry - by force.
I remember even today that I took a day off from work, waiting for a desk to be delivered to my place. I woke up relaxed in that morning and I turned on the mobile data on my phone, waiting patiently to be bombarded by notifications. I got a message from a friend of mine, telling me that Russia was fighting in Ukraine. I replied to him that yeah, I know, in Donbass, right? (or something like that) - to which he replied something along the lines of "no, bro, they literally attacked Ukraine, they're in Ukraine" and sent me a link to some live reporting.
It was just as the #pandemic was getting over, most people got their shots, and we were hoping to go back to normal. We were hoping the world would go on with the ensuing post-war system that held largely well and ensured some prosper (albeit unequal) economies. The fact that a permanent member of the UN Security Council directly invaded a sovereign nation - even more so, for land grabbing reasons - changed that. I remember walking in the University Square here in Bucharest and trying to figure stuff out of what happened - my first thought was, "this world will simply not return to what it was. The old order and everything I learned about conflicts was no longer applicable".
#Trump's invasion (as I cannot really say America's invasion since the Congress didn't authorize this) of Venezuela, followed by the swift capture of its leader had an expectable outcome - not only the latter was smaller and not really surrounded by allied countries, but the #USArmy is a better trained, gunned and more effective army than that of the #Russians - but still equally shocking, given that outcome. Regardless of the motives of Trump's action (be it #drugs, #oil and whatnot), this paints a gloomier picture. What we're seeing in #Venezuela is the practical, real world application of Trumpo-Putinist doctrine, so far only expressed in words by the #POTUS when it came to #annexing #Greenland, #Canada or #Panama. It is the doctrine that was the standard in the #internationalsystem until #WW1 and the doctrine that was only starting to be abandoned after WW2, when a (apparently) more solid international organization - the UN, that is - was created to keep the order and make wars preventable. It is the doctrine that says that #mightisright and whoever has the weakest army risks being swallowed by the one that has the strongest. It is the very opposite of what our #postwar world was built on.
Maduro is not a leader to cry about. Even far from it. He's been ruling his country with an iron fist, suppressing dissent, repressing opposition and getting human rights to a low that probably even Putin would only dream about, let alone Trump himself. Yet what happened in Venezuela does not guarantee it a stable democracy, freedom, human rights. Because Trump cares nothing about these things - he showed it at home, he showed it in US #bluestates and #bluecities, he showed it by allying and bending down to dictators like Xi and Putin. What happened in Venezuela was a display of force. And it will inadvertently be a positive signal for #dictators around the world that they can do whatever they like on other countries' lands.
Right now, #EU is the strongest remaining guarantor of a #lawbasedorder. Canada, Australia, the UK, New Zealand and the democracies of the Far East are more like regional players.
Beyond these events, a couple of questions arise: What did we do to end up in this terrible situation? Could the US Democrats come back to power this year and successfully flip the situation? Or Europe? Or at least will Europe be able to keep the rule-based order to some extent at least? Or are we doomed already?
