There will be many celebrating the order President Donald Trump gave to the US military to put in a strike on Venezuela and “extract” its president, Nicholas Maduro, to American soil so he can stand trial on a raft of charges ranging from “narco-terrorism” to possession of weapons.
Prominent among them will be the millions of Venezuelans forced into exile during the years of the Maduro regime, which, apart from being accused of stealing an election, is also said to be detaining and torturing opponents.
Those exiles are scattered all over central and South America, as well as the US itself, not to mention further abroad.
Perhaps not marking “liberation”, though, will be millions of joyous Trump supporters who have watched a real-time Rambo movie… but with even better scriptwriting than Hollywood could manage.
Here at home, many right-wingers, who have found, in Trump, their new best friend, have been cheering, too.
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Some have even been warning our government that something similar could await this country because of the “terrible things” happening to white people.
Of course, part of the crowing is about how the American pilots and special forces operators would find it even easier to give us the proverbial snot klap than they did to Maduro’s forces in Caracas and elsewhere.
Few of those local Trump fans appear to care about the fact that, no matter how bad Maduro is, the US strike violated international law.
And, if you think someone like Trump can ride roughshod over global rules, don’t get upset if our politicians start thinking they can do they same with pesky laws like protection of private property rights…
To be fair, Trump has made a huge song and dance about taking illegal action, but he is far from the first: The US has, since the end of World War II, believed itself to have a divine right to police the planet.
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Ground invasions have happened in Grenada and Iraq, while countless aerial strikes have been conducted against a host of countries.
Yet, in taking the current unilateral action – without even informing his own Congress – and rationalising it by saying it was a law enforcement process, Trump has made the world a more dangerous place.
Who’s next? Is it Greenland, which Trump openly covets for its rare earth mineral resources? What will Europe do if that happens?
Now that Washington has given the finger to international law, what stops China from moving more aggressively to regain Taiwan, which it considers part of its territory?
The fact that South Africa is of little use to Trump other than as a sop to his racist supporters who want white people to stand together, means the likelihood of us facing the Caracas Option is small.
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And, of course, we don’t sit atop some of the world’s biggest oil reserves as Venezuela does.
Mind you, Trump is clearly wanting regime change in Caracas – and he has made it abundantly clear he cannot stand the current one in the Union Buildings. So, who knows?
The most worrying aspect of the current Trump escapade is that it confirms the American habit of hitting people who cannot really hit back. That makes for good sound bites and video clips.
But one day, one of those little guys might call on a much bigger – nuclear-armed – friend to help sort out the bully in the sandpit.
