I thought it would be a welcome relief to come to the wilds of Namibia to photograph wildlife and switch off from the world…but I was wrong.
Almost as soon as we arrived after 18 hours in the air, news of the audacious kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores broke, a story too big to ignore.
So while my companions are off Elephant and Hippo spotting, I’ve taken to the cozy camp bar to hammer out a few thoughts.
First off, it’s nothing new for the Americans to stick their nose into South America affairs in an attempt to gain land, power, influence or impose their political and moralistic views on other sovereign nations.
The latest outrage in Venezuela, which, let us not kid ourselves, is all about the US getting access to the world’s largest oil reserves of 300 billion barrels. Saudi Arabia comes in second with reserves of around 268 billion barrels.
There is some debate over the actual size of the Venezuela reserves as well as the cost of extraction, but the thick gloopy heavy crude of the Orinoco Belt is ideal to power America’s gas guzzling five litre pickups so beloved by the baseball cap wearing fraternity in the States.
Trump denies it, but of course snatching Maduro was about regime change and nothing to do with the drugs so freely available on American streets and what Maduro is now charged with supplying. It’s about having a regime in place that he can control and milk the country’s natural resources. He is not doing this for the good of the Venezuelan people, although most will not be unhappy to see the back of the corrupt and awful Nicolas.
Historically, America’s first big punch-up was, somewhat ironically, with their British colonial masters and the American Revolutionary War of 1775. This saw them secure a decisive victory in the Siege of Yorktown in 1781 which led King George III to negotiate an end to the war.
After that, there were various wars with the indigenous American Indians in the late 1700s, where the locals stood little chance with bows and spears against guns and shells.
The US got into its imperialist stride when, in 1846, President James Polk managed, by force of arms, to force the so-called Mexican Cession and steal the vast territory which became the American Southwest, California, Nevada, Utah, and chunks of other states. A spectacular land-grab which kind of sowed the seed of the idea that regional domination by force of arms was entirely possible.
The US has always been ready to go to war abroad to protect its economic interests, although this is no different to how other imperial powers behaved. Even in China around the mid-1800s they were ready to deploy troops to look after US interests to protect against civil unrest, local domestic uprisings and local squabbles between the British and the mainlanders.
The Americans have done this regularly all over the world, interrupted by a spell between 1861 and 1865 when they were busy beating the hell out of each other during their own American Civil War between The Union and eleven Southern States. The Union won.
A small sidenote - In 1867 on June 13, a US naval force landed and burned a number of native huts as punishment for the murder of the crew of a wrecked American ship.
Broadly speaking, America's military involvement in other countries appears to have mainly been one of protecting US economic interests, although some of these adventures were questionable as to their real motives. The weight and learning points of long-past US history is obviously highly debatable, questionable and arguable.
There is a whole laundry list of past US military actions, so let's skip to what the world's No.1 military power has been up to since World War II, remembering that, without doubt, with no American involvement, that global conflict would have turned out very differently.
If imperialist Japan had not launched its surprise December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbour base, the US may not have entered the war. This is obviously a hypothetical question but at the time there was huge domestic resistance in the US to getting involved in 'foreign wars' following the bloodbath of the First World War which killed 120,000 American troops.
America's vast resources, military and technological might secured ultimate victory against German fascism in Europe and Japan's imperialist aggression in the Pacific. However, it was not so successful against the Democratic People's Republic or Korea (DPRK) during the three year 1950 Korean War, or the 20 year battle against the North Vietnamese. The Vietnam War is technically dated 1955-1975, although the peak fighting was between 1965 and 1973 when the Americans finally fled from Saigon.
These were proxy wars during the Cold War which developed after World War II and in which America took a lead role aided by various United Nations allies, with communist Soviet Union and China on the other side.
In Korea for all their equipment, training and sheer force of arms, the Americans ended up only holding the DPRK and Chinese troops at bay and the war ended in a stalemate with borders pretty much the same. Technically the DPRK and South Korea are still at war and are living with an uneasy ceasefire and separated by a four kilometer wide Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). (Well worth a visit if have spare time next time you are in Seoul)
The Vietnam War was similarly embarrassing for the Americans. Historians point to them not being able to deal with the guerrilla tactics of the enemy, lack of knowledge of how to fight in dense jungles and also not matching the motivation and unity of the North Vietnamese who were fighting for national unification and independence.
Whatever the myriad background factors and arguments, the fact remains that despite the huge military strength of arms, men and equipment, the US did not do well at all, with Vietnam being a particular embarrassment. Neither was as Turkey Shoot as some had expected.
Add to this the Bay of Pigs disaster. Cuba became communist after the 1959 Cuban Revolution when Fidel Castro came to power. The Soviet Union suddenly had a friendly foothold right on America's doorstep. US President John F. Kennedy wanted Castro gone and a more US friendly regime, hence the disastrous invasion attempt. It was an abject foreign policy failure which killed well over 2,000 thousand soldiers in total.
In US involvement in Iraq between 2003 and 2011 is similarly seen as being a failure because of poor post-invasion planning, including disbanding the Iraqi army, underestimating the resulting insurgency by the locals and failing to understand Iraqi politics. All this led to a general breakdown in security, sectarian violence and the rise of groups like ISIS.
Finally, let's mention Afghanistan in the list of post World War Two military failures. Operation Enduring Freedom saw the United States pour in huge troop deployments and massive financial investment. It was a mess with a complex legacy of security challenges, humanitarian impacts, and political debate over its effectiveness hampering the entire operation. The Americans were in Afghanistan for 20-year until 2021 when it suddenly pulled out leaving the country in disarray and the Taliban back in charge. A hugely wasteful and ineffective foreign policy failure.
The point is, when you look back over recent history the United States, despite its massive and well-funded military machine and apparently super-smart intelligence services, has performed badly in terms of its military adventures.
Trump may swank about the US military and try to make the world at large think it is so powerful it can do anything he wishes. The evidence of recent history would appear to show this is very much not the case. Foreign policy decisions have not exactly been America’s strong point in the past few decades. In fact, most have been downright embarrassing.
Military analysts are saying ever more loudly that the 2-½ hour operation snatching Maduro would have been impossible without significant inside help by people inside the country who wanted to see the back of him. Trump's assertion that Maduro was caught in bed is absurd given a few 1,000 bombs had been dropped on Caracas before the snatch-squad moved in.
His threats against Greenland and taking it by force from Denmark appears not to take into account that the US Army, for all its might, has virtually no ability to wage war in Arctic conditions both in terms of equipment or training. The European armies do. Just as the terrain defeated the Americans in Vietnam, might not the conditions and terrain defeat them in the Arctic? Many military analysts are saying it would.
Trump is a blow-hard and in my humble opinion an unwell, mentally unstable old man of limited intellect. Clearly a wannabe dictator, he is a dangerous individual.
The world certainly should sit-up and pay attention to his bluster and threats but at the end of the day is it just that? Empty rhetoric which is certainly not backed up by recent military adventures.
His army snatching one guy and his wife in the middle of the night with inside help and the massive resources at their disposal is one thing - waging actual war is quite another.
But Trump is threatening just that by talking about the Monroe Doctrine. President James Monroe first articulated the doctrine on December 2, 1823 in his State of the Union Address. It is a foreign policy position that opposes any interference in the Western Hemisphere and broadly flies in the face of modern international law.
Trump adopting the Monroe Doctrine means he is claiming everything in the western hemisphere belongs to America, which would include all of South America, Canada and Greenland. Already Trump has laid claim to all of these but nothing much has happened other than him talking about it and kidnapping Maduro.
Trump's hot air and bluster will certainly continue but he is obviously getting more concerned about the forthcoming US mid-term elections in November.
The mid-terms could well see the Republican Party lose control of the House of Congress which would put a spoke in Trump’s wheel in terms of the dictatorial way he is running the country. His recent comments show he is worried that recent polls will not improve and time is running out for him to behave like a King. His fellow Republicans are clearly worried too and more are speaking out against him for fear they will lose their jobs come the mid-terms.
The lead-up to November will be interesting in as much as observing Trump's antics on the world stage and how the over world leaders deal with his madness. You have to admire Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney who has basically just stuck two-fingers up at him while others like British Prime Minister Keir Starmer have embarrassed themselves by grovelling. Starmer invited him over for a state visit almost immediately after Trump was elected.
November could be a turning point and draw Trump’s teeth if his Republican party loses its majority in Congress. If that happens Trump would find it very much harder to push through his whims and crazy ideas. Sorry, I mean ‘policies’.
So until November we are just going to have to wonder if we might eventually end up with four dictators, the first three of them imperialists, running the world for us all?
Russian President Vladimir Putin who is seeking to dominate Europe, China’s President Xi Jinping looking to dominate Asia and Africa, US President Donald Trump who has actually stated he wants to dominate the entire western hemisphere and Indian Prime Minister and Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi whose dictatorial style rules over the world’s biggest population.
Yikes!
Tinkerty Tonk...
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