Shucking Oysters: Warrior Diplomacy
By Alex Allen
Not since 2021 have I felt such existential dread about where we are heading. As the iconic bumper sticker warned us: If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention. Pick a verb: scared, confused – the future is not friendly. And if you think it is, then do tell me what pills you are taking or flavour of Kool-aid you are drinking.
Let’s look at the biggest elephant in the room. Last year: His tariffs sent the world’s economies floundering. He fired thousands of federal workers. He mocked justice with pardons for his criminal friends. He ordered masked agents to violently grab anyone that looked different. He ordered the National Guard into select cities fomenting fear and aggression. He cut funding to Ivy League universities to toe his ideological line. He sued the media for inflaming his ego. He has threatened annexing Canada, Greenland, and Panama. He has big plans for Europe and huge ones for the Middle East. He paved the iconic Rose Garden. He demolished part of the White House for his $400 million gilded ballroom. He renamed the Kennedy Center, the Trump Kennedy Center. In just six months he made over $3 billion through crypto and licensing deals. And this barely covers it.
And then mere moments into the New Year, in a brazen military operation, the “strongest and most fearsome military on the planet” kidnapped Venezuelan President Maduro and wife and then ceremoniously bombed the capital, Caracas. The couple are now facing charges for “narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices as well as conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the US.”
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said at a news conference, where he boasted that this “extremely successful operation should serve as warning to anyone who would threaten American sovereignty or endanger American lives.” Trump continued to gloat: “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.”
But it’s not about national security. It’s about crude (pun unintended) oil. “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars … and start making money for the country,” Trump said as he celebrated Maduro’s capture. What Trump wants is Venezuela’s oil fields. He’s fixated: “we built the Venezuela oil industry with American talent, drive, and skill, and the socialist regime stole it from us.”
Hyper-masculine Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, continued the rhetoric: “American warriors are second to none. The best in the world and the best of our country. What all of us witnessed … was sheer guts and grit, gallantry and glory of the American warrior … Our warriors are the elite of America.” And if we still didn’t get it, Hammerhead Hegseth reminded one and all: “This is America first. This is peace through strength and the United States War Department is proud to help deliver it.”
Dan “Razin” Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff followed with more lurid details. Also sharing his boss’s penchant for hyperbole, Caine gushed about “leveraging” their “unmatched intelligence capabilities” and how it was “an audacious operation that only the United States could do.” His closing remarks were most telling: “Our jobs are to integrate combat power so when the order comes, we can deliver overwhelming force at the time and the place of our choosing against any foe anywhere in the world.”
Maduro was not popular at home or abroad. Venezuelans everywhere are celebrating this moment, looking to return after more than a decade of economic mismanagement, corruption, and repression. After winning the election by a slim margin in 2013, he expelled US diplomats and accused them of poisoning the previous leader, Hugo Chavez. Maduro inherited absolute control over state institutions, including the military leadership, the Supreme Court, and the media. Following the election in 2018, Maduro was declared the unopposed winner, but many countries, including the US and Canada, would not recognize his presidency. He jailed opposition leaders and forced many others into exile. In 2024, Maduro was again elected the winner, this time under more questionable circumstances. All the while, Maduro’s wife held multiple high-ranking positions, such as attorney general and chief of parliament.
Sound familiar? Remember that Trump got three million less votes than his opponent and still won. And don’t forget the 32 felons Trump pardoned himself for, from falsifying hush payments to porn star Stormy Daniels to attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
When asked about opposition leader Maria Corina Machado (who stole Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize last year) he said “I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country.” That alone, US State Department correspondent Tom Bateman wrote, “will signal to some in Venezuela, particularly Machado’s supporters, that Trump isn’t serious about shoring up Venezuela for a democratic or just future, but rather to plunder its oil wealth.”
Meanwhile, the interim Venezuelan leader, vice-president Delcy Rodríguez, who Trump has said will “temporarily run” the country, warned that “if she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”
Prime Minister Carney’s initial glib response was that all parties respect international law. Later he added that Canada stands “by the Venezuelan people’s sovereign right to decide and build their own future in a peaceful and democratic society.”
Pierre Poilievre, who is married to a Venezuelan, was less nuanced: “Congratulations to President Trump for the arrest of the narco-terrorist and socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro, who should spend the rest of his days in prison.” He also suggested that González share the presidency with Machado.
According to a 33-page US National Security Strategy released in November, Trump officials say they are carrying out their national security strategy, which calls for American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere, asserting himself where and when he needs to. This has huge implications for Canada, particularly in terms of Arctic sovereignty, defence and security. In other words, peace through strength.
And here we are, apologetically attached to our impulsive conjoined twin. Even Trump’s Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair recently, that Trump has an alcoholic’s mentality – he thinks he can do anything he wants.
Trump did say that US military action could soon be coming to Colombia, Cuba, Greenland, Iran, Mexico, and Venezuela (again). In a recent Atlantic article, “The Fuck-Around-and-Find-Out Presidency,” the authors eloquently wrote: “Trump views many parts of this hemisphere as a rightful extension of his US sandbox, where he is free to snatch and grab what he pleases.” Will Canada be next?
This year will mark 250 years since the founding of the United States. As David Pratt wrote in The National, the mood surrounding such a significant anniversary will be more tense that celebratory. We will see more of the Trump effect, “shifting global alliances and the blurring of the boundary between war and peace.”
In an interview in December, former Liberal foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy said it best, when he voiced his concerns that Prime Minister Carney “is working on the basis that somehow we’re going to find ways to get along with the US. It’s like asking a serial killer to babysit your kids.”
