Regime change and “nation building” have not gone well for the US in recent years. The overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in April 2003, for example, or the long but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to keep the Taliban from power in Afghanistan are two obvious US foreign policy failures in the 21st century.
The American political scientist Francis Fukuyama noted the irony that US President Donald Trump openly criticised his predecessors for what he called “forever wars” and yet Mr Trump has now opened up a new conflict in Venezuela that may last a long time. This conflict began with naval manoeuvres then the capture and overthrow of the unpopular Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, but it is unclear where or how it may end.
The unpredictable consequences of regime change could even outlast Mr Trump’s term in the White House.
On a military level, US experts at West Point, American allies and also potential opponents will study the daring operation to snatch Mr Maduro for years to come. It could easily have gone wrong. It didn’t, unlike former president Jimmy Carter’s 1980 attempt to rescue 52 US hostages in Tehran. At the time, mechanical failures on military helicopters and a sandstorm led to a humiliating failure that cost Carter re-election to the White House.
Mr Trump and his team, however, can for a limited time bask in the success of the removal of an unpopular dictator. But just as the defeat of Saddam turned out to be the beginning – not the end – of Washington’s problems in Iraq, the same is very possible now in Venezuela.
Back in 2002, as then-president George W Bush contemplated overthrowing Saddam, secretary of state Colin Powell warned him of what was called the “Pottery Barn Rule” after a well-known American shop that sells crockery and furniture. “If you break it, you own it.” The overwhelming military power of the US broke Saddam and won the war, but history suggests the US then lost the peace.
Regime change by force may easily destroy one regime. It’s not so easy to create a stable and friendly new one.
Nevertheless, Mr Maduro was hugely unpopular in Venezuela. He led a discontented but potentially rich country with enormous oil reserves and a great deal of human talent, and so about eight million Venezuelans left the country for a better life. Many settled in the US, part of what Mr Trump sees as an immigration crisis that he wants to end.
Mr Maduro’s fate, therefore, is the least of Trump’s problems.
First, what will any new leadership in Caracas look like? How stable will it be? The experiences of the US in Afghanistan and the Middle East suggests that military victories produce resentment rather than political solutions. Second, as I wrote in these pages a few weeks ago, American interventions in Latin America – sometimes called “Uncle Sam’s backyard” – have been frequent but in the medium or long term are often unsuccessful.
The US invaded Cuba in the 1890s and backed another invasion in the 1960s leading to the Bay of Pigs fiasco. US-Cuban relations are poor. Washington backing for the Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua began in 1981 with – to put it politely – mixed success. It ended in the Iran-Contra scandal during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. This bizarre episode involved US officials secretly selling weapons to Iran (despite a legal embargo on such sales imposed by Congress) and using the profits to fund Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua. Again, it did not end well.
There have, however, been US “regime change” successes. In October 1983, America invaded the tiny island of Grenada although parallels to the much more complex Venezuelan action are not obvious. They also successfully overthrew the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega in 1990. But if military action to overthrow a leader of a neighbouring country is seen as acceptable to Americans, why should such action not be acceptable if carried out by other big powers?
Russia has tried as much in Ukraine. They have failed, at least so far, but the Kremlin can argue that Americans are hypocritical by attacking a near neighbour while condemning Moscow for doing the same. China also has ambitions over Taiwan, although Beijing is moving mostly cautiously. But the key point is that justification of US action in Venezuela can be repurposed by governments elsewhere to justify the use of force to achieve their own ambitions.
All this comes after Mr Trump’s public desire for the Nobel Peace Prize, always unlikely and now probably impossible. Mr Trump also talks of military action in Caracas as “an assault like people have not seen since World War 2”. This apparently overlooks the Korean War, the Vietnam war, US troops entering Baghdad, Kabul and many other conflicts.
Whether the skill of US assault forces in Caracas will now be matched by the skill of US diplomats or American politicians in Washington is also very uncertain. The real lesson of history is that leaders often do not learn the lessons of history.
Nation-building and regime change demand long-term application and attention. These may not be Mr Trump’s key skills.
