Europe’s leaders continue to play supplicants to Trump, who may be an even bigger existential threat than Putin with his undisguised US imperialism
Grandstanding, self-righteous and hypocritical, what can possibly go wrong with the European Union under the leadership of Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas?
For a superstate bloc that supposedly stands for the rule of law, human rights and international justice, Brussels has given the lamest excuse of a response to the murderous American raid in Venezuela and the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife.
European Commission President von der Leyen said the bloc was “closely monitoring the situation in Venezuela”, that it stood “with the Venezuelan people” and supported “a peaceful and democratic transition”. “Any solution must respect international law and the UN Charter,” she declared.
“Closely monitoring”, “respect international law”? That’s diplomatic speak for doing absolutely nothing.
Nikolas Rajkovic of Tilburg University and Harvard Law School observed the double standard. For von der Leyen, “Ukraine was framed as an existential breach of order; Venezuela is treated as a crisis to be processed”, he wrote in the international law journal Opinio Juris. “Ukraine was not a test of whether law could constrain power. It was a test of whether law would remain the language through which power is judged. Venezuela answers that question.”
It ought to be clear that the enforcement of international law and sanctions is only for weak countries and enemies of the West. This is why Rodrigo Duterte and Maduro are in detention waiting for trial while US President Donald Trump and Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu go their merry unrestrained way to pursue war and genocide.
Meanwhile, the office of Kallas, the foreign affairs chief, issued a tepid statement that sounded almost supportive of American aggression.
“The European Union calls for calm and restraint by all actors, to avoid escalation and to ensure a peaceful solution to the crisis,” it said.
And then it called Maduro an illegitimate leader and cited Trump’s fictitious claims about his role in transnational drug trafficking. “The EU has repeatedly stated that Nicolas Maduro lacks the legitimacy of a democratically elected president,” the statement continued. “The EU shares the priority of combating transnational organised crime and drug trafficking, which pose a significant threat worldwide.”
The latter claim is worse than a bad joke. In rationalising the US aggression, Trump has claimed Maduro was the head of a drug cartel called “Cartel de los Soles”, echoing his Justice and State departments. But it turns out such a cartel never existed. As The New York Times reported, “The Justice Department has backed off a dubious claim … accusing [Maduro] of leading a drug cartel called Cartel de los Soles ...
“It is actually a slang term … After the administration captured Mr Maduro, the Justice Department released a rewritten indictment that appeared to tacitly concede the point.”
Stephen Walt, a columnist at Foreign Policy magazine and an international relations professor at Harvard University, made the same point. “The US Justice Department has now admitted that the ‘Cartel de los Soles’ – the supposedly dangerous drug cartel that the Trump administration kept bleating about last year – never actually existed. It was, in other words, a wholly fictitious bit of administration propaganda every bit as real as those Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.”
As for Venezuela being a hub for transnational drug smuggling, he pointed out that the US raid was never about “narcoterrorism”. “Not only was Venezuela not a significant source of illegal drugs coming to the United States (and certainly not fentanyl),” Walt wrote, “but US President Donald Trump’s recent decision to give a full pardon to former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez – whom a US jury had previously convicted of narcotics trafficking – shows you how much he really cares about that problem.”
The world has long known that Kallas is not the sharpest tool in the diplomatic shed, but surely even she and her aides must realise Trump’s new-found imperialism undermines the European case against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Moreover, his claim on Greenland from Denmark, a member state of Nato, could unravel the whole Western military alliance.
Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, told CNN explicitly that the US had the right to take over Greenland and exploit Venezuela’s natural resources, or those of any country that may challenge US national interests. “Greenland should be part of the United States,” he said. “The president has been very clear about that; that is the formal position of the US government”.
Trump has explicitly stated that the military option is on the table to take Greenland. Miller, seen as one of the Trump White House’s most influential policymakers, elaborated. “The US is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere,” he said. “We’re a superpower and under President Trump we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower. It’s absurd that we would allow a nation in our backyard to become the supplier of resources to our adversaries but not to us.”
If this is not imperialism, I don’t know what is. What will happen to the Nato treaty’s Article Five on collective security and defence if or when the US takes over Greenland, by force or other means of coercion? Will European Nato states stand up to the US? Or more likely, they will simply acquiesce, thereby nullifying Article 5. But without the article, there is no Nato.
The two EU women leaders may claim to be speaking for all 27 member states, but serious cracks are showing.
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Trump’s biggest fan in the EU, opted out of even mentioning Venezuela. At least he was being consistent, as he has long been accepting of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
On the other hand, Spain (EU and Nato), France (EU and Nato), Iceland (Nato), Norway (Nato) have been more robust in their criticism of the US operation. Perhaps mindful of its past colonialism, Spain joined Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, and Uruguay in issuing a statement to express their “profound concern and firm rejection of the military actions carried out unilaterally in Venezuelan territory”.
Trump, not Putin, may turn out to be the real existential challenge to Europe. Yet, von der Leyen, Kallas and Nato’s European leaders continue to play supplicants to Washington. If Europe continues with leaders like them, the days of the EU and Nato are numbered.
