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The toppling and reported capture by incursive American military units of Nicolas Maduro will send a shiver of fear and consternation around the world. This power grab is unlawful, without justification, and regionally and globally destabilising. It overturns global standards, disregards national territorial sovereignty, and risks creating an anarchic situation within the country.

It is chaos made policy. But this is the world we now live in – the world according to the US President.

An Extraordinary and Perilous Declaration of Unfettered US Power

The overt assault on Venezuela signifies an remarkable, hazardous assertion of unchecked American might and arrives the same week that the President menaced military strikes against another unpopular government opposed to the West: that of Iran. It comes after many months of increasing US military, economic and political pressure on Maduro, encompassing lethal maritime attacks on boats of alleged drug traffickers.

Trump claims to be acting to prevent illegal narcotics entering the US through Venezuelan routes and to halt an alleged influx of “criminal” migrants. In an echo of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, he is also charged with desiring Venezuela’s huge oil and gas resources – doubts strengthened by frequent, unlawful US seizures of Venezuelan petroleum carriers.

But Trump’s primary motives appear to be individual hostility aimed at Maduro, and a wish to resurrect the 19th-century Monroe doctrine by creating a US sphere of influence and supremacy throughout the west.

Hemispheric Alarm and Global Repercussions

Regional leaders, including Colombia’s president, who has conflicted with Trump in the past few months, met the takeover with outrage and alarm; not least, perhaps, because they fear they too could become targets of Washington’s aggressive new hegemony. Cuba’s leftwing government has special reason for worry. It depends significantly on Venezuela’s regime for low-cost fuel and backing in politics and economics.

The US top diplomat has been explicit of his desire for regime change in Havana. In Panama, too, levels of concern will be elevated. Trump has previously threatened armed intervention there, over authority over the Panama Canal. Indeed, the alleged apprehension of Maduro recalls the 1989 US invasion of Panama and the toppling and arrest of its leader at the time.

Autocratic, undemocratic governments around the world will be closely observing Trump’s subsequent moves, as will Washington’s democratic allies. Iran condemned the coup. It has valid cause to be apprehensive. But Russia’s president might not be completely unhappy by the removal of his Venezuelan ally.

A Perilous Benchmark for Global Conflicts

Trump’s unprovoked resort to violence is not so very different from moves during the invasion of Ukraine. Both have illegally attacked a neighbouring country and attempted to oust its government. For China’s leader, whose forces were last week practising military action against the “separatists” of Taiwan, Trump has just established a benchmark he may eventually happily emulate.

Trump’s coup is of significant worry to Britain, the EU and western democracies. They ought to, and have to, clearly denounce it. It openly confronts the laws and tenets of the global system they cherish. The US has yet again disregarded the United Nations and traditional methods of resolving inter-state grievances. And it is acting with seemingly little consideration for what happens next in Venezuela.

Uncertain Aftermath and Risk of Disorder

The Caracas government has been decapitated, but other senior members of the regime appear still to be at their posts. They are urging resistance and, potentially, retaliation against the US. There are unverified accounts of non-combatant deaths. If a leadership void develops, public order might disintegrate, sparking internal conflict or a possible military coup. And it is uncertain whether the most recent American armed intervention has concluded, or may intensify more.

The notion that banished dissident figures will quickly come back and that full democracy will now be reinstated is naive. The next few days will be critical. And the responsibility lies entirely with Trump.

The Illusion of a Peacemaker

Trump’s imprudent move should finally lay to rest his always misleading characterisation of himself as a “global peacemaker”. It’s high time that leaders in Europe openly acknowledge him for what he is – a international provocateur of war, a universal menace.

Each time he stumbles clumsily into conflict zones, imposing timelines, issuing ultimatums, picking favourites and profiting from suffering, the quest for fair and enduring peace is hindered.

Little wonder peace is elusive. And strangely, even while posing as a disinterested peacemaker and one who avoids intervention, Trump simultaneously wages war on the world. The US conducted record numbers of air strikes in the Middle East and Africa the previous year, surveys show.

A Heritage Built on Violence

Since returning to office a year ago, peace-loving Trump has bombed Yemen, negligently causing the deaths of numerous civilians after loosening rules of engagement; bombed Nigeria, to detrimental outcomes; bombed Somalia, Iraq and Syria; and bombed Iran, where he mendaciously exaggerated the effectiveness of American attacks on atomic energy sites. He even will not exclude bombing Greenland, a independent land of a NATO partner.

What’s going on in the President's mind? A benign interpretation is that in matters of war and peace, he has no conception what his actions entail – no plan, no understanding – and invents strategy as he goes, based on how he feels.

The sinister interpretation says he knows exactly what he is doing, that greater and more severe actions is to come. Like previous leaders in their final term who ran out of road domestically, Trump finds the global platform offers greater possibilities for the application of authority and self-importance. He is forging a historical record in blood.

Trump’s reckless, perilously unstable conduct is getting measurably worse. His Venezuela “triumph” may embolden him to try further and larger, irrational atrocities. He parades and postures, cries havoc! and lets slip the dogs of war.