Listening to a backbench Tory in the House of Commons arguing in the case of the armed abduction of Nicolás Maduro that “the end justifies the means”, I was reminded of a saying more fashionable in my childhood: “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” As I wrote on December 17th, the recent US national security strategy ought to be read by anyone concerned about the future of global peace and politics.
The US state department has published a photo of Donald Trump above the slogan “This is Our Hemisphere” with the word “Our” printed in double sized capitals and the colour red. Trump’s unlawful armed action against Maduro has been predictable and predicted for a long time. In these columns, I have warned about it on more than a dozen occasions going back to 2017. After inauguration in 2017, Trump openly spoke about coming armed conflicts involving American forces. While claiming to be an international peacemaker, Trump is happy to use micro-wars in the form of missile, drone and air operations on one condition – that the receiving party lacks any capacity to respond. Moreover, his use of force is always done in pursuit of his underlying agenda – the planet’s oil resources.
The security strategy document has this to say about the Middle East: “As this Administration rescinds or eases restrictive energy policies and American energy production ramps up, America’s historic reason for focusing on the Middle East will recede”. Decoded, the United States intends to bypass oil resources of the Arab world by finding its increasing oil requirements elsewhere.
The document also states: “Strengthening critical supply chains in this Hemisphere will reduce dependencies and increase American economic resilience ... The Western Hemisphere is home to many strategic resources that America should partner with regional allies to develop to make neighbouring countries as well as our own more prosperous ... At the same time we should make every effort to push out foreign companies that build infrastructure in the region”.
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In this context, Trump’s armed action against Maduro is clearly concerned with oil resources – no security threat or criminal conspiracy against the US. If Trump was concerned about the drugs threat to the US, he would take action against Colombia and Mexico. Although we have yet to see the evidence at Maduro’s trial, the inescapable conclusion is that Trump wants to grab control of the world’s largest oil reserves in Venezuela.
Let’s be clear about three things: Venezuela’s oil reserves are not US property. The western hemisphere from Greenland to Tierra del Fuego is not the domain of the US by right or by history. The Monroe doctrine concerned foreign imperialism in the western hemisphere; the so-called Donroe doctrine is a claim of outright ownership where sovereignty is sublet to complaisant vassel regimes.
Watching prominent Sinn Féin personalities and others of the hard left congregating in their scores on the Ha’penny Bridge on Saturday, a different thought struck me.
Sinn Féin is a political chameleon. When fundraising in the US it conceals its hard-left and Marxist ambitions and alliances
Why on earth would Sinn Féin, an Irish political party, however wealthy, have sent an official delegation to Maduro’s inauguration in 2019? Do their “shared values” include the values of Hugo Chávez and Maduro? Why has nearly a quarter of the Venezuelan population fled the socialist paradise so admired by Sinn Féin?
Sinn Féin has form in the region, of course. It lied that it had not an official representative in Cuba until the Havana regime inadvertently confirmed the true position.
Explainer
Who is Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s ousted president?
At the Weston Park talks which I attended in 2001, US representative Richard Haass alleged IRA involvement with Colombia’s communist Farc guerrilla insurgency. In exchange for $25 million narco dollars financed by the cocaine trade, the IRA supplied mortar technology to FARC resulting in the loss of many innocent Colombian civilian lives, US intelligence claimed. This was IRA post-ceasefire, post the Belfast Agreement of 1998. We now know that Provo research into mortar and IED technology continued in the west of Ireland until 2003.
Sinn Féin is Ireland’s wealthiest political party and beneficiary of its largest property portfolio. How?
This should be borne in mind when we read about Sinn Féin’s drum-beating for a united Irish socialist republic. Socialism takes many forms but Sinn Féin’s version is to be judged by its open admiration for Chávez, Maduro, Castro and Farc, not to mention other international hard-left revolutionary movements. Sinn Féin is a political chameleon. When fundraising in the US it conceals its hard-left and Marxist ambitions and alliances. It speaks of a united Ireland and preaches “Brits out” while paying mere lip service to the Belfast Agreement’s guarantees for the British identity of Protestant unionists.
Attempts by Sinn Féin to create a popular-front government in the Republic in alliance with every shade of left-wing opinion have as much potential to repeat in Ireland the economic collapse presided over by Chávez and Maduro. Is the ugliness of the Trump regime in Washington mirrored in Sinn Féin’s ambitions for a hard-left Chavista socialist republic in Ireland?
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