Will no one stand up to Trump?

Martin Shipton

It’s quite extraordinary that when asked about the gangster-like kidnapping of a foreign head of state and his wife on the orders of Donald Trump, Keir Starmer’s response was to say that he needed to find out the facts, and that more information would hopefully come to light at Trump’s press conference later.

These comments alone reveal both the moral vacuum at the heart of Starmer’s approach to politics and the humiliating lack of influence he has over an ally with which the UK supposedly has a “special relationship”.

Contrast what Starmer said with the words of his predecessor as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, a man written off by many as not of Prime Ministerial calibre: “The US has launched an unprovoked and illegal attack on Venezuela. This is a brazen attempt to secure control over Venezuelan natural resources.

“It is an act of war that puts the lives of millions of people at risk — and should be condemned by anyone who believes in sovereignty and international law.”

It’s also worth recalling the words of Margaret Thatcher, when US troops invaded the small Caribbean country of Grenada in 1983, at a time when her friend Ronald Reagan was President: “We in the Western democracies use our force to defend our way of life. We do not use it to walk into other people’s countries, independent sovereign territories … If you are pronouncing a new law that wherever Communism reigns against the will of the people … there the United States shall enter, then we are going to have really terrible wars in the world.”

Trump has been back in the White House for less than a year, and he is behaving without restraint. Having said there would be no more foreign wars if he was elected, he has authorised military action against a growing number of countries, mainly in the Middle East, but now in Africa and South America too.

In a typically rambling speech delivered at his Florida resort and de facto southern White House Mar–a-Lago, Trump didn’t even bother to deny that one of his aims in deposing Nicolas Maduro and “running the country”, as he indelicately put it, is to seize Venezuela’s oilfields and infrastructure. His justification in doing so is based on the fact that in 1976 the country’s then government decided to nationalise the oil industry – something it had a perfect right to do.

The other justification for overthrowing Maduro was that he is supposedly the head of a massive drugs cartel – according to Trump, the very biggest – which is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans. How strange, therefore, that a report produced by a US agency as recently as March 2025 failed to identify Venezuela as a major producer of narcotics.

Trump has certainly inaugurated a new era, and we’re all the worse for it.

The United States has long been known to intervene in the politics of other countries, and to have engaged in regime change. The CIA was involved in the violent overthrow of Chile’s Socialist President Salvador Allende in 1973, for example. He was replaced by the brutal military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. But things were done more discreetly in those days, and it took time for proof to emerge. The US did not openly boast about such transgressions.

Monroe Doctrine

Trump operates on a different level. In his Mar-a-Lago speech on Saturday afternoon, he proudly proclaimed the return of the Monroe Doctrine – a foreign policy approach initiated by President James Monroe in 1823 that asserted the United States’ right to control the political development of South America. In fact, Trump went so far as to half-jokingly refer to it as the “Don-roe” Doctrine, renamed after himself.

In that context it’s no surprise that he should be talking about “running” Venezuela until it’s possible to transition to democracy – an empty promise made by many a dictator in the past.

Trump has single-handedly demolished the post-war consensus that – as Churchill put it – “jaw-jaw is better than war-war”.

In his triumphant speech to journalists at Mar-a-Lago, he showed no restraint in asserting his right to do exactly as he pleases from a military point of view. In this he has taken lessons from Benjamin Netanyahu, the war criminal Prime Minister of Israel who also has a licence to behave with impunity.

Starmer’s response was pathetic and shameful. As a human rights lawyer, he’s fully aware that Trump’s behaviour in seizing Maduro and his wife is entirely contrary to international law. Yet he’s not prepared to call it out and acts like a lapdog to Trump. If one were able to have a discreet, private conversation with him, he would probably say that he was acting in the UK’s best interests by holding back and failing to condemn Trump’s behaviour. But if political leaders don’t stand up for what is right, the danger is that international diplomacy will be reduced to the supremacy of the bully. Which will negate the purpose of the international bodies set up as part of that post-war consensus.

Sanctioned

We already have a situation where officials of the International Criminal Court have been sanctioned for daring to uphold the values that underpin the organisation. Trump’s disgraceful and immoral support for Israel has led him to characterise those august bodies who seek to hold the rogue state to account as themselves illegitimate.

Black is now white and white is now black.

Trump’s action in Venezuela undoubtedly compromises the support that Ukraine deserves against Russia. What argument could be deployed against Putin if, perish the thought, he mounted a successful operation to seize President Zelenskyy – as he initially intended? And how could one argue against China invading Taiwan?

When the Soviet Union disintegrated, there were concerns that the balance of power that had largely ensured peace during the Cold War years would be disrupted. It’s taken a few decades for that disruption to come into effect, thanks to the Americans’ decision to elect a madman as their President.

The future of international relations is on a knife-edge – and Europe’s failure to stand together on the moral high ground is making disintegration more and more likely.

Will no one stand up to Trump?