Editorial – The strong take, the weak suffer: Trump’s world order

International law has always been a mix between showmanship, disregard and observance. Donald Trump is not the first US president to ignore international law but he is the first to show utter contempt and insensitivity to its importance in maintaining peace and a vanishing framework of order in the relations between states. For small, defenceless countries like Malta, international law is what keeps us free.

Trump is also not the first US president to ignore other countries’ borders. Richard Nixon’s secret bombings of Laos in the Vietnam war and then George Bush’s invasion of Iraq spring to mind. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine similarly ignored another country’s statehood. Israel has relentlessly bombed civilians in Gaza. Myanmar, Sudan. The list goes on.

The capture of President Nicolás  Maduro of Venezuela should not only be seen as decapitating the head of a vile dictatorship that has impoverished what should be a rich country and exiled more than a quarter of its population. The capture of Maduro is primarily about capturing resources, not justice.

Trump has no interest in implementing the results of the last Venezuelan election, which the opposition won by a landslide, as confirmed by respected, outside observers and the failure to publish detailed results. Maduro’s former socialist vice president is now president, supposedly under the tutelage of the US, working together with the army’s leaders, militia, armed criminal gangs and civilian elites to loot Venezuela. It remains to be seen whether the Venezuelan regime will accept being a US vassal state without tens of thousands of US troops on the ground.

Trump wants ‘reimbursement’ for the nationalisation of Venezuela’s oil industry years ago and a stake in the resources of a sovereign country he feels entitled to as an American.

Similarly, Trump originally wanted a share of Ukraine’s resources as a price for supporting it against Russian aggression beyond what was remotely reasonable and, it seems, without US security guarantees for Ukraine’s own sovereignty that would probably be meaningless anyway.

Trump wants Greenland, part of the Kingdom of Denmark. He believes Canada should be the 51st state of the US. He states, openly, that the entire western hemisphere is America’s own backyard, echoing Putin’s own, much weaker, aspersions to much of the former USSR, which encounter stronger resistance. In recent days, Trump has threatened Colombia, Cuba and Mexico.

This imperialist, transactional foreign policy echoes the European 19th century scramble for Africa. Trump’s actions, even if reversed by a future administration, have created precedents that will shape our futures. They have also reinforced Russian and Chinese territorial expansionism.

And, yet, Malta will refrain from loud condemnations of the US. So will the EU. For the EU, the trading and security relationship with the US and continued US engagement in Ukraine has priority over the situation in Venezuela – even if there is now Trump’s threat that he wants to take over Greenland, a massive land mass Denmark is responsible for.

But this US president is not as omnipotent as he sees himself and his unpopularity with the American electorate is thankfully growing. The midterm elections, either way, will send a strong message. America is not Donald J. Trump – a man who will go down in history for humiliating his country and disrupting world order. 

We should, however, work more closely with our partners in the EU, aligning our interests with the need to strengthen independent European political and security frameworks to safeguard our way of life – away from the attacks unleashed by Trump and Putin.

It should be clear to all, in this changed world, that security cannot be taken for granted.