Whatever “elbows up” was supposed to mean, it apparently doesn’t mean Canada can be counted on to protest even slightly when U.S. President Donald Trump commits acts of naked imperialism.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s endorsement of Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro appears to signal that, while we object to Trump imposing tariffs on Canada, we’re OK with the U.S. president unleashing a torrent of bombs, killing dozens of people and seizing the Venezuelan leader and his wife — all in the cause of taking control of the country’s massive oil reserves.
New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg characterized Trump’s action as “imperialistic gangsterism,” but our prime minister described it as “welcome news.”
Former Canadian foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy insisted that Canada needs to speak out: “If we simply allow Trump and his crowd to think that they can get away to do whatever they want … then we are vulnerable.”
It’s no longer impossible to imagine Trump and his gangsterlike officials deciding that they should manage Canadian oilfields, critical minerals and Arctic passageway.
Rather than welcoming Trump’s lawless assault on Venezuela, Carney should be working intensely, not just to protect us through NATO, but to orchestrate a global consensus against such blatant and egregious violations of international law.
Carney’s failure to condemn Trump’s actions helps obscure the deeply corrosive nature of imperialism, now being revamped and revitalized by Trump.
Much has been said about how Maduro destroyed the Venezuelan economy, but he didn’t do it all on his own.
From the early 1900s, Washington ensured Exxon and other major oil companies won enormously favourable oil concessions from Venezuela, and created a supportive class of Venezuelan oil managers, while leaving millions of Venezuelans in abject poverty.
Various attempts to drive a better deal for Venezuela failed until Hugo Chavez, a charismatic politician, rose from modest roots and was elected president in 1999.
Chavez strengthened national control over the country’s oil industry and redirected oil revenue into social programs for the masses, making him wildly popular with the poor. Part-black and part-Indigenous, he was fiercely opposed by the country’s proforeign elite who dismissively referred to him as “the monkey.”
Chavez also played a key role in reviving OPEC, the cartel of oil-producing nations which had replaced the earlier oil cartel, known as the Seven Sisters, through which the major oil companies carved up and controlled world oil markets.
Chavez’s open defiance of the West made him a hero to millions in Latin America, but infuriated Washington. It likely contributed to Washington’s covert support for a 2002 coup attempt against him, Chavez told me in an interview at the presidential palace in Caracas in 2004.
However, it’s been under Trump that Washington has really ramped up measures against Venezuela. Starting in 2017, the first Trump administration imposed sweeping sanctions that devastated the already-faltering economy, partly by preventing other countries from trading with Venezuela.
U.S. economists Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot maintain that those Trump sanctions — targeting the state-owned oil company and restricting Venezuela’s ability to raise funds on financial markets — led to some 40,000 deaths, effectively amounting to “collective punishment.”
Addressing the UN Security Council this week, Sachs explained that Trump’s sanctions had reduced production by Venezuela’s oil company by 75 per cent, slashing the country’s GDP per capita by 62 per cent.
The best way to protect other countries — including Canada — from Trump’s apparently limitless territorial ambitions is to stand together, firmly united against him. Time for Canada to stop coddling him.
This article was originally published in the Toronto Star.
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