\n<\/p>\n
For many years before becoming president, Donald Trump publicly criticised<\/a> the George W Bush administration over its decision to launch the war on Iraq. And yet, today, in his second term as president, he finds himself presiding over a military debacle that is quite reminiscent of Bush\u2019s.<\/p>\n Trump ordered a military intervention to remove an antagonistic foreign leader, based on a flimsy argument of national security, with the goal of accessing that country\u2019s oil. In both cases, we see a naive confidence that the United States can simply achieve its goals through regime change. US intervention into Venezuela reeks of the same hubris<\/a> that surrounded the Iraq invasion two decades ago.<\/p>\n Yet there are also important differences to consider. The most important distinguishing feature of the operation in Venezuela is its lack of an overarching vision. On Saturday after Trump finished an hour-long news conference alongside his secretaries of defence and state, it was not clear what the plan was for Venezuela going forward, or if there was a plan at all. His statements threatening more attacks in the following days brought no clarity either.<\/p>\n Past instances of US-led regime change fit into the larger ideological visions of the incumbent US commander-in-chief. In 1823, President James Monroe declared the Western Hemisphere off-limits to European colonialism. As the United States spent the 20th century consolidating its sphere of influence across the Americas, the Monroe Doctrine would justify various interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Cold War added new justifications for the United States to overthrow leftist regimes and install friendly governments in the Americas.<\/p>\n As the Cold War ended, President George HW Bush sought to serve as a caretaker for a \u201cnew world order\u201d in which the US had emerged as the world\u2019s lone superpower. When Bush sent troops to Somalia in 1992 and his successor Bill Clinton reversed a military coup in Haiti in 1994, they did so under the paradigm of \u201chumanitarian intervention\u201d. When George W Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, it was done under the umbrella of the post-9\/11 \u201cwar on terror\u201d. When President Barack Obama intervened against the forces of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, he was guided by the \u201cresponsibility to protect<\/a>\u201d doctrine concerning civilians in danger.<\/p>\n But in the case of the US attack on Venezuela, there has been no ideological justification. Trump and his team have haphazardly thrown around references to humanitarianism, counterterrorism and more to justify the attack. The president even brought up the Monroe Doctrine. But just as it seemed that he was grounding his foreign policy in a larger ideology, albeit one borrowed from two centuries ago, he made a joke of the concept.<\/p>\n