Azmi Bishara: What is new is not Maduro’s abduction, but Trump's open admission that the goal is oil

The US assault on Venezuela on the third of this month, and the abduction of its president, Nicolás Maduro, occupied a substantial part of the in-depth interview given by Azmi Bishara, Director General of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, on Al-Araby Television from the Qatari city of Lusail on Thursday evening.

Bishara argued that what is new in this aggression is not the kidnapping of Maduro — Washington has a precedent in this regard, having abducted Panamanian president Manuel Noriega in 1989 — but rather the open admission that the objective is to seize Venezuela’s oil.

Even in issues geographically distant from the United States, Donald Trump was a recurring presence in the interview, despite having completed only one year of his four-year presidential term. The discussion moved between an examination of what remains of the post-WW2 international system and the consequences of entrenching power as the sole criterion governing contemporary international relations — a dynamic that benefits powers such as Russia, China and Israel, while disadvantaging others, notably Western Europe.

The interview tackles present developments in Syria and Yemen, Gaza and Israel’s proposals regarding it, and addressed Arab foot-dragging in confronting Israel’s bid to seize Red Sea ports, as well as Egypt’s capacity — if it chose — to halt the war in Sudan, just as it had been able, early on, to bring the assault on Gaza to an end.

A Hollywood-style spectacle

Bishara said the “Hollywood-style spectacle” characterising the Venezuela operation and the abduction of its president was deliberate, forming part of Trump’s boastful display of power in steering international relations, as it leaves a deterrent and intimidating impression. He stressed that what is new is not the operation itself, but “the naked clarity in openly declaring that the goal is to seize Venezuela’s oil”. He noted that the narcotics pretext quickly disappeared from Trump’s justifications, replaced by an acknowledgement of the real objective — oil above all — since Trump “considers Venezuela’s nationalisation of its oil (under the late Hugo Chávez in 1999) to be theft of American oil”. 

This observation, Bishara remarked, illustrates how global standards have been completely inverted in the era of the current US president.

In this context, the author of In Answer to the Question: What Is Populism? asserted that drugs, dictatorship in Venezuela, corruption and the other justifications advanced by the populist Trump have nothing to do with the attack on the Latin American country and its abducted president. As evidence, he cited Trump’s swift threat to the interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, with a fate worse than Maduro’s, “if she does not cooperate with us”. Bishara observed that the world is witnessing a revival of the re-division of global influence “at a time when there is no longer rivalry between colonial powers over colonies that no longer exist”.

Asked about the impact of the abduction on international power balances, Bishara said Trump deals with Western European leaders as a group of “losers” who must fend for themselves. At the same time, Trump is prepared to accept that in Eastern Europe the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, can occupy Ukraine by virtue of strength; that China can annex Taiwan by force; and that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu can impose his dominance in the Middle East until Trump receives serious backlash from one of them, for which there are, in Bishara’s assessment, no signs as yet.

As to whether the world is facing a new international order, Bishara recalled that the global system born out of the Second World War was replete with violations of international charters and laws, and that many powers overrode and breached it. “What is new with Trump,” he said, “is that he openly admits it.” He lamented the lack of serious scrutiny of what he termed “soft violations”, such as Washington’s withdrawal, the day before yesterday, from 66 international organisations, including bodies concerned with combating drugs and terrorism. He concluded that Trump wants the United States to be “a great power with no obligations whatsoever".

Three more years

On whether Trump might face constraints in the remaining three years of his term, Bishara said the midterm elections at the end of this year would be the most important milestone. Domestically, he explained, Trump’s policies have not yet produced immediate economic gains, while many Democratic sectors in the United States believe the state is moving towards a gradual erosion of the rules of the democratic game itself — through sidelining and neutralising Congress, undermining freedom of expression, and the blatant enrichment of the Trump family and those around it.

In Europe, Bishara regretted that “there are those who want to appease America at any cost in order to keep it in NATO”, describing this as “short-sighted, because Trump respects only the strong — and therefore he will not respect Europe if it is not strong”. In the same vein, he noted that democracy is not a priority for Washington, adding that “Russia may be more important to the current administration than Western Europe”.

As for the seriousness of Trump’s intentions to seize Greenland, which belongs to Denmark, Bishara analysed the position of the 47th US president as “offering a trade-off: acquiring Greenland in exchange for Washington remaining in NATO”. He also observed that while China has lost access to cheap Venezuelan oil, it has, in return, gained expanded regional influence following what occurred in Venezuela.

While he did not rule out Trump repeating the Venezuelan scenario elsewhere in the world, Bishara expressed understanding for the realism with which leaders of Latin American countries threatened by Washington are acting. Some face extremely harsh conditions, as in the case of Cuba and the current Venezuelan leadership; others are approaching elections at home, such as Brazil and Colombia. He also made a point of clearing interim Venezuelan president Rodríguez of rumours of collusion and capitulation.

Trump in the MENA context

Responding to a question, Bishara agreed with the view that Netanyahu has long sought to be “the Trump of the Middle East” by adopting disinformation as a method and embracing a policy based solely on force. Bishara argued that Trump and Netanyahu are “allies in ideology and interest”, even though Trump does not accept being an equal ally to anyone, while Netanyahu is prepared to accept the status of junior ally to the more powerful Trump — and even to endure his rebukes.

Bishara recalled Trump’s own acknowledgement of the extent of the Israeli lobby’s influence over him. As evidence that the relationship between the two men is an alliance of ideology and interest, he pointed out that Trump — despite his volatility and contradictory statements on Gaza and the West Bank — has not once mentioned that Palestinians have rights.

Regionally, Trump differentiates in his relations with Arabs between the wealthy Gulf states, whose leaders he calls “my friends”, and the areas surrounding Palestine — Lebanon and Syria, and perhaps Jordan in the future — which he does not object to becoming an Israeli sphere of influence. He therefore urges their officials to reach an understanding with Netanyahu. Here, Bishara revisited a question he had posed months earlier in a previous interview on the same channel: Will Arab leaders, even those who have normalised relations with Israel, accept Netanyahu becoming the ultimate authority even in their countries’ internal affairs?

Arab paralysis from Gaza to Somaliland

On Gaza, Bishara reiterated his well-known position that Egypt is supposed to be a regional power, “but it is not one at present”. Had there been clear Egyptian action, he argued, the war on Gaza could have been halted two weeks after it began; likewise, Cairo is capable, if it wishes, of stopping the war in Sudan.

Beyond Cairo’s role, Bishara said Israel is attempting to persuade Washington of what he called a “diabolical idea”: beginning construction in certain areas of southern Gaza while neglecting the north and centre, leaving them besieged so that residents are pushed southwards. By contrast, Hamas says it will not accept its disarmament by any party other than an independent Palestinian government.

Regarding developments in the breakaway republic of Somaliland, which Israel has recognised as an independent state, Bishara said the Israeli orientation in the Horn of Africa enjoys Arab support from the UAE, as part of an attempt to control Red Sea ports as far as Bab al-Mandab. He warned that this affects the Gulf states and Arabs more broadly, allowing Israel to impose further conditions on them, and expressed surprise at the absence of any clear Arab pushback against this overt project. As for what Arabs can do to counter efforts to turn their region into an Israeli sphere of influence, Bishara said they can impose their demands on Iran, which is currently facing significant difficulties, in order to build a regional security system.

Turning to Yemen, the author of On the Arab Question: An Introduction to an Arab Democratic Manifesto spoke of what he described as the elimination of the project to secede southern Yemen, while not ruling out the still “extremely dangerous” possibility of Yemen’s fragmentation. He was commenting on developments over the past two weeks, marked by a Saudi strike that may have been decisive against the Southern Transitional Council, whose power, he said, “was inflated with Arab support”, in an implicit reference to the UAE. Opening the door to southern secession, Bishara warned, could lead to Yemen becoming four or five states.

As for developments in Syria, Bishara described them as extremely difficult, noting that Syria “has been freed from the Assad regime but not from many other things”. Offering advice, he warned that if the current authorities do not present a unifying national programme for Syria, the situation will become worse than it is now, “because so far, factional behaviour and the absence of a national approach have landed us in many problems”.

Such a national programme, Bishara said, must begin from the reality that the entire Syrian people were victims of the previous regime, not just one sect or component. It must acknowledge that the “us versus them” approach must fundamentally change, and recognise that deals between factions do not build a national army. He concluded by warning that “attempting to reach understandings with external states over internal issues contributes to fragmentation”, expressing regret over the language of the US-Israeli-Syrian statement issued two days earlier following the Paris trilateral meeting, “because it is not the language of a party whose land is occupied by the other side”.