Is it better to be friends with the biggest bully in the schoolyard, regardless of how he behaves? So far, Australia has always answered yes. But what if the bully’s trappings of democracy, order, science and reason fall away?
After the illegal kidnapping of Venezuela’s president and his wife by US special forces, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese spoke publicly of his desire for a ‘peaceful, democratic transition’ of power, saying Australia urged ‘all parties to support dialogue and diplomacy in order to secure regional stability and prevent escalation.’
So how is that supposed to work? The only form of diplomacy on offer from the United States now is gunboat diplomacy. Popularised by the British Empire, that’s what the world was supposed to have left behind years ago, in favour of a rules-based global order, preventing war, now reduced to tatters.
Opposition leader Sussan Ley said, ‘The coalition’s position has always been for a transition to democracy in Venezuela, and dictators and despots should always face justice.’ But democracy isn’t on the table in Venezuela, and hasn’t been mentioned by President Donald Trump, even in the fig leaf form of his predecessors.
War, what is it good for?
Like all bullies, Trump pushes boundaries until he is checked. In the absence of anyone in Congress with a spine, that means he is restrained only by his ‘own morality’, as he recently told The New York Times.
His invasion of Venezuela (killing at least 75 according to US officials), followed the murder of at least 95 people in small boats at sea, all of whom were accused – without evidence – of being international drug smugglers, a crime that doesn’t carry the death penalty in the US anyway.
President Maduro was undoubtedly a deeply unpleasant dictator, but very few of the many human rights protesters he imprisoned have been released, his deputy and other cronies remain in control, and the actual winners of the last Venezuelan election haven’t been invited to form government, despite opposition leader María Corina Machado’s recent offer to give the man who has militarily attacked seven countries in the last year her 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.
It appears increasingly likely that Donald Trump’s latest attack had nothing to do with democracy, or drug smuggling, or even oil, with American fossil fuel executives press-ganged into the Oval Office last week looking visibly uncomfortable at the prospect of spending billions of shareholders’ dollars in Venezuela to drive an already low oil price even lower. Even Trump seemed more interested in admiring the progress of his absurd ballroom through the window than talking about oil.
In a classic wag the dog scenario, the main effect of the Venezuela venture has been to drive the Epstein Files – now well overdue to be released in full – from the world’s front pages, while also delivering another piece of the global puzzle demanded by the inheritors of the twisted ‘Technate’ dream, in which the USA will spread far beyond its existing borders.
Going along with the world’s greatest liar
Like facts, Trump believes that rules are for other people, and has recently been talking openly about invading Cuba, Mexico, Colombia, Greenland, and Canada. Democracies don’t go to war against one another, supposedly, but can the United States still be called a democracy? If so, for how much longer?
The murderous behaviour of ICE in Minneapolis last week, and the instantaneous, industrial-strength lying about what happened, from the highest levels of government, despite clear video evidence, makes it even clearer that Australia’s ally is an increasingly dangerous threat, internally and externally.
Other major events are being obscured by all this chaos, such as the hundreds of thousands dead, many children, at the hands of Elon Musk’s dismantling of USAID. According to a recent study in The Lancet, 14 million deaths are expected by 2030 if that situation continues.
In another epic victory for cruelty and stupidity, last week saw the withdrawal of the United States from 66 international organisations and treaties, among them crucial collaborations on climate, oceans, piracy, counter-terrorism and the empowerment of women, including the absolute abandonment of the Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was signed by President George W. Bush in 1992.
Following this disastrous cascade of events, Australia’s former PM and now ambassador to the United States, Kevin Rudd, who once described climate change as ‘the great moral challenge of our generation’, yesterday shared a smiling picture of himself and Pete Hegseth’s lackey Elbridge Colby, The US Under Secretary of War for Policy, following a private dinner with their wives in Washington.
Colby is the bloke who wants Australia to join the USA to fight our biggest trading partner, China, in exchange for non-existent AUKUS submarines.
Afterwards, Rudd wrote ‘The Australia-US alliance has never been stronger.’
WTAF?
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
