OVERTHROWING governments in Latin America has long been the US practice from a familiar playbook. The US has for decades intervened by military force to oust governments and assassinate leaders in the Western Hemisphere. More often than not, it has succeeded. Sometimes it has failed, as in trying to kill and remove Fidel Castro in Cuba epitomised by the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. This triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis that drove the US and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war.

The US-backed coup in Chile in 1973 involved the assassination of its elected Marxist president Salvador Allende and installation of a brutal regime under Gen Augusto Pinochet. Another CIA-sponsored coup deposed Guatemala’s elected government in 1954. In 1989, the US invaded Panama to oust Manuel Noriega, capture and extradite him to stand trial in America. The US-led invasion of Grenada overthrew its government in 1983. Over 40 US interventions are said to have ‘succeeded’ in the past century and a half. This includes the invasion and capture in the mid-19th century of over half of Mexican territory. The US also engineered regime change and toppled governments in countries beyond Latin America — Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

Against the backdrop of this predatory history, the US attack on Venezuela ordered by President Donald Trump followed a well-trodden path. But that didn’t make it any less egregious. President Nicolás Maduro was captured by American forces and taken to the US for trial. The armed intervention was illegal — a breach of international law and norms and violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty. It sent shock waves across the world and invited condemnation from many countries, while legal experts and some Democratic lawmakers called it........

© Dawn