Is the United States about to start a war in South America, asks Andrew Marr
After seizing a sanctioned oil tanker, which Venezuela calls an act of piracy, with a huge naval battlegroup in the region, and following lethal strikes on Venezuelan drug boats, it is really beginning to look as if Donald Trump intends to attack and topple the regime of the dictatorial president Nicolas Maduro.
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Nobody should feel much sympathy for Maduro.
Under him, the economy has collapsed, about a quarter of the population has fled, and the likely winner of the last presidential election, the opposition leader Maria Machado, has received the Nobel peace prize for her defence of democracy against him.
Trump’s vehement attacks on Maduro, who he calls a narco-terrorist, might just be bluster.
But it might not.
Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, about the fifth of the global supply.
Like other South American countries, it has been flirting with America’s biggest rival, China.
This, in other words, is not a local story.
We don’t know what President Trump is going to do, but if he ignores international law and attacks Venezuela directly, that has serious implications everywhere, from Eastern Europe to Taiwan - a big ripple, as it were, in the new World disorder.
Or is that me being alarmist?
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Andrew Marr is an author, journalist and presenter for LBC.
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