US President Donald Trump is not a statesman. He’s a gangster in a suit. His unilateral and illegal aggression against Venezuela earlier this week only serves to confirm this.

He built his election campaign on the promise of being an anti-war candidate – a claim so blatantly false that it now risks dividing the so-called Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.

For a brief moment, some entertained the idea that Trump’s brand of conservatism might be anti-war, while the neo-liberals were pushing for more war.

No more. The fallacy has been well and truly exposed. Trump has revealed himself to be no different from those before him. He’s as much of a war hawk as those he decried in his campaign speeches. While the presidency may change, American foreign policy remains constant. It is centered on more wars driven by resource acquisitions and profit.

And let’s be clear. What the United States did to Venezuela wasn’t a matter of legitimate foreign policy, counter-narcotics, or “law enforcement” by any reasonable standard.

It was a straight-up violation of international law. Bombing a sovereign nation, killing civilians while kidnapping its democratically-elected president, and hauling him to New York like a war trophy.

No UN mandate. No approval from Congress. No extradition process. No legal justification that survives five minutes of basic scrutiny. Just brute force and a smirk.

This was always who Trump was. So let’s call this latest act of military aggression what it truly is: kidnapping for oil. Modern colonialism.

Trump didn’t even bother hiding the motive. He openly declared that the US would “run” Venezuela, a country sitting on the world’s largest proven oil reserves. It is criminal extortion.

Source: Press TV. Header image resized and slightly enhanced by me.