That a country thinks it has the right to randomly invade another country has repercussions that will for sure be played on the global arena in the years to come.
When Donald Trump ordered United States troops to invade Venezuela in South America and capture its president Nicolas Maduro on January 3, 2026, he was merely going down a well-trodden path.
Ever since the fifth president of the US, James Monroe, declared in 1823 that the Americas was off limits to the European powers (later called the Monroe Doctrine), the US has tended to treat the American continent as its backyard, targeting nations therein to enforce its will.
When the US was keen to create a canal connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific in the early 20th century, and the country controlling the isthmus, Colombia, refused to play ball, the US carved out a separate country, Panama, and soon thereafter, the Panama Canal was constructed.
Before the invasion of Venezuela and the capture of Maduro, in the 1980s, the US had invaded the Caribbean island of Grenada, located north of Trinidad and Tobago, and Panama (the very country they helped set up) and captured its then de facto ruler, Manuel Noriega.
Grenada was a British colony that achieved independence in 1974. Five years later, Maurice Bishop, a politician, seized power and set up the People's Revolutionary Government.
Bishop's aim was to have a Marxist-Leninist government. The US, which considers the Caribbean as its backyard and after losing Cuba to the communists in the late 1950s, had little desire to see another communist nation in its neighbourhood. It was not pleased at the developments.
Bishop began building an airport just south of its capital, St George. So far so good. But the airport was huge and soon the then US president, Ronald Reagan, accused Bishop of building the airport to assist the Soviets and Cubans.
The claim was that airport runways were being long enough to accommodate the largest Soviet Union aircraft to bring military equipment.
After the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979, the second round of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union was on in full force, and each side was suspicious of the other.
However, the situation took a turn when in October 1983, following internecine bickering within the People's Revolutionary Government, a coup took place and Bishop was shot dead by the Grenadian army on October 19, 1983.
A few days later, on October 25, US troops invaded Grenada, ostensibly after being requested by the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States.
It is hard to miss the paradox: The US invaded Grenada after Bishop, the Marxist leader, had been killed by his own armed forces.
Ronald Reagan later said that he ordered the invasion out of concern for the welfare of 600 US students in Grenada and to avoid a repeat of the Iran hostage crisis (where Iranian students had held hostage officials of the US embassy in Teheran).
Incidentally, on October 23, two trucks packed with explosives exploded at a US Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 299 American and French personnel.
There have long been allegations that the Grenada invasion was carried out to distract attention from this deadly attack that claimed 241 American lives.
Thirty-two years later, it is worth noting that the US invasion day, October 25, is celebrated as Thanksgiving Day in Grenada and is a national holiday.
And that the airport, which sparked off the invasion, is now called the Maurice Bishop International Airport.
The Panama invasion is even more bizarre, involving guns and music.
Interestingly, it was not related to the Cold War and was in fact, linked to Noriega's links to the drug cartels, much like the Venezuela situation.
Noriega was the military chief and de facto ruler of Panama from 1983 to 1989, though officially Panama was ruled by presidents.
Interestingly, Noriega had been on the payroll of the CIA, apparently from the late 1950s when he joined the military, and was considered one of the most valuable intelligence sources for the CIA.
His job was to curb the spread of communism in the central American countries and to funnel aid to militias on the side of the US.
This cozy arrangement began to deteriorate when allegations of Noriega's involvement in narcotics smuggling began to surface.
In 1988, US federal courts indicted Noriega on various charges, including drug trafficking.
The last straw for the US was when Noriega annulled the Panamanian general election in 1989.
US President George H W Bush, Ronald Reagan's successor, ordered the launch of Operation Just Cause, the invasion of Panama in December 1989.
To avoid capture, Noriega sought refuge in the embassy of the Holy See (the Vatican). The US had no desire to disrespect diplomatic protocol by entering the embassy and causing an uproar across the world.
Instead, the US launched 'psychological operations' (psyops) to capture Noriega.
Apparently, Noriega's musical taste veered towards the genre of opera and a loathing for rock music.
Accordingly, US troops surrounding the Holy See embassy played heavy metal and hard rock music at full volume, day and night.
The aim was to cause immense distress to Noriega's musical sensibilities! The US has, of course, denied such claims saying the music was played to prevent eavesdropping.
Whatever the motivation, it worked. Noriega surrendered to US troops and was flown to the US, where he was incarcerated till his extradition to France in 2010 and later Panama where he died in 2017.
What will be Nicolas Maduro's fate remains to be seen. But the fact that a country thinks it has the right to randomly invade another country has repercussions that will for sure be played on the global arena in the years to come. Watch this space.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff
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