Letter: In light of US military attack on Venezuela, does West need to get tougher to protect itself?
A letter from John Gemmell:
I hope and expect that the US military attack on Venezuela will lead to democracy for that country.
Horrified demonstrators gathered to protest on the Ha'penny Bridge in Dublin. Oh to live in a world of precious certainties such as theirs! The harder question is whether it may be increasingly necessary to impose democracy and decency on failed and dangerous states, for everyone's sake.
It is an unusual way to begin a letter by mentioning Genghis Khan, whose armies killed millions – my aim is to highlight some serious modern foreign policy choices.
If the canons of international law that now exist had been in place back then, and if Genghis Khan had not savagely invaded his neighbours but just concentrated on killing his own people, it could well have been considered illegitimate for foreign states to intervene to liberate those oppressed people. This is the sub-optimal world of modern international law.
So his primitive tyranny might have continued forever, and we would have watched the suffering for all time.
I am not directly comparing Genghis Khan to modern dictators, but there are some very unpleasant ones about. President Trump has intervened in one such dictatorship - Venezuela.
If we put the president's bombast to one side, and the likelihood that some oil revenues from Venezuela will now find their way to the US, there is also a greater truth - that democracy is now likely to be returning to that country. This is a good thing.
It might also be good if president Trump now helps bring democracy to Iran. But he should stay away from Canada and Greenland. They are already free and his team knows it.
I offer no full solutions. But I do note this - powerful dictatorships are already attacking democracies and corrupting developing countries. Add to this nuclear proliferation, climate change, economic scarcity and AI, and we face possibly existential threats.
So, we in the West must decide. Do we need to get a little tougher to protect ourselves, and should that spirit of self-preservation include supporting a robust expansion of democracy abroad, even, in some cases, where tyranny is already in place and can only be removed by force?
John Gemmell, Wem, Shropshire