By Atilio Boron

Donald Trump has said that in the coming days he will begin a campaign supposedly aimed at attacking drug trafficking enclaves in Venezuelan territory.

This aggressive escalation, which is completely at odds with the United Nations Charter and international law, began with a sort of undeclared naval blockade, continued with the announcement of the total closure of Venezuela’s airspace, and now culminates with the threat of bombing—and eventually invading—that country’s territory.

With this decision, the US president threw the final shovel of dirt on the grave of the defunct “rules-based world order,” substantially changing the conditions under which actors in the international system operate in what is now an irrevocable multipolar world.

The old rules have become obsolete, and Trump’s decision has ushered in a Hobbesian scenario where the law of the strongest prevails.

It is obvious that, given the collapse of the old order and the impotence of the United Nations to prevent crimes such as those already perpetrated by the US administration with its extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean (not to mention the brutal genocide in Gaza) the aggression against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela can only be thwarted if some of the major players on the world geopolitical chessboard make a bold move that redefines the position of the pieces in the tangled chess game of international politics. UN statements and appeals are not enough.

Actions, not words, are needed. And from this point of view, only China is in a position to take action that would thwart the attack on Venezuela.

How? By moving part of its navy to the Taiwan Strait and surrounding Taiwan, emulating what the United States did in the Caribbean. Initially, it would have to be just that: a deployment of naval forces without firing a single shot.

But if, despite this, Washington moves from harassment to attack, China will be fully within its rights to respond in kind and recover the rebellious province that the United States has turned into a battering ram against Beijing.

I believe that China’s gesture of encircling Taiwan—I repeat, only that, without resorting to aggression against the island—would be an important step toward reevaluating diplomatic negotiation over military force and would send a clear message to the most warmongering power on the planet, as former President Jimmy Carter described the United States.

A message that would say that the US can no longer do as it pleases, overthrow governments, organize coups d’etat, occupy or destroy territories, and seize their wealth as it has done for so long.

If Washington is allowed to trample on the UN Charter and international law with impunity, and if its policies of pressure, blackmail, and violence come at no cost, the result will be an exacerbation of its deep-rooted tendency to use the enormous weight of its military apparatus as a privileged instrument of its actions in the international system, fueling the temptation to replicate the same pattern of aggression in other regions of the world.

In conclusion: if the return to “gunboat diplomacy” is not repelled by a strong response from China, imperialism will advance until it completely surrounds the Asian giant, even going so far as to promote Taiwan’s independence through violence and readying its guns to attack China, which appears in official US documents no longer as a commercial competitor but as an “evil actor” that must be destroyed.

That is why China should not delay a second longer in establishing a blockade with its warships around Taiwan. Not only to save lives in Venezuela and prevent the destruction of its infrastructure, public buildings, universities, schools, and hospitals, as the Israeli regime did in Gaza, but also in self-defense. That is, to preserve China from Washington’s insatiable voracity for world domination.

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