World crises deepen in the wake of genocide

The year 2026 has begun with an escalation of the multiple international crises caused by a US government headed by a megalomaniac who openly spouts contempt for international law and says his actions will be determined only by his code and by America’s interests.

The US assault on Venezuela, the killing of its citizens in the bombing of Caracas and the kidnapping of its president and his wife was a new escalation of perpetual US aggression in Latin America. We have seen that interventionist aggression for decades, it is what US governments do. But this was more blatant than ever before, with no pretence of legality, no attempt to cover the naked grab for oil and power.

It is no coincidence that this final complete abandonment of any semblance of adherence to international law comes in the wake of the Israeli genocide in Palestine. That genocide - and it is not over - has been funded, facilitated and cheered on by the Trump regime. And Israel has got away with it. The criminal collaboration with genocide by Trump and by European states such as Britain and Germany was accompanied by criminal neglect on the part of other states.

The lesson for Trump was clear. Go for it, there will be no consequences. And so he attacks Venezuela and ramps up his threats to seize Greenland. He pulls the US out of United Nations organisations. The Trump attitude to the UN was summed up on RTÉ by a former US diplomat who said - unchallenged by the presenter - that the UN is “controlled by the Chinese Communist Party”.

Within the US Trump’s ICE thugs are on the rampage, a heavily armed, heavily politicised militia, akin to the Freikorps in Weimar Germany, precursors of the Nazis. Their murder of a mother has caused widespread outrage but again Trump knows he will get away with it. As on the streets, so in the corridors of power; the Trump regime concocts a criminal indictment against Jeremy Powell, the man he appointed as Chair of the US Federal Reserve, because Powell dares to maintain his independence and won’t do Trump’s bidding.

In Iran there is revolt against the repressive regime but the situation for the Iranian people has been made far more dangerous by Israel’s attacks last year and the current threats of further attacks from Israel and from the US. Such threats may actually strengthen the regime since historically it owes its very existence to resistance against the West which toppled Iran’s first democratically elected president in a 1950s grab for oil. Then for decades the US and Britain backed the ruthlessly repressive Shah of Iran, leading to the Iranian revolution of 1979 and ultimately the takeover by the current regime. And of course the US is no more interested in  democracy in Iran than it is in the oil-rich repressive Gulf states which it regards as allies, or in Venezuela for that matter. The grab for resources, power and ‘prestige’ is all that matters.

Where is Ireland’s voice in all this? The response of Taoiseach Mícheál Martin and Simon Harris to the US attack on Venezuela has been a new low in Irish foreign policy. They could not bring themselves to utter a word of criticism let alone condemnation of the US’s flagrant breach of international law. They are preparing to ditch the ‘triple lock’ safeguard for Irish neutrality, to end the requirement for UN mandates for missions by Irish forces, further undermining the UN when it is under unprecedented attack. In the same vein Martin and Harris have delayed the Occupied Territories Bill, oppose the inclusion of services in it and are trying to find a way of abandoning it altogether.

Now more than ever it is vital for us to campaign to defend Irish neutrality, demand truly independent foreign policy and assert Ireland’s true role as a voice for peace, disarmament and international law under the United Nations.