Self-love is a two-sided coin. It can strengthen or stifle, expand or enfeeble, perfect or pauperise. When love is returned, one soars. When love is spurned, it cripples and disconsolates. Having touted himself as a “President of Peace”, Donald Trump is, today, the man spurned.

Now that the Nobel Peace Prize has eluded him even after claiming to have ended “eight raging conflicts”, Trump has begun to flex his muscles.

A large-scale strike on Venezuela’s capital city by the American forces overthrew the Nicholas Maduro regime. President Nicolas Maduro and his wife were captured, blindfolded and handcuffed, and taken to the US. The swift operation was carried out by the US Army’s Delta Force. It is an elite special operations group of soldiers trained in secret counterterrorism operations and hostage rescues.

The regime change is the name of the new game. Venezuela is the victim of the “Donroe” Doctrine, the “Trump corollary” to the much-maligned Monroe Doctrine. The 1923 Doctrine warned the European nations against further colonisation and intervention in the Americas. It established the Western Hemisphere as a sphere of American influence.

But leaders of the Senate and House Armed Services committees were not consulted on the regime change.

Maria Corina Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, who was expecting to be installed as president too, was spurned by Trump, who now says she does not have the “support or respect" within the country.

It is pretty obvious that having failed to end the Ukraine war through his mediation, the “President........

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