The United States’ escalating actions against Venezuela reveal more about imperial power, criminal methods and strategic denial than any genuine concern about drugs or rule of law.

Australia, and all the other nation states on the planet share a common status: in terms of the rule of law – domestic and international - and mutual respect, we are irrelevant to whatever grand strategic purposes the United States is bent on achieving. The current strategy against Venezuela which, in plain terms, involves serial murder on more than 80 counts on the high seas, internal destabilisation, and the threat of invasion, is but the latest example of the antics of a rogue superpower.

To the extent that Australian governments (and others for that matter) remain silent they debase themselves: their ritual declarations of commitment to rules-based orders less an indication of a strong principle than merely a weak sentiment.  Moreover, it is so unnecessary and cowardly, and so very dangerous.

Unnecessary because what is on offer in this fiasco is the projection of an American psychosis – in this case concerning a widespread addiction to dangerous drugs - on to Venezuela (among others).

It takes the form of delusions and disorganised thinking and is more a symptom of any number of causal factors in societies and organisations under severe physical and mental stress and trauma. Overall, the attribution of cause, or causes for the dire predicament is elsewhere: American exceptionalism assumes America’s essential purity; it is the non-American world that infects.

This is the stuff of fable. Or perhaps Madison Avenue without the sophistication of the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen.  And even then the advertising agencies might pass on a contract that would require sanistising the very special........

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