Donald Trump’s campaign against Venezuela is less about drugs than power, exposing deep hypocrisy in US policy and raising uncomfortable questions for Australia about its alliance.

President Donald Trump’s actions to prevent Venezuela sending drugs to the United States are the actions of a hypocritical, lawless, rogue superpower. Trump has sanctioned the serial murders without interview, arrest or trial of over 80 Venezolanos suspected of drug-running to America. He has sought internal destabilisation of the Maduro Government without bothering to talk to it first. He threatens invasion by sending a large naval force to patrol Venezuela’s coast line.

As Michael McKinley writes in _Pearls and Irritations_, this is all part of the projection of an American psychosis – a widespread addiction among Americans to dangerous drugs. Their predicament is blamed on the suppliers, not the voracity of moneyed American users, traffickers and profiteers.

This was not always so. As Australian Ambassador to Mexico in the 1990s, I was invited to join a think tank on the import of dangerous drugs to the US. Our chairman was James R Jones, the then United States Ambassador to Mexico. Jones was a level-headed bloke, a retired Democratic Congressman from Oklahoma, and a Clinton appointee to Mexico in 1993.

Jones was genuinely concerned about the deleterious effects of addictive drugs in America. But he took the line that it was the financial pull-factor from the United States that generated the supply industry. Petty officials or policemen in drug-supplying countries could not be expected to resist a bribe that might keep their families off the streets, and supply them with food and education.

Jones also wanted to draw a much wider bow about which countries supplied the drugs. Not just Venezuela, or from several other drug producing countries in Latin America. They also came from Asia, especially the golden triangle of Laos, Thailand and upper Burma. In consultation with Canberra, my contribution was to add particulars and details of Asian drugs and where they were generated and how many of them found their way into Australia and the United States. Jones and I compared notes on what our respective governments were doing to inhibit the trade.

I think Jones would be appalled at Trump’s dangerous ham-fistedness. Maduro may be a dictator and a socialist, but he continues to be the legitimate president of Venezuela. Trump has just pardoned James Orlando Hernandez, the president of Honduras over drug dealing. Hernandez was charged originally with importing large quantities of cocaine into the US. His pardoning could undermine US credibility about drug restrictions and embolden corrupt actors.

The pardoning certainly strips bare Trump’s reasons for going after Maduro. For the self-declared exponent of ‘the deal’, harmful drugs are not Trump’s main motivator. Venezuela has the world’s biggest proven reserves of oil – 303 billion barrels. That is one fifth of the global total. Saudi Arabia is second with 267 billion barrels, Iran third with 208.6 billion barrels. The United States has reserves of just 55 billion barrels. Venezuela’s reserves are five times those of the United States, and Trump wants them under US control. Pressure about Venezuelan drugs appears very much to be a diversion, a cover.

Trump’s double standards about drugs are exposed when it comes to China, a main supplier of the addictive recreational drug fentanyl to the United States. Trump has neither the cojones nor the consistency to call China out, let alone send in aircraft carriers or summarily bomb small Chinese vessels which may be carrying drugs.

Examples of Trump’s hypocrisy breed like flies. He claims to deserve a Nobel Peace Prize, yet none of the peace ‘deals’ he cites have been done. It’s not a year since his ‘Liberation Day’, but rising food prices and American discontent have forced him to drop tariffs, including on Australian beef.

How long will the Australian government tolerate such an untrustworthy ally? How long will its spokesmen and women stick to the tired but increasingly fanciful cliché about the values Australia shares with its main ally? Marles and Co are increasingly trapped in fantasy land. Unfortunately, in this regard at least, the deputy prime minister is largely supported by a directionless (and witless) Opposition.