‘Only Trump could make us miss hypocrisy’
Jeremy Shapiro argues that Donald Trump’s directness regarding foreign interventions highlights the loss of moral hypocrisy that previously governed the rules-based international order.
What you need to know
🔹 Jeremy Shapiro notes that Donald Trump lacks traditional diplomatic hypocrisy.
🔹 Critics argue hypocrisy at least acknowledges a necessary moral framework.
🔹 The 2003 Iraq invasion is cited as a high-minded moral hypocrisy.
🔹 Trump’s Venezuela operation makes no claims of promoting global democracy.
O nly Trump could make us miss hypocrisy”.¹
So said Jeremy Shapiro, research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations and former advisor at the US State Department.
Masha Gessen, the American journalist of Russian ethnicity, expressed a variation of the sentiment. So did various think tankers, analysts, the US foreign policy “blob” and other entities that cogitate and pronounce on world affairs.
Such were the arguments mustered in defence of the rules-based international order after Donald Trump’s military operation in Venezuela, which kidnapped the country’s head of state.
The rationale is that hypocrisy has considerable value because it is the homage vice pays to virtue. By being hypocritical you acknowledge that uou shouldn’t have been doing something. It means that however bad your actions, at least you know the moral requirement of eschewing an action. When you deny the need for hypocrisy, you send a message that there are no limits to doing bad things because they’re not bad in the first place.
Everyone has been pointing to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq² and describing President George W Bush’s high-minded invocation of propagating democracy as a hypocrisy that at least claimed the moral high ground.
Mr Trump, by contrast, has never once referred to the Venezuela operation as America’s chance to help end the democratic deficit.
Would a hypocritical embrace of the high ground have helped?
I rather think not. Mr Trump’s actions would be just as venal and self-interested as those of Mr Bush or any other legally dubious overseas intervention by the US.
GOING FURTHER
Jeremy Shapiro Profile and Analysis | ECFR
The Crisis in Venezuela: A Geopolitical Overview | REUTERS
Donald Trump has laid bare the myth of the west’s rules-based order | THE OBSERVER
The white man’s burden, Trump edition | FT
Iraq War: A Controversial War | BRITANNICA
Donald Trump Foreign Policy Tracker | THE GUARDIAN
Venezuela News and Conflict Updates | BBC
The Future of US Foreign Policy and Democracy | CHATHAM HOUSE
Realpolitik and the Death of Diplomatic Hypocrisy | THE ECONOMIST
Sources:
▪ This piece was first published in Medium and re-published in Europeans TODAY on 30 January 2026 under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. | The author writes in a personal capacity.
▪ Cover: Flickr/The White House. (Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.)
