Hey everyone,
As I wrote on the final day of 2025, you’d be well advised to fasten your seatbelts as 2026 is going to be even crazier and more dangerous than 2025. Here we are three days later and Trump goes for regime change in Venezuela by capturing President Maduro and his wife.
Maduro was a dictator, an illegitimate president and very few people will miss him. He was up to no good at all, a bit like Saddam Hussein back in the day, although arguably Saddam was the worse of the two. In the narrow and short term perspective, Maduro’s riddance is good news. However, it will be hard to find more positives than that!
The first problem is the aftermath. Trump said in his press conference that the US will run the country until it can be turned over to Venezuelan rule. Apart from Trump’s bluster about the magnitude of the strike, there are no indications that Maduro’s power structures have been dismantled. Maduro certainly wasn’t popular, but Venezuelans won’t welcome US interference. It will be a very hard country to control.
Judging by the evidence, the intervention is more about oil wealth than counter-narcotics. I’m certainly no expert on narcotics or counter-narcotics, but figures from the World Drug Report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) puts Venezuela firmly behind Columbia, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico and Central America in terms of both production and trafficking routes. A large scale impact on the inflow of drugs in the US by removing Maduro seems delusional.
What I do know is that any succesful counter-narcotics strategy, like counter-terror strategy, depends on governance. Criminal and terror networks thrive in weak governance. Unless there is a comprehensive plan to strengthen indigenous governance, the US is likely to end up in even deeper trouble in Venezuela than before the intervention. That’s where we’re at!
Trump has stated that he wants access to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves and it was just repeated by Secretary Hegseth at the press conference. It seems that Trump attempts to put a stooge on top in Venezuela that will allow him to skim oil wealth. That’s likely to lead to unrest and a civil war is a distinct possibility.
Seen from a global perspective the most worrying part is that the Venezuela intervention is a clear manifestation of Trump’s world view. The world view that was spelled out clearly in the National Security Strategy. I’ve illustrated the NSS world view on my “beautiful” map below:-)
This is a world view where the three largest powers in Trump’s view have their separate spheres of influence. The Americas belong in Trump World, the so-called “Donroe Doctrine”! Of course, Putin’s Russia is by no other means than nukes and geographical size a major power. Its GDP is slightly higher than the Nordic countries combined, but in Trump’s head clearly Russia is great!
Having their separate spheres of influence is likely a world view that Trump shares with Xi and Putin to a large extent. The two latter have called it “multipolarity” for years, but that term is propaganda. Like Trump they want to run affairs in their back yards, so they’re likely settle for the above tripolar structure.
Obviously, Venezuela is troublesome as it was the major bridgehead in Latin America for both Putin and Xi for years. So they’re likely to be on the loosing side here. Seen from Trump’s perspective he’s merely strengthenening his own hand in the “strongman world order”. What Putin and Xi will demand in return, we can only speculate, but Ukraine, the Baltics, the rest of the post Soviet space, Taiwan, countries on the rim of the South China Sea are likely to come into play.
You may know that Putin already green lighted Trump’s takeover of Greenland during a speech in Murmansk at the end of March this year. The Venezuela intervention shows doubters that Trump intends to dominate the Americas and this is very likely to go for Greenland as well.
We’re likely to see more strongman deals and occasional flare ups. I call it “the dictators’ tripolar world order”. Formally, the US is still a democracy, but Trump is “a wannabe dictator” to quote the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Milley.
About my map, it’s hard to say where the border goes in Europe. Trump and Putin shares the view that European unity is a problem, so it seems they can agree to share the spoils by getting more nationalistic autocrats into power. Orban illustrates this. Europeans who don’t like the look of my map need to wake up and act!
There’s no chance Trump will stand up for democracy and the rules based world order. That’s not his world view and people need to stop any fantasies in that direction. In Trump’s view dictators and autocrats are strong whereas leaders abiding by democracy are weak.
And please, anyone who believed all the BS about Trump as “the peace president” and a contender for the Nobel peace price, just stop it…I wont even mention Infantino and the complete idiots at FIFA. It gives me brain freeze!
Obviously, there are also legal issues in the US, but I won’t go into those here. I’ll leave you with this.
Stay safe out there!
