The U.S. invasion of Venezuela late last Friday shocked the world for many reasons. It represents another fundamental departure from the post-WWII order supported by the United States for the last 50 years. It was also an unprovoked, naked act of aggression based on the flimsiest of pretexts. Congress was not consulted, and the executive branch has far exceeded the 60 days allowed by the 1973 War Powers Act to get congressional approval for ongoing military action.
Far worse than these shattered norms are the horrifying possibilities this action raises. President Donald Trump and the GOP have laid bare their desires for hegemony, colonialism, and empire, and the dangerous global consequences of America pursuing these cannot be understated. Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro was an unpopular kleptocratic dictator, and this article should not be in any way interpreted as a defense of him; but it is a warning of what this invasion means, and what is to come.
Perhaps the most blatant of all the recent acts is Trump’s own declaration that the U.S. will “take control” of Venezuela “for a while” to seize and exploit the oil resources of the country. He will undoubtedly place a right-wing dictator beholden to him in charge of the country, opening the door to yet another avenue for foreign money flowing to him. Similarly, oil companies will compete with one another for access to the seized assets, meaning more money being laundered to Trump, his family, and other supporters in this spoils-of-war system.
It also sets the U.S. up to occupy a country that, while holding no love Maduro, likely won’t be happy to exchange a left-wing dictator who bankrupted and impoverished their country with a right-wing one who is doing the same. The U.S. has a long history of propping up unpopular despots with embedded troops, which hasn’t gone particularly well since Korea (where there was at least U.S. and UN support for the sovereignty of South Korea). Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria have been fruitless fiascos, producing corrupt unstable dictatorships at best (Iraq), or leaving our enemies in charge at worst (Iran, Afghanistan, and Vietnam until the 1990s).
Like so many of Trump’s militaristic foreign policy misadventures, there seems to be no long-term plan or strategy beyond executing lightning strikes in the hope that it produces desired results. While Iran is currently in turmoil, the world does not seem to be safer, more peaceful, or more orderly as a result.
The same is true for Venezuela: Trump does not appear to have a coherent plan for how to take and maintain control. Instead, there seems to be a belief in the administration that Venezuela can either be bullied into surrender, or that U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators even as U.S. oil companies seized their national resources. This despite the fact that Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, remains defiant and at large, and the military and security apparatuses of the regime remain largely intact. There are signs that Trump may allow Rodríguez to remain in place, so long as she continues moves to adopt a laissez-fair capitalist system that lets US oil companies exploit Venezuelan resources.
This act has also sent a chilling message to the world that the United States is beginning the process of carving up the world into spheres of influence run by dictatorships (namely the U.S., Russia, and China). Russia was Venezuela’s benefactor and ally but has been strangely quiet. Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Fiona Hill testified to Congress in 2019 that Russia was “signaling very strongly that they wanted to somehow make some very strange swap agreement between Venezuela and Ukraine.” In other words, the U.S. could have Venezuela if we let Russia have Ukraine. This strongly suggests that the price for letting the U.S. go after Venezuela without any protest was, and will be, Ukraine. It also suggests that Tawain may already be on the table as a bargaining chip with China, in order to secure its acquiescence to further U.S. regional hegemony in the Americas.
America’s 2025 National Security Strategy document has already put NATO and Europe on notice that they are the real enemy to Trump’s ambitions for empire and riches. In this seminal document, Russia was no longer portrayed as an adversary, and China was barely mentioned. Instead, the document focused on distancing the U.S. from NATO and the EU, treating them as adversaries rather than our closest allies. This further supports the notion that the globe is being carved up behind closed doors by nuclear-armed dictators intent on amassing wealth, building buffers to their empires, and securing their own backyards.
Trump has signaled that the global order of the past 80 years means nothing, and the U.S. is back in the business of colonial empire-building as if it was a pre-World War One great power. Canada and Greenland should be extremely alarmed by this. Both of these countries have been put on notice since the beginning of the second Trump administration that he intends to annex them, and this overt, over-the-top act of war against Venezuela confirms that there’s nothing stopping him from finding some pretextual casus belli to justify a U.S. annexation of Greenland. Denmark, Canada, and Greenland are all NATO members, and it appears the U.S. is barreling toward a confrontation with that organization.
Members of the EU, NATO, and the countries being threatened here should have their eyes wide open to the implications of what is happening. They are not dealing with someone who can be appeased, any more than Ukraine could have appeased Russia in 2022 by any means other than complete capitulation.
Leaders of democracies around the world need to understand this for what it likely is: the opening salvos of a broader campaign of modern Lebensraum and Anschluss. History teaches that the best time to say no in concrete terms is early, and not after despotic nations are deciding who gets to keep which parts of countries they invaded.
