Trump's new world order is emerging - and Venezuela is just the beginning

The American president has been quite clear that Cuba, Mexico, Colombia, and Greenland are his targets. We have to believe him.

Source: The Guardian
Translation: Telegrafi.com

As the Caracas skyline lit up with American bombs, we saw the morbid symptoms of a declining empire. It may sound counterintuitive. After all, the US has kidnapped a foreign leader and Donald Trump has said he will “run” Venezuela. Of course, this sounds less like decay and more like intoxication: a superpower drunk on its own strength.

But Trump’s greatest virtue, if it can be called such, is his candor. Previous American presidents hid their naked self-interests behind the language of “democracy” and “human rights.” Trump needs no mask. In 2023, he boasted: “When I left, Venezuela was about to collapse. We should have invaded, we should have taken all that oil, it would be right there.” And this was not a spontaneous statement. The logic of oil grabbing, and much more, is clearly laid out in Trump’s new National Security Strategy, recently released.

The document acknowledges something long denied in Washington: that US global hegemony is over. “After the end of the Cold War, US foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American dominance of the entire world was in our country’s best interest,” it says with barely concealed disdain. “The days when the United States held up the entire world order, like Atlas, are over.” These are like unofficial funeral rites for American superpower status.

What replaces it is a world of rival empires, each imposing its own sphere of influence. And, for the US, that sphere is the Americas. “After years of neglect,” the strategy declares, “the United States will reactivate and implement the Monroe Doctrine to restore American primacy in the Western Hemisphere.” The Monroe Doctrine, formulated in the early 19th century, purported to block European colonialism. In practice, it laid the foundation for American dominance over its own backyard: Latin America.

Violence in Latin America, aided by Washington, is nothing new. My parents sheltered refugees fleeing Chile’s right-wing dictatorship, installed after socialist President Salvador Allende was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup. “I don’t see why we should stand by and watch a country become communist because of the irresponsibility of its people,” declared then-US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The same logic underpinned murderous regimes in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia, as well as in Central America and the Caribbean.

But in the past three decades, that dominance has been called into question. The so-called “pink wave” of progressive governments, led by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has sought to assert more regional independence. And, most importantly, China – the US’s main rival – has grown in influence across the continent. Bilateral trade in goods between China and Latin America was 259 times greater in 2023 than in 1990. China is now the continent’s second-largest trading partner, after the US. At the end of the Cold War, it wasn’t even in the top ten. Trump’s attack on Venezuela is just the first step in an effort to overturn all of this.

The experience of Trump's first term has led many to believe that the authoritarian leader in the White House was just a bubble. Then, he struck a deal with the traditional Republican elite. The unwritten agreement was simple: he would offer tax cuts and regulatory waivers, and he would be able to vent endlessly on social media. The second-term Trump is a full-blown far-right regime.

When he threatens the democratically elected presidents of Colombia and Mexico - believe it. When he declares, with barely concealed glee, that “Cuba is about to fall” - believe it. And, when he says: “We need Greenland, absolutely” - believe it. He really intends to annex over two million square kilometers of European territory.

If – when – Greenland is swallowed up by a Trumpian empire, what happens then? Trump has noted Europe’s ludicrous response to his illegal attack on Venezuela. But the American seizure of sovereign Danish territory would mean the end of NATO, which was founded on the principle of collective defense. Denmark’s land would be stolen as openly as Russia’s swallowing of Ukraine. Whatever faint noises may come out of London, Paris or Berlin, the Western alliance will be over.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, American elites convinced themselves that they were militarily invincible and that their economic model was the pinnacle of human development. This arrogance led directly to disaster in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, as well as the 2008 financial crisis. American elites promised the people utopian dreams and then dragged them from one failure to the next. Trumpism itself was born out of this massive disillusionment. But the “America First” response to the decline of the United States is the abandonment of global dominance in favor of a hemispheric empire.

What remains for the United States itself? When the United States defeated Spain in the late 19th century and took the Philippines, several prominent figures founded the American Anti-Imperialist League. “We believe that the policy known as imperialism is hostile to freedom and leads to militarism,” they declared, “an evil from which we have had the glory to be free.”

“We declare that no nation can long exist as half republic and half empire,” declared the Democratic Party in the 1900 presidential election, “and we warn the American people that imperialism abroad will quickly and inevitably lead to despotism at home.” In the end, informal empire replaced direct colonialism, and American democracy—always deeply flawed—survived.

Who would dismiss these warnings today as exaggerations? What happens outside cannot be separated from what happens inside. This is the imperial “boomerang,” as the Martinican writer Aimé Césaire defined it three quarters of a century ago when he analyzed how European colonialism returned to the continent in the form of fascism. We have already seen the “war on terror” turn out this way: its language and logic were reused for domestic oppression. “The Democratic Party is not a political party,” declared Stephen Miller, Trump’s chief of staff, last summer. “It is an extremist domestic organization.” National Guard troops are being sent into Democratic-run cities as an occupying force, repeating the “attacks” once carried out in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Seen this way, Trump’s benevolence towards Russian ambitions in Ukraine is not at all mysterious. As early as 2019, Russia reportedly proposed increasing American influence in Venezuela in exchange for the US withdrawal from Ukraine. Who knows if such a deal has been made. What is certain is that a new world order is emerging. It is a world where increasingly authoritarian powers use brute force to subjugate their neighbors and steal their resources. What might once have sounded like a dystopian fantasy is being built before our eyes. The question is: do we have the means, the will and the ability to fight back? /Telegraph/