Trump’s attack on Venezuela signals a new era of U.S. imperialism

In this video, I talk about the American attack on Venezuela and what it says about the state of the world. Honestly, it’s a pretty depressing picture, where American imperialism seems to be something we need to get used to.

Watch the video here or read the transcript below.

Best,
Anders

Transcript:

The United States has attacked Venezuela and removed President Maduro. In this video, I want to share a few high-level thoughts about what it means and what it says about the world. So, let's talk about it.

The situation in Venezuela is still developing and we don't know how things are going to unfold. It can go in many different directions, so there is a lot of uncertainty. What I want to do here is to share some initial reactions to what we saw happening and what it means.

First, I think it's necessary to acknowledge how well executed this military operation was. It was a very big operation. It involved many aircraft, ships, intelligence on the ground, and it all worked out very well. They went in, they took President Maduro and his wife, and they got out again, and the Americans did not take a single casualty. That is extremely impressive. I think it's questionable whether any other military in the world could have done the same as what the Americans did here.

So, on the tactical and operational side, this was very well executed and clearly planned out very well. At the strategic and political side, I think things are more murky. Frankly, it's not quite clear what the plan is from here. Donald Trump says that now the United States is going to be running Venezuela for the coming period of time and that they are going to come in with American oil companies and take more or less control of the Venezuelan economy.

But how they're planning on doing that is very unclear, especially because it does not seem that the United States is planning on having a military presence in Venezuela. So apparently, they are going to be running the country without actually being in the country. And that is probably not going to work.

So while on the tactical and operational side, it seems that there was a very good and clear planning process and very strong execution of the mission to capture Maduro, then on the strategic level, it's less obvious that there is a plan, and it will be interesting to see how this is going to unfold.

If we look at it from a broader perspective, I think we're seeing a continuation of three trends that have been observable for some time. The first is that the United States is withdrawing from the rest of the world, and they are focusing on what they call the Western Hemisphere. This is also defined in the new national security strategy that I made a video about a little while ago. The Trump administration sees North and South America as the important sphere of influence for the United States, and they see that the United States should be the dominating great power there.

Trump is already now talking about doing the same in other countries that they did in Venezuela. He's hinting at military operations in Mexico, Cuba, and Colombia. And on social media, high-level MAGA profiles are publishing maps that show Greenland as soon to be part of the United States.

So increasingly, it seems clear that the Trump administration has an imperialistic agenda that they are trying to push. They have big plans for both territorial conquest and power projection in what they see as their legitimate sphere of influence.

Needless to say, this is a very different direction for US foreign politics from what it used to be. And I think, quite frankly, it's a development that most people had not predicted just a year ago when Trump came into office. At that time, what was more discussed was American isolationism. But now we're actually talking about American imperialism. So that's a very significant change in tone.

I think it's questionable whether this is going to work for Trump. First, there is a significant risk of what can be called imperial overstretch, where they just take on too much because they assume that it will be easy and that everything is going to go as smoothly as it did to remove Maduro. But then afterwards, it turns out that things are actually more complicated and the United States can end up in situations that are similar to what we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan, because the easy part is removing the previous leader of the country. The hard part is dealing with the turmoil that comes after.

So imperial overstretch is one constraint that Trump might run into. Another obstacle is that it's not clear to me whether this imperial project has popular support in the United States. I doubt it. First, there is a very large group of Americans who actually liked the old United States, where they stood for things like freedom, democracy, international law, and human rights. They don't like the direction that their country is going because they feel that it's against the values that America is supposed to stand for.

And in addition to that, there is also a very large group of Trump voters who actually voted for him because they believed that what he stood for was American isolationism. They liked the idea that America would not be involved in all kinds of foreign conflicts, but would focus on spending the resources at home and building the American base, and that this is what "America First" meant. They will obviously be disappointed to learn that "America First" apparently means that they will not get out of foreign conflicts, but will instead get involved in a range of new wars in Latin America.

So, I think Trump's imperialistic project might run into some domestic opposition in the United States, because this is actually something that can unite large parts of both sides of the political spectrum. Because the United States does not have a history of aggressive imperialism as the national narrative that unites the people. This is the case in Russia, for example, and that's why this kind of project sort of works for Putin. But it will take something special to create that type of public narrative in the United States. It's not just going to come out of nowhere.

So that was the first major trend that I think the attack on Venezuela signifies. The second one is what we can call the lawlessness of the American political system. The attack on Venezuela was against international law. That's quite clear. In fact, pretty much everything the United States has been doing in terms of Venezuela over the last half year or so has been illegal. It's been illegal to attack drug boats with missiles. It's been illegal to blockade Venezuela. And this attack and the removal of President Maduro are also against international law. Unfortunately, we live in a time when international law is threatened, but I still think it's worth mentioning.

But perhaps even more significant, the attack on Venezuela was against American law. It was against U.S. federal law for Donald Trump to do this without congressional approval. This is not something that the American president can just do. The American president has the authority to do certain things, such as initiate self-defense, for example, without congressional approval, and then he can get that approval afterward. But this was a planned attack that was intended for regime change in a foreign country, which is an act of aggression that the U.S. president is not allowed to do without congressional approval. Yet Donald Trump just did it anyway.

So, we're seeing a clear trend where the checks and balances on the US president are falling apart. And increasingly, Donald Trump just does whatever he wants without any checks and balances. And he's committing the US military to war without actually asking anyone for approval.

So, the United States is moving in a direction of a more personalistic foreign policy that really depends on the mood of the president. And with Trump, that obviously adds a lot of unpredictability in what we can expect.

The last trend I want to emphasize is the fact that perhaps we need to stop talking about great power competition. This has been the kind of mantra in international relations discussions for quite a while that we have great powers in constant competition with each other. However, increasingly, it appears that the three biggest great powers are actually just dividing the world among themselves.

The United States is to dominate the Western Hemisphere. China will take East Asia and Russia can dominate Europe. It seems that this is the direction that things are moving: away from constant competition between the great powers and toward an understanding between them about dividing the world into spheres of influence. And if you happen then to live in a country that is in one of these regions and you don't want to be ruled by an imperial great power, then you'd better start thinking about what you're going to do about it.

So, those were my initial thoughts about the American attack on Venezuela and the arrest of President Maduro. Even though Maduro was, in every respect, a terrible person and a dictator, and it's good he's gone, I think it's an extremely worrying development. But at the same time, it's also not really something new. It's more an expression of trends that we have been observing for a while in terms of the United States embarking on not American isolationism, but rather actual American imperialism. And also that Trump is increasingly performing foreign policy without any checks and balances or required approval from other institutions in the United States. And that all this points to a future where China, Russia, and the United States seem willing to simply divide the world among them instead of pursuing great power competition as we've been used to thinking about it.

Okay, I will end it here. If you found the video helpful or informative, then please give it a like. And if you want to support the channel and get access to bonus videos, you can subscribe to my newsletter on www.logicofwar.com. Thank you very much for watching, and I will see you again next time.