( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – As a Christmas present to his evangelical base, Donald Trump ordered military strikes against an Islamic State offshoot in Nigeria on December 25. On a day usually reserved for celebrations of the birth of a man who urged his followers to “turn the other cheek,” Christian lawmakers like Ted Cruz (R-TX), Tom Cotton (R-AK), and Ted Budd (R-NC) all celebrated the death of what Cotton called “bloodthirsty savages.”
As a New Year’s present to himself, Trump dispatched a SEAL team to kidnap Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro on January 3 and deposit him in a New York jail. Trump was personally invested in humbling a leader that had refused to kowtow in the face of American power. Trump was reportedly infuriated that the Venezuelan leader was literally dancing just out of reach.
The operation to capture Maduro was itself an audacious attempt at semi-regime change. Maduro was extracted, but the rest of his government was left in place. After claiming that the United States would rule a country still in the hands of Maduro’s colleagues, the president left it to other members of his administration to resolve the obvious contradiction.
Maduro is facing trial, Trump is facing questions, and a number of other countries are facing the threat that they will be next on the U.S. president’s to-do list for 2026. The raid itself was a surprise. But what else did people expect when U.S. voters put a vengeful felon back in the White House?
War and/or Peace
Over the last year, pundits on both sides of the political spectrum have argued over whether Donald Trump is a peace president or a war president. The interventions in Nigeria and Venezuela have served to ramp up the debate.
The president himself, as part of his bid to win a Nobel Peace Prize, has claimed to bring peace to a number of conflicts around the world. At the same time, prior to Nigeria and Venezuela, he launched strikes against Iran, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and Syria. He has pushed for the first trillion-dollar military budget and changed the Department of Defense to the Department of War. He has threatened Cuba, Colombia, and Greenland, and casually mentioned the annexation of Canada. He has continued to supply American weapons to a variety of rights-abusing nations including Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.
Two days before the attack on Venezuela, Trump claimed that his New Year’s resolution was “peace on earth.” Detractors contrasted that statement with his subsequent action against Maduro. Trump himself asserted, on the other hand, that the military operation was in fact about peace, not oil or regime change.
This debate over war and peace misses the point. For Trump, peace negotiations and military strikes are simply the means to an end. He wants to exert power over as much of the world as he can reach. That power might be represented by territory (Greenland), the replacement of recalcitrant leaders (Venezuela), economic opportunity (Russia), investment into the U.S. economy (Saudi Arabia), mineral wealth (Ukraine, Congo), trade domination (most of the world but particularly China), or just plain vassalage (NATO). In each case, Trump wants a cut for himself.
War president? Peace president?
No, Donald Trump is interested in only one thing: control.
Venezuela: What’s Next?
The idea that the United States will “run” Venezuela is the end of a conversation, not the beginning of one. Trump clearly had no follow-up plan after removing Maduro from power. He famously requires his advisors to boil briefing notes down to a half page since he can’t be bothered with details. Information about the raid itself no doubt exceeded the limit of his attention span, and he couldn’t focus on the follow-through.
The most important question—who will replace Maduro—doesn’t seem to concern him. He was dismissive of Maria Corina Machado, the opposition figure who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year that Trump thought rightfully belonged to him. He also seems unclear about the disposition of Delcy Rodriguez, who has replaced Maduro.
The confusion might stem from the secret negotiations that Rodriguez and her brother Jorge, the head of the National Assembly, conducted with U.S. negotiators last year. According to the Miami Herald, the Rodriguez siblings offered to push Maduro aside and install a retired general in his place. Charges against Maduro would be dropped, and the former leader would stay in Venezuela or go into exile in Turkey or Qatar. The Trump administration ultimately said no, reportedly because Trump didn’t want to let Maduro off the hook. For Trump, revenge is paramount.
When confronted on future plans for Venezuela, Trump has fallen back on his business-world instincts. The new boss would naturally control the company against which he’d conducted a hostile takeover. What Trump really meant by “running” the country, according to his court interpreter Marco Rubio, is that the U.S. government would work with Venezuelan partners to ensure free or very low-cost access to oil and other key assets in the country. Governance is not Trump’s thing. Just look at DOGE and his incompetent handling of U.S. government policy. Relying on the rule of thugs—in Saudi Arabia, Hungary, or North Korea—is more his style.
Trump and the U.S. military reserve the right—the right of imperial powers—to intervene again if Venezuela resists U.S. dictates. But the administration is not interested in nation-building. Nor was the kidnapping of Maduro all about Venezuela’s oil. After all, Maduro offered to give U.S. preferential access, which Trump rejected.
The capture of Maduro was for demonstration purposes, much as a mafioso orders a hit on a rival to send a message to all other competitors that resistance is futile.
Message to China
The key recipient for the Venezuela message was not China per se but all the countries in Latin America—and elsewhere in the world—that have begun to rely on China as their primary trade partner, investor, and benefactor. China, for instance, is South America’s largest trading partner. Trade between Brazil and China is now twice the volume of trade between Brazil and the United States. This is astonishing given that the United States was Brazil’s largest trade partner for 80 years—until 2009.
Latin America has also taken advantage of billions of dollars in Chinese investments into infrastructure, like ports, mines, and transportation. The overall percentage might be low—China represents 2 percent of the FDI total compared to 38 percent for the United States—but the numbers are much bigger in certain sectors, such as mining and energy. Also, much of the Chinese investment doesn’t appear in that total because it flows through third countries.
The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy updated the Monroe Doctrine to emphasize the U.S. priority of keeping other major powers out of its backyard and extending that priority to drug interdiction and immigration. The Trump administration has put pressure on specific countries—Panama, Argentina—to move away from China. It has celebrated recent right-wing victories in Chile, Bolivia, Honduras, and Ecuador.
But China is patient. It offers good deals to Latin American countries, regardless of the political ideology of the ruling party. The Trump administration, aside from some ad hoc offers like the $20 million it sent to Javier Milei’s government in Argentina, is not interested in competing at that level. The Biden administration sent some nominal funds to Central America to stabilize economies and reduce the push factors for immigration. Trump prefers to use the stick over the carrot.
Unravelling the World Order
Trump has famously bent over backwards to explain away Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The truth is, Trump has long admired Putin’s contempt for international law. Much of his frustration during his first term was that he couldn’t flex U.S. military muscle in quite the unrestricted way that Putin was doing even before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The compliment is now being repaid by some pro-Kremlin sources in Russia in their commentary on Venezuela. “The operation was carried out competently,” according to the Telegram channel Dva Mayora, which is close to the Russian military. “Most likely, this is exactly how our ‘special military operation’ was meant to unfold: fast, dramatic and decisive.”
Putin has pioneered a modern double standard on sovereignty. No one should be allowed to tell Russia what to do within its borders and thus violate its sovereignty. But Russia is free to dictate to its neighbors and violate their sovereignty at will. Trump loves that double standard so much that he has rebuilt U.S. foreign policy around it.
Previous U.S. administrations tried to paper over such double standards. Trump revels in them. He doesn’t follow rules. He rewrites them and then delights in how the comparatively powerless cluck and moan. The UN watches as Trump tears up the UN Charter and can do little more than lament the state of the world.
In hockey, a power play happens when one team loses a player to the penalty box and the other team goes a player up. With overwhelming military force at his disposal, Trump is on an extended power play. He will use America’s asymmetric advantage to score as many goals as he can during his term.
The analogy is not precise. Trump is not only the captain of the team that’s up one player. He is also the referee. He determines when an infraction has taken place, and he assesses the penalties. He is judge, jury, and executioner.
Whether it’s war or peace, it’s all the same game for Trump. He aspires to be the number one bad hombre: the one in complete control.
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