Bringing it all back home |
Donald Trump displaying a giant map with Greenland and Canada as part of the United States to world leaders in the Oval Office. Photo courtesy Donald J. Trump/Truth Social.
Before dawn on January 3, the United States launched a “large-scale strike” against Venezuela during which its President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were kidnapped and flown out of the country. They were subsequently arraigned in a New York court on drug and weapons charges. Though there were no American deaths, at least 100 people were killed in the assault, including Venezuelan civilians and 32 Cubans.
Four days later, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, Jonathan E. Ross, fatally shot a 37-year-old American woman, Renée Nicole Good, three times in the face at point-blank range. Video analysis by the New York Times of “bystander footage, filmed from different angles, appears to show the agent was not in the path of the victim’s SUV when he fired.” Contrary to the claims put out by the Department of Homeland Security within two hours, this was a brutal murder—not self-defence.
What has any of this to do with Gaza? The short answer is: everything. For it was above all in Gaza that the new world order of which these are symptoms was forged.
Later on January 3, Donald Trump told journalists that “We’re going to run the country [Venezuela] until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.”
With a nod to the Monroe Doctrine (which he has modestly renamed the “Donroe Doctrine”) of 1823, Trump warned that “Under our new National Security Strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.”
“I understand the anxiety over the use of military force,” Vice President J.D. Vance posted on X, “But are we just supposed to allow a communist to steal our stuff in our hemisphere and do nothing? Great powers don’t act like that. The United States, thanks to President Trump’s leadership, is a great power again. Everyone should take note.”
By “steal our stuff” he meant Venezuela’s nationalization of foreign oil companies in 2007 under Hugo Chávez.
When Britain, France, and Israel invaded Egypt in 1956 aiming to depose President Gamal Abdel Nasser following his nationalization of the Suez Canal, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower pressured them to accept a United Nations ceasefire and voted for UN resolutions publicly condemning the invasion and approving the creation of a UN peacekeeping force. That was under the old post–Second World War “rules-based” order.
According to Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller:
As Maya Angelou once said, when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
Trump made his determination not to have American hands tied by involvement in multilateral organizations, treaties, or agreements very clear from the get-go. On his first day in office, he withdrew the US from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Paris Climate Agreement.
Two weeks later he pulled the US out of the UN Human Rights Council, prohibited any future US funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and ordered a review of US funding and involvement in the UN, including what he called the “anti-American” UNESCO (from which he would withdraw the US in July 2025).
Following that review, which was led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, on January 7 this year Trump withdrew from a further “35 non-United Nations organizations and 31 UN entities that operate contrary to U.S. national interests, security, economic prosperity, or sovereignty” and “advance globalist agendas over U.S. priorities.”
One of these was the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to which all other countries in the world belong. This frees up the US from any future international obligations regarding action on carbon emissions and global warming. Trump has long made it clear to the world that he proposes to “Drill, baby, drill!”
More recently (and very ominously), in the words of former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Trump has made “the momentous decision to constitute an alternative” to the UN, a so-called “‘board of peace’, with a remit for interventions far beyond Gaza, and with membership offered to about 60 favoured states, including Russia.”
That the UN opened the road for this when it cravenly endorsed Trump’s “Gaza Peace Plan” on November 17 is indicative of just how moribund the old order has become.
The invasion of Venezuela is not a one-off. Despite running on an anti-war platform, the use of force (or threat thereof) has been a defining feature of Trump’s presidency.
He has threatened to annex Greenland, “take back” the Panama Canal, and employ economic force to compel Canada to become “a cherished and beautiful 51st state.”
Notwithstanding his petulant lobbying for a “Noble Peace Prize” (like Obama) and his specious claim to have “ended eight wars,” in 2025 Trump bombed Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Nigeria, and Venezuela, and the US has killed at least 112 people in strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. Asked whether “killing the citizens of another nation who are civilians without any due process is called a war crime,” J.D. Vance responded: “I don’t give a shit what you call it.”
On December 16 Trump declared “A TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into, and out of, Venezuela … Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.” As of January 13, the US Navy had seized five tankers. Asked what would happen to the oil, Trump responded “We’re gonna keep it.”
Trump has now extended the blockade to Cuba, warning “THERE WILL BE NO........