Invade the world, invite the world. That pithy phrase was invented in the 2000s by Steve Sailer, the right-wing writer, to mock the then bipartisan consensus which supported George W. Bush’s war on terror abroad while pushing open borders at home. Or, as Sailer also put it: ‘Bomb them over there and indulge them over here.’ Back then, such analysis was generally dismissed as the preserve of white supremacist cranks. Now, it’s fair to say that Sailerite thinking animates the spirit of the second Donald Trump administration. Disrupt the world, deport the world. That’s the order of the day.

Since America’s stunning attack on Venezuela last weekend, almost everybody has had a stab at revealing Trump’s real intentions – including, naturally, Trump and his talking heads. It’s all about securing the oil, stopping the drugs, defeating China, Russia and Iran, or re-establishing ‘hemispheric dominance’. The truth, of course, is that it’s about all of the above and more.

‘Narco-terrorism’ is the official casus belli. ‘We have a drug caliphate in our backyard,’ warbled Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator and arch-sycophant, standing next to a nodding Trump on Sunday. But it’s no secret that the US also wants to extract trillions of dollars’ worth of Venezuelan crude – the President said as much in his first press conference on the matter on Saturday.

The less-discussed factor behind Operation Absolute Resolve is immigration – and the Trump administration’s determination to put the world back in its place. The ‘Donroe Doctrine’ – known more formally as........

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