Alan Zendell, January 8, 2025

I’ll leave the issue of whether using American military forces to attack Venezuelan President Maduro’s compound and spirit him away to New York under a federal indictment was legal to the courts. As important as adhering to the rule of law is, in this case it’s less important than the implications of the event.

Maduro is a really bad guy. The world will not be worse off without him, but we said the same thing about Saddam Hussein. We received a lesson in nation-building, more than twenty years ago, but we seem to have forgotten it. The cliché “break it and own it” applies here in spades. President Trump is being opaque and evasive about his plans, but he admitted to a New York Times reporter, yesterday, that the United States could be “running Venezuela” for years.

That is a terrible idea. In Iraq, we catastrophically misjudged the situation and discovered that putting the pieces back together was impossible. We either created or nurtured the rapid growth of ISIS, which has been plaguing us ever since. In Venezuela, the situation is potentially much worse. It’s a prescription for continuous anti-American guerilla action both in Venezuela and the rest of Central and South America. Well-armed revolutionary groups, some funded by our Communist adversaries, exist throughout the region, with eight major ones just in Venezuela and its neighbors, Colombia and Peru.

If nearly twenty years of unwinnable war in Iraq and Afghanistan weren’t enough, we’d be bogged down in Venezuela until our next president bit the bullet and withdrew. That’s exactly what drove the final nail into the coffin of the Soviet Union when they overextended themselves in Afghanistan. And if we’re not bankrupted by guerilla warfare, we risk a more serious war encountering Russian and Chinese ships in the Caribbean. A Russian submarine was tracking yesterday’s capture of a Russia shadow fleet oil tanker leaving Venezuela.

All these practical considerations and warnings are real, but of perhaps greater long-term interest are the global implications of Trump’s plans. Republicans, ever since the Tea Party emerged, have been plotting to reverse the post-World War II world order. Two main thrusts of that were easing international borders and free trade, the theory being that powerful nations that have mutual economic interdependencies are less likely to nuke each other. The European Union showed that free trade and soft borders could work, and the economic benefits of increased trade and tourism have both been excellent outcomes for Europe.

Ideologically, in the last sixty years, the world has paid lip service to the idea that no nation has the right to destroy another’s sovereignty, a principal tenet of the United Nations charter. When Russia attacked Ukraine in 2014 and 2022, most of the world was shocked at the total disregard of Ukraine’s sovereignty, which had been guaranteed by Russia when Ukraine relinquished its nuclear missiles after the Soviet breakup. The other NATO nations took that very seriously, and still do, despite Donald Trump’s sympathies obviously being with Russia in the conflict.

There’s been much speculation about the relationship between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Conventional wisdom among non-MAGA people is that Putin has Trump under some kind of thrall, and that Trump worships strongmen, notwithstanding that most are brutal murderers with no shred of moral character. Everything Trump did in 2025 supports that view, and the administration’s total lack of transparency is right in character with it.

Americans have seemed puzzled by that since Trump took office, but the explanation is becoming clearer every day. Trump has long rhapsodized in public about being unfettered by federal laws and regulations, and worst of all, our Constitution. He publicly craves the kind autocratic power held by his greatest adversaries, Putin, and Xi Jinping. He’s furious that he cannot do whatever he pleases as president. He continually sucks up to Putin only to be humiliated at every turn, yet he seems unable to break his worshipful addiction to raw power.

All this brings us to the return of imperialism and the nineteenth century concept of Spheres of Influence. Nineteenth century imperialism didn’t work. It brought us two world wars and scores of minor ones. Imperialism is about greed and power-grabbing on an international scale. It respects neither sovereignty nor human rights, focusing instead on increasing the wealth and power of the leaders of the strongest countries. And it is the preferred world order of both Putin and Xi. Putin has worked hard to sell it to Trump, who has apparently bought into it without reservation. Renaming the Monroe Doctrine for himself, Trump couldn’t be clearer about his intentions.

MAGA and Trump would return us to a world order in which three major powers control everything within their spheres of influence. Putin wants Europe and Eurasia, generally leaving the rest of Asia to China. I wonder how India, Australia and New Zealand would feel about that as they watch Russia and China fight over carving up Africa. In that universe, Trump would be the Emperor of the Western Hemisphere.

It’s an insane fever dream, a world in which three powerful dictators run everything with complete disregard for the long-term health of our planet and 99% of its people. It’s a world we don’t want our grandchildren living in. We’ve already been there, and it doesn’t work.