The New World Order #1
The American Playbook
TL;DR: Trump’s National Security Strategy told us exactly what was coming. Venezuela was as much about spheres of influence as it was about oil – definitely not drugs. The post-WWII rules-based order is dead. Yet, everyone’s still pretending the old referee is coming back.
When the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) popped up on my X feed, I skimmed it. Twenty pages. Thought “this is aggressive,” and moved on with my life.
Last Saturday, Maduro was captured in a military raid and essentially teleported to a Brooklyn jail. Trump called it a “brilliant operation.”
I went back and read page 16 of that NSS:
“Targeted deployments to secure the border and defeat cartels, including where necessary the use of lethal force to replace the failed law enforcement-only strategy of the last several decades.”
They published the playbook. Then they ran it.
The Document Nobody Read
The NSS isn’t like previous versions. They used to be laundry lists – every region mentioned, every ally flattered, every threat acknowledged. Documents designed to offend no one and commit to nothing.
This one is unhinged.
It opens by calling post-Cold War American foreign policy a failure: too many commitments, too much “globalism,” too many interventions in places that don’t matter. Imagine a corporate restructuring memo, but for the planet.
The establishment consensus –liberal internationalism, rules-based order, multilateral institutions– gets dismissed as elite overreach that hollowed out America’s industrial base.
The replacement framework: economic security is national security. Supply chains, critical minerals, energy dominance. The word “democracy” appears sparingly. “Industrial base” dominates. Military posture, alliances, regional priorities – everything flows downstream from economics.
The Trump Corollary
Page 15:
“After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere... We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.”
The Monroe Doctrine is 200 years old. It just got teeth.
The NSS calls this the “Trump Corollary” and names the target explicitly: Chinese infrastructure investment, Chinese loans, Chinese ownership of strategic assets. Venezuela had become China’s strongest ally in Latin America.
Had. Past tense.
China’s special envoy for Latin America, Qiu Xiaoqi, met with Maduro in Caracas on Friday. Smiling photos. Talk of “a bright future for China-Venezuela relations.”
After midnight, American helicopters landed at Venezuela’s largest military complex.
Beijing issued a statement saying it was “deeply shocked.” The world’s second superpower got pantsed in its own partner’s living room – and the timing wasn’t coincidental. Friday’s diplomatic visit made Saturday’s raid more humiliating, not less.
Message sent: Chinese partnerships offer no protection.
Follow the Energy
Venezuela has 300 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. The largest in the world.
The NSS is explicit about “energy dominance” as a strategic priority. Cheap energy fuels reindustrialization, maintains advantage in AI (those data centers are power-hungry), and gives America leverage over allies and adversaries alike. Venezuelan oil under a friendly government isn’t just geopolitics.
Secretary of State Rubio said it plainly: “What we’re not going to allow is for the oil industry in Venezuela to be controlled by adversaries of the United States.”
Trump, asked about China’s reaction: “We’ll be selling oil, probably at much larger doses.”
This is resource nationalism dressed in narco-terrorism charges.
The legal justification (drug trafficking) and the strategic motivation (energy and sphere of influence) don’t have to be mutually exclusive. But nobody’s pretending anymore.
The conventional objection: quagmire, blowback. But Venezuela isn’t Iraq. No sectarian divide. No nation-building fantasy. Install an aligned government, stabilize oil production, leave.
The Dominoes
Hours after the Maduro raid, Stephen Miller‘s wife posted an image on X: a US flag superimposed over Greenland. One word caption: “SOON.”
The NSS cites Greenland’s “strategic Arctic location” and “critical minerals.” Trump has appointed a special envoy whose stated mission is annexation. When asked if military force was on the table, he declined to rule it out.
Denmark’s Prime Minister: “If the United States attacks another NATO country, everything stops.”
Greenland’s Prime Minister: “No more pressure. No more fantasies about annexation.”
But after Saturday, who believes the fantasies are fantasies?
Update: As of Tuesday, the White House confirmed military force remains “an option” for Greenland. Trump gave a timeline: “Let’s talk about Greenland in 20 days.” The fantasies have a schedule now.
Yes, Greenland is NATO and Venezuela wasn’t. The escalation ladder is different. But the rules that made “America wouldn’t do that” a reasonable assumption? Those rules died in Caracas. Rare earth minerals, Arctic shipping routes, strategic positioning against Russia and China – Greenland has what America wants. The question is no longer if there’s pressure but what kind.
The cascade continues: 32 Cuban security personnel died in the Venezuela operation. Trump pivoted to Colombia – called President Petro “a sick man who likes making cocaine.” Then Mexico: “run by drug cartels.” The Monroe Doctrine is a modus operandi. Venezuela was the proof of concept.
The Great Powers Blinked
Chinese state media landed on an interesting frame: the US has “hollowed out decades of rhetoric positioning America as the guardian of international rules.”
They’re not wrong. And they’re taking notes.
Moscow’s response was even more telling: muted. Foreign Ministry condemnation, UN Security Council calls, “solidarity with the Venezuelan people.” But Putin himself? Nothing. Russia is stretched – Ukraine consumes everything, antagonizing Trump risks the peace deal he wants. He’s choosing leverage over loyalty.
The message to every country with Chinese or Russian backing: great power protection has limits. It means something until it doesn’t.
The Gap
You read this strategy document. It said what it was going to do. And you still wouldn’t have believed them.
Decades of diplomatic hedging had trained us to discount clear statements of intent. Call it the bluff discount – the assumption that powerful people are always posturing, never planning. The discount just went to zero.
China got caught the same way – they sent their envoy to smile for photos on Friday. Russia is staying quiet to preserve leverage. European leaders are issuing statements about “international law” while the country that actually defends them threatens to annex an ally’s territory.
Everyone’s operating on outdated assumptions. The post-WWII consensus (American hegemony filtered through multilateral institutions, sovereignty respected (mostly), force used only with coalition legitimacy) that consensus is on life support. The EU is the only one still pretending the patient will recover.
A Note on Perspective
I’m a European, watching from the sidelines.
The White House NSS has a section on Europe. It’s brutal.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather live under American hegemony than Chinese. The Americans at least pretend to care about individual liberty, even while grabbing people from their beds in Caracas.
But “at least we’re not the worst option” is a rough pitch for the next century of world order.
What does any of this mean for Europe? For the continent that shaped the West and established the institutions that America is now abandoning?
That’s Part 2. And yeah, it’s personal. ⬇️
Loved it! Looking forward to part 2.
excellent breakdown. whether Europe likes it or not, we’re on our own now. no amount of whining and writing letters is going to change that.