Today, Trump's target was Caracas. What tomorrow? [View all]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/03/today-trumps-target-was-caracas-what-tomorrow


Today, Trump’s target was Caracas. What tomorrow?
Stephen Wertheim
He took office promising to annex Greenland and take back the Panama Canal. Now that he has ousted Maduro, other countries could be next
Sun 4 Jan 2026 01.27 EST

snip//

Whatever happens next in Venezuela, the consequences will not be confined there. Trump plainly intended his attack to assert US ownership of the entire region. “American dominance in the western hemisphere will never be questioned again,” he intoned. In the national security strategy released last month, the administration declared a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, claiming a mandate to use any means necessary to excise almost any kind of external influence from the Americas. The administration has barely begun to apply its ballyhooed corollary. Trump prefers to cast entities closer to home – migrants, gangs and cartels – as existential threats to the United States, invading the country from without, subverting it from within.

Trump’s attack on Venezuela confirms what his semester of speedboat strikes in the Caribbean suggested: the United States is transmuting the now-exhausted war on terror into a war on so-called narco-terror. Enmity once directed at terrorists in the Middle East is turning toward a kaleidoscope of border-crossing threats in the western hemisphere. Trump’s definition of these threats is almost infinitely porous, extending to what he has repeatedly called “the enemy from within”. Not for nothing did Trump pause from his address on Venezuela to ad lib about the troops he has sent to patrol American cities.

Today, the target was Caracas. What tomorrow? Trump has already drawn up a menu. He took office promising to annex Greenland and take back the Panama Canal. Now that he has ousted Maduro, he could apply much the same rationale to attack any number of countries. Trump claimed yesterday that “the cartels are running Mexico”, an assertion that contains all the justification Trump would need to invade it. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, meanwhile, warned the government of Cuba to be concerned.

Even if the best-case scenario transpires in Venezuela – if a stable, oil-gushing, pro-American democracy suddenly springs to life — success may embolden the administration to find out just how far it can go to remake the region to its liking.

But best cases rarely come to pass. More likely, Donald Trump’s luck with hit-and-run military strikes is about to run out. “Great nations do not fight endless wars,” he said in his first term. Then what kind of nation is Trump’s America?