Just six days ago, President Donald Trump, standing alongside first lady Melania Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, revealed his New Year’s resolution.
“Peace on Earth,” he said to reporters, before joining the New’s Year’s Eve celebrations at the property where just 48-hours later the Commander-in-Chief watched his special forces snatch Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores from their bed in a fortified compound in Caracas, as missiles and bombs struck military targets in other parts of the country.
It wasn’t casualty-free as President Trump claimed, at least not on the Venezuelan side. Civilians, not just military, were among the dead from the air strikes, including. Rosa González, 80, killed when an apartment complex, near Caracas airport, was hit.
So much for “peace on Earth” in 2026.
Not that we were expecting it.
And not that we were expecting Donald Trump’s second term to suddenly mellow and ease off on the fire-hose of chaos and craziness that dominated 2025.
Australians have got used to waking up and wondering what madness occurred while they slept.
But this abduction of a foreign head-of-state and his declaration that America was now “running Venezuela” raised the incredulity bar.
As for President Trump, he appeared to have loved the show of violence and hinted at more to come.
“This incredible thing last night … We have to do it again. We can do it again, too. Nobody can stop us,” he told Fox News.
““I watched it literally like I was watching a television show … It was an amazing thing,” he added.
How do you start to unpack such a destabilising event with so many potential consequences for the region and the entire world?
The president’s comments about “needing Greenland”, wanting Canada as the 51st State, going after Cuba, and potential military action against Colombia and Panama are no longer being dismissed as harmless bluster. Think spine chills.
Denmark and Greenland were aghast at a social media post by Katie Miller, a prominent America First media personality and the wife of Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s close confidant and deputy chief of staff. She tweeted a map of Greenland covered by the US flag with the caption: “Soon.”
Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen called Ms Miller’s post “disrespectful”.
Clearly, Operation Absolute Resolve, was not one of President Trump’s impulsive acts and had been in the planning for months.
In the short-term, how it plays out from here depends on how Venezuela’s military and it’s political leadership reacts to President’s Trump’s re-embrace of gunboat diplomacy. Do they cower in the shadow of an armada of military hardware sitting off the coast, or do they resist? Early indications point to the former.
Any notion that this was all about democracy and liberating the good people of Venezuela from the clutches of an oppressive dictator in Maduro, as claimed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, appears tenuous considering Maduro’s regime isn’t being dismantled. His Vice President Delcy Rodríguez has been given the green light by President Trump to run the country. Albeit, with the sinister warning that a fate worse than Maduro’s awaits her if she “doesn’t do what’s right.”
Presently Maduro’s corrupt machinery of government remains intact. This includes the intelligence service, his key henchmen and the Colombian guerrilla group ELN, which has bases in Venezuela.
President Trump was dismissive of the opposition’s Maria Corina Machado, claiming the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner “doesn’t have the support or the respect” to run Venezuela. Yet 12 months ago Mr. Rubio spoke with both Ms Machado and the candidate she supported in her country’s 2024 election, Edmundo González, whom the Secretary of State called the “rightful president.”
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s rationale that drugs and particularly fentanyl motivated the raids appear even more spurious. Fentanyl used illegally in the United States does not come from Venezuela and the bulk of the cocaine that passes through Venezuela is trafficked to Europe.
And of course President Trump has adopted a different stance with other autocratic leaders in Latin America.
Former Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernández, was let out of prison recently after getting a pardon from the White House. He’d been given a 45 year jail term for creating “a cocaine superhighway to the United States”.
President Trump hasn’t shied away from the real prize from the military operation – the world’s largest proven oil reserves. He mentioned oil no fewer than 20 times in one media appearance.
During his first presidential campaign, Mr Trump criticised former Republican President George W. Bush for failing to “take the oil” during his war in Iraq.
Where does this dangerous gambit leave the international rule of law? Down the toilet?
And what if it emboldens Russia’s Vladimir Putin to invade more of Europe beyond Ukraine or President Xi Jinping of China to move on Taiwan. Surely, these are parts of their “spheres of influence” in the same way the Trump Administration’s talks about dominating and controlling the Western Hemisphere.
Is there a future where the most of the world is carved up by the three superpowers? Like I said, there is a lot to unpack.
https://thewest.com.au/opinion/john-flint-trumps-military-ambitions-no-longer-harmless-after-abduction-of-venezuelan-president-bombing-c-21211595
