Trump’s new world order is being born – and Venezuela is just the start | Owen Jones

AAs Venezuela’s skyline lit up under American bombs, we observed the morbid symptoms of an empire in decline. This may seem counterintuitive. After all, the United States kidnapped a foreign leader and Donald Trump announced he would “rule” Venezuela. This surely seems less like decadence and more like intoxication: a superpower strong in its own strength.

But Trump’s great virtue, if you can call it that, is frankness. Previous American presidents have presented their personal interests in the language of “democracy” and “human rights.” Trump renounces the suit. In 2023, he boasted: “When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it back, we would have had all that oil, it would have been right next door.” And it wasn’t a spontaneous remark. The logic of an oil grab, and much more, is clearly laid out in Trump’s recently released national security strategy.

The document accepts something that Washington has long denied: the end of US global hegemony. “After the end of the Cold War, America’s foreign policy elites convinced themselves that continued American domination of the entire world was in our country’s best interests,” he says with barely concealed contempt. “The days when the United States supported the entire world order like Atlas are over. » These are the unceremonious funeral rites of America’s superpower strategy.

What replaces it is a world of rival empires, each imposing their own sphere of influence. And for the United States, this sphere is that of the Americas. “After years of neglect,” the strategy states, “the United States will reaffirm and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.” The Monroe Doctrine, formulated in the early 19th century, purported to block European colonialism. In practice, this laid the foundations for American domination in its Latin American backyard.

Violence in Latin America facilitated by Washington is not new. My parents took in refugees who had fled Chile’s right-wing dictatorship, installed after the overthrow of socialist President Salvador Allende in a CIA-backed coup. “I don’t see why we should stand by and watch a country become communist because of the irresponsibility of its people,” said Henry Kissinger, then US Secretary of State. A similar logic underlies U.S. support for murderous regimes in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia, as well as in Central America and the Caribbean.

But over the past three decades, this dominance has been challenged. The so-called “pink tide” of progressive governments, led by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, sought to assert greater regional independence. And above all, China – the main rival of the United States – has gained power across the continent. Bilateral merchandise trade between China and Latin America was 259 times larger in 2023 than it was in 1990. China is now the continent’s second-largest trading partner, behind the United States. At the end of the Cold War, it wasn’t even in the top 10. Trump’s assault on Venezuela is just the first step toward trying to reverse the situation.

The experience of Trump’s first term has led too many to conclude that the White House strongman was all bluster. He then reached a compromise with the traditional Republican elite. The unwritten deal was simple: cut taxes and deregulate, and he could talk endlessly on social media. Trump, in his second term, is a far-right regime in his own right.

When he threatens the democratically elected presidents of Colombia and Mexico, believe him. When he declares, with barely concealed relish, that “Cuba is ready to fall,” believe him. And when he says, “We absolutely need Greenland,” believe him. He fully intends to annex more than 2 million square kilometers of European territory.

If – when – Greenland is swallowed up by a Trumpian empire, what will happen then? Trump will no doubt have noticed the pitiful weakness of the European response to his blatantly illegal attack on Venezuela. But an American seizure of Danish sovereign territory would surely mean the end of NATO, based on the principle of collective defense. The theft of Denmark’s land would be just as egregious as Russia’s devouring of Ukraine. Whatever the muffled noises emanating from London, Paris or Berlin, the Western alliance would be over.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, American elites convinced themselves that they were militarily invincible and that their economic model marked the culmination of human development. This hubris led directly to catastrophe in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, as well as the financial crash of 2008. American elites promised their people utopian dreams, then dragged them from one disaster to another. Trumpism itself was born from the resulting mass disillusionment. But the “America First” response to America’s decline is to abandon its global dominance in favor of a hemispheric empire.

Where does this leave the United States itself? When the United States defeated Spain in the late 19th century and captured the Philippines, senior dignitaries founded the American Anti-Imperialist League. “We believe that the policy known as imperialism is hostile to freedom and tends toward militarism,” they declared, “an evil from which we have had the glory of being freed.”

“We affirm that no nation can long support half a republic and half an empire,” the Democratic Party asserted during the 1900 presidential election, “and we warn the American people that imperialism abroad will lead quickly and inevitably to despotism at home.” Ultimately, informal empire replaced direct colonialism, and American democracy – still deeply flawed – endured.

Who today would consider such warnings exaggerated? What happens abroad cannot be separated from what happens at home. This is the imperial “boomerang”, as Martinican author Aimé Césaire defined it three-quarters of a century ago, analyzing the return of European colonialism to the continent in the form of fascism. We have already seen the “war on terror” boomerang in this way: its language and logic repurposed for domestic repression. “The Democratic Party is not a political party,” Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, said last summer. “It’s a domestic extremist organization.” National Guard troops are being sent to Democratic-run cities like occupying forces, echoing the “surges” once unleashed in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Seen in this light, there is nothing mysterious about Trump’s indulgence toward Russian ambitions in Ukraine. In 2019, Russia reportedly offered to offer increased U.S. influence to Venezuela in exchange for U.S. withdrawal from Ukraine. Who knows if such a deal was reached. What is certainly true is that a new world order is dawning. It is a country in which increasingly authoritarian powers use brute force to subjugate their neighbors and steal their resources. What might once have seemed like dystopian fantasy is being assembled for all to see. The question is whether we have the means, the will and the capacity to fight back.

• Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist. His next book, The Fall of the West, will be published by Penguin Random House in fall 2026.