The American Left is all in a tizzy about Trump's capture of Venezuelan President Maduro and a vow to 'run the country' and yet Venezuelans have poured into the streets of Caracas shouting their approval. The twenty year rule of brutal, oppressive dictatorship is over thanks to American military intervention.
It was a win-win situation. The country is rid of a tyrant who has run the country into the ground, and the United States has easy access to vast oil reserves. Yes, memories of George W Bush's failed mission in Iraq where he too toppled a dictator, withdrew immediately because of a naive assumption that the removal of Saddam Hussein would automatically usher in an era of democracy, peace, and security, are still vivid, but the comparison is tendentious.
Armed, Islamic terrorist militias with nothing but hatred for the United States, committed to the creation of an Islamic caliphate and the expulsion of a sworn enemy and not the liberator the Americans assumed, were left in power after America's precipitous withdrawal are not Venezuelan patriots.
In Venezuela, there are no such avowed terrorist groups, and in contrast to the Iraqis, the Venezuelan people are delighted to enter into a phase of international renewal and respect, economic prosperity, and social polity. Of course there will be opponents - there are hard-bitten anti-American sentiments in every country - but few expect a mass uprising, terrorism, or civil unrest.
In a world dominated by energy, the geopolitical calculus has changed. The vast demands for electricity generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the need for fuel to power traditional industry and economic expansion, will define friends and enemies. Venezuela was low-hanging fruit in this equation, there for the taking; but other more difficult challenges face Trump and the United States.
The competition for rare earth materials - those essential for the operation of computers and cell phones - is fierce, and China and America are using every means to secure them. Peace in Ukraine - tantamount to throwing Ukraine under the bus to secure America's control of its important rare earth reserves - is part of the new Machiavellian foreign policy ruling the world. The United States, long a believer in moral exceptionalism and the use of American influence to do good in the world, has finally joined the real world of amoral geopolitics.
Iran has been an implacable enemy of both Israel and the United States since its Islamic revolution in 1979, and Trump's destruction of its nuclear capability was a necessary and expected move to neutralize the regime. Without an Iranian nuclear threat, the United States and Israel could destroy Hamas and Hezbollah, render the region safe for Israeli consolidation of power, self-defense, and expansion of its political and geographic territories.
The bombing of the nuclear facilities also sent a strong message throughout the Middle East. This President was no patsy; and so when Trump says that if the Iranian mullahs harm one hair on the head of democracy protestors, they will pay a mortal price, they believe him - and so do the demonstrators who know that he has their back.
The overthrow of the Islamic regime with American support is also a win-win proposition. The major sponsor of Islamic terrorism in the region will be removed, and Iranian oil will flow again to the US. Pure geopolitical, Machiavellian national self-interest.
Trump is also saber-rattling about Colombia and its narco-trafficking, socialist government; but it is unlikely that he will used military force to overthrow it. Without Colombian drug processing and trafficking and the gangs that are involved, the region will be safer and the flow of cocaine to the US will be diminished, but drugs are not oil, gas, and rare earths.
Those who are convinced that Putin has his eyes on the Baltic states and beyond - pure hegemonic interest - have overlooked the same geopolitical calculus operative in the case of Donald Trump. Yes, Russia could roll into Estonia, but why and for what ends? The expansion of empire these days is a function of very practical issues, and gone are the days of Imperial Russia whose tsars simply wanted to rule vast territories. Genghis Khan was not interested in resources when he conquered most of the known world. The Ottomans and the Persians before them conquered because they could, and reaped the harvest of their conquests afterwards.
Of course each of these imperial regimes wanted the resources, labor, and capital which would come with victory, but the overall vision was conquest pure and simple.
Russia and China today have imperial interests in mind, but within this new paradigm. A what's-in-it-for-me calculus. China has nearly one-and-a-half billion people, many of whom have just risen out of poverty; and Xi will not stop his aggressive economic and geopolitical moves until his country is universally strong. To assure that he needs the world's resources and intends to get them by hook or by crook.
Previous American administrations, particular that of Joe Biden, were hopelessly bound by internationalism and the homespun ideas of diversity and inclusivity. America had to be seen as the Eden of the world, a utopian place where the most disadvantaged had a place. The brown and black people of the world deserved no less, and the Biden foreign policy overlooked the aggressive, unmistakable designs of Putin, Xi, and others in the pursuit of peace and harmony - Neville Chamberlain redux.
No longer, for Donald Trump is playing big-boy geopolitics, an 'I want that' and 'I will take that' nationalism that matches that of America's adversaries. Such self-interest requires conflict, and as world history has shown peace is not a function of negotiation and harmonious settlement but military standoff. The world was peaceful during the Cold War because the Soviet Union and the United States were at a nuclear stalemate - thousands of nuclear missiles on each side pointed at each other.
Territorial, resource-based wars are the rule, not the exception. Everywhere from the failed states of Yemen, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and the Congo to the superpowers, nations are constantly fighting for fertile ground; and this has been history's lesson since time immemorial.
So why is the Left in such agony? Why do they assume that their utopian, idealistic views and political policies of compromise and appeasement will ever save the day? How myopic, blind, and senseless can they be?
'No Kings' was the perfect example of progressive fantasy - a febrile illusion of a harmonious polity that has never existed. Donald Trump has no intentions of being a monarch, but a ruler of a powerful, unintimidated, unbowed, nation in aggressive pursuit of the means to protect, defend, and promote its interests.
Both at home and abroad, Trump has shown this sense of Machiavellian purpose. There is no pussyfooting, on-the-one-hand-on-the-other indecision. This is the way successful empires, nations, and states have always maintained power and influence.
'Democracy Matters' say the lawn signs in liberal neighborhoods, but who is to define the parameters of any political system? Churchill claimed that democracy was the worst form of government except all the others, but he had no inkling of the combinations and permutations it would take. China is doing quite well, thank you, with a unique capitalist-socialist, democratic-authoritarian model.
Trump is acting more like Putin and Xi than expected of an American president, but so what? He is redefining American foreign policy to reflect the realities of a competitive world, and what is not democratic about that?
Three more years of this aggressive, confrontational, self-interested foreign policy - all needed to counter the threats of Russia but especially China and to keep an eye out for Iran, and the still murderous Islamic clans in Africa and the Middle East.
Fortunately the world's governance is turning conservative, and young leaders in Europe, South America, and Asia are changing the way nations are led. Giorgia Meloni, President of Italy perhaps best embodies this new conservative ethos.
Trump has more allies than the Left thinks, and progressives' old-fashioned, discredited, naively hopeful ethos is quickly becoming history.
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