Opinion: Trump's green light to the strong

By Mark Kenny

A version of this article was originally published by The Canberra Times.

With the ink barely dry on Donald Trump's new Western Hemisphere accented National Security Strategy, its lawless potentialities are apparent.

We got just three days in before discovering that 2026 heralds a return to something closer to the 19th century chauvinism of 1826.

That was a time when plundering empires did as they pleased and weaker nations suffered as they must.

America, via its Monroe Doctrine (1823), took a stand, declaring future European acquisitions would be repelled in its hemisphere.

Now, under what Donald Trump delights in branding the 'Donroe' doctrine, he's decided to have a bit of both - his own hemisphere and a spot of their imperialism.

The world's other strongmen are in fierce agreement.

The 47th president's daring abduction-arrest operation in Caracas owed its legitimacy not to any credible national security threat to America.

Rather, it was an exclusively White House-based move openly serving its plutocratic objective of gaining American corporate access to Venezuela's unrivalled reserves of heavy crude and other mineral riches.

Trump lamely insisted that a national security threat existed because drugs were flooding into America. This was thin given that fentanyl does not come from Venezuela, and cocaine comes overwhelmingly from Colombia.

It looks even odder though against the fact Trump had just freed a convicted narco-criminal two months prior.

Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez was found guilty in 2024 of orchestrating the shipment of more than 200 tons of cocaine(!) into the United States. For this major crime, a US court had handed down a lengthy 45 year prison sentence.

Yet in November, Trump pardoned Hernandez explaining that the Honduran had been "treated very harshly and unfairly".

Startling contradictions such as these are now so common in Trump's behaviour that they have been largely 'priced in'.

Still, they keep coming. Asked by the New York Times after the Venezuela mission about any fetters on his authority, Trump said "Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It's the only thing that can stop me."

Shocked? In the same interview, he also admitted that the relevance of international law was solely a matter for his judgement, venturing "it depends what your definition of international law is". How convenient.

Even the moderate State Department, traditionally Washington's out-stretched hand to the world, has gleefully confirmed the direction of travel - perhaps better called the 'direction of unravel'.

Once a sophisticated diplomatic agency, 'State' used ex-Twitter in recent days to warn nations not to "play games" with this president, declaring, in his beloved full caps, "THIS IS OUR HEMISPHERE".

Another post displayed a montage of friendly post-raid frontpages from around the world accompanied by the words: "Just one week into 2026 and the world has already taken notice that American grit, resilience, and strength is truly back."

American grit? American 'grift' more like, given the plunder now underway.

Who wins? As things stand there are no guarantees that impoverished Venezuelans will see much of it.

America has now seized shipments of 30 to 50 million barrels with an estimated value of US$2.8 Billion.

"We need to have that leverage and control of those oil sales to drive the changes that simply must happen in Venezuela," explained Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Another official talked of not stealing the oil but "controlling the revenue".

The age of impunity has well-and-truly arrived.

The result of all this could be what Richard Haass has described as a slide from "a world order to three regional disorders" - a Western hemisphere where America no longer pays fealty to the interfering multilateral bodies like the UN; an Asian hemisphere, where China's supremacy is already manifest; and another in Europe, of which Russia would be the biggest power.

President-Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Haass served as a senior official in the Republican administrations of George H W Bush and George W Bush.

This cleavage is already happening. Trump's objective of getting Greenland directly imperils NATO with its linchpin Article 5 obligation on states to defend any member whose territory is attacked.

What was never envisaged was an act of aggression by one member state on another. European leaders are trying to play down this existential prospect but reports suggest that privately, they're in a state of mild panic.

The ultra-right-wing Stephen Miller, Trump's deputy chief of staff is the brains behind much of this, which is why his chat with CNN's Jake Tapper following the Caracas mission is worth noting.

"We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else," he skited on the White House lawns, before describing a world "that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power."

"We're a superpower, and under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower."

Miller's bluntness notwithstanding, apologists for the Trump Administration in this country insist that America remains the same globally reliable, regionally engaged ally as it has been since the Second World War.

Trump, let us remind ourselves, is still in the first year of this term. How many more rules does he have to break to puncture Australia's nave optimism?

Mark Kenny is the Director of the ANU Australian Studies Institute and host of the Democracy Sausage podcast.