America’s Hubris Trap

From Caracas to the Arctic, Trump’s bulldozer foreign policy

Air Cmde TK Chatterjee(retd)

If I were to summarise the international events of the last month, I would go thus. As the United States (US) special forces spirit Nicolás Maduro into custody and Venezuela stumbles into a perilous ‘transition’ shaped more in Washington than in Caracas, the Trump administration is simultaneously rattling the foundations of Arctic security with open threats to annex Greenland, prompting Danish leaders to warn of nothing less than the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO’s) unravelling.

Together, these crises expose a new era in which territorial ambition, resource competition, and alliance fatigue collide, forcing NATO to confront a question it was never designed to answer: not how it will deter its adversaries, but whether it can survive the behaviour of its most powerful member.

To explain this clearly, I will address each event separately.

Venezuela

The US has maintained a long tradition of interventionism across Latin America and the Caribbean. Venezuela was only part of a wider pattern till January 2026, not singularly in the US crosshairs. For much of the 20th century, US-Venezuela ties were pragmatic and often cooperative, especially around oil, and only turned openly antagonistic with the ‘Bolivarian’ turn under Hugo Chávez and the subsequent authoritarian drift under Nicolas Maduro. So, effectively, since the rise of Hugo Chavez, successive US administrations have treated Venezuela as a hostile regime, subject to sustained economic warfare with multiple sanctions. The decade-wise breakdown in relations is as follows.

Late 1990s–2000s: Hugo Chávez’s election and the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ shifted Venezuela from a relatively reliable oil partner into an openly anti‑US, anti‑neoliberal pole in Latin America. Early clashes over oil policy, US criticism of Chávez’s internal politics, and the shadow of the 2002 coup attempt laid the emotional and political groundwork in Washington for viewing Caracas as a hostile regime.

2000s–early 2010s: As Chávez deepened alliances with Cuba, Iran, Russia, and later China, and used oil diplomacy to support left‑wing governments, the US foreign‑policy establishment increasingly bracketed Venezuela with other ‘problem states’, even while outright military options remained off the table.

Mid‑2010s: Under Maduro, economic collapse, repression, and contested elections allowed Washington to recast the relationship from ‘strategic nuisance’ to ‘authoritarian crisis’, justifying escalating sanctions. Each new round of financial and oil sanctions normalised the idea that coercive tools were the primary means of dealing with Caracas.

2019–early 2020s: Recognition of an alternative president, overt support for opposition figures, and talk of ‘all options on the table’ embedded regime‑change logic in policy. Even when direct intervention did not materialise, the Overton window had shifted: the notion that Venezuela’s leadership was illegitimate and removable by external pressure became mainstream in Washington.

The question arises, if the hostility was long-standing, what triggered this sudden escalation, wherein an armada of warships and a host of fighter jets was deployed all around the small nation? The pretext was drug smuggling, which was termed as narco terrorism and viewed as an act of war against the US. But facts prove otherwise. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) assessments summarised in multiple fact‑checks agree that the vast majority of cocaine consumed in the US originates in Colombia and transits primarily through Central America and Mexico, with Venezuela playing a secondary or minor role in US‑bound flows and a more important role as a platform for Europe‑bound shipments. Fentanyl consumed in the US is overwhelmingly produced in or by Mexican cartels, using precursor chemicals from China and, to a lesser extent, India; Venezuela is not identified as a producer or significant transit point in DEA or UNODC reporting.

Just a change in terminology, from drug smugglers to narco-terrorists, turned the occupants of the boats from ‘smugglers’ to ‘combatants’, which in turn authorised the US to take lethal action against the terrorist