Donald Trump’s imperial plans are heading the U.S. for an unprecedented disaster by disturbing an established international order through mindless acts which are undermining the sovereignty of several independent nations.
This seems to be a long-term habit of Trump’s. Laying claims on people, achievements, and resources, that do not belong to him rightfully. It’s just that the victims have changed and the stakes are much higher now, threatening world peace itself.
What started out as a tendency in Trump’s youth many years ago with groping women without their consent and boasting about it has grown into a monster that threatens the new world order.
From a delusional estimation of deserving the Nobel Peace Prize (for supposedly putting an end to 8 wars – at least one of which one of the nations involved (India) denies he had any role to play in), to a dangerously out of proportion bombing of another militarily weaker nation to plunder its natural resources (Venezuela), to threatening to “take over” - by the use of illegitimate force - a completely peaceful, happy nation (Greenland), what we are witnessing with Donald Trump is the dangerous evolution of unchecked narcissism into imperial delusion, where personal ego and raw military power combine to pose a genuine threat to global peace and international law.
For one (Venezuela), he claims to be restoring democracy, law and order there, but what are his excuses for Greenland? None. And he is not even pretending to have any!
Someone needs to say it, and we will
At this point and rate, Trump is coming off more as the quintessential spoilt bully at school - who demands to walk over others as a matter of right, wails when he is denied the right to do the same, and ultimately unilaterally wields force on those weaker (or seemingly weaker) than him when nothing works, than as a King.
In any case, there are crucial considerations that Trump, MAGA and the blindfolded Republicans supporting him are forgetting to take into account.
In the new international order, there is no space for Kings, and sooner or later the world will put him back to where he belongs.
Here are two realities that the Donald Trump administration is actively concealing from common Americans while it's busy chest-thumping about its imperial invasion of Venezuela. And they are both heading the U.S. in for a disaster beyond its means to control.
The U.S. under President Donald Trump captured Russian-flagged oil tanker Marinera in international waters, days after it invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its head of state Nicolas Maduro.
Trump's administration has been vehemently denying that it is "winging it" and has in fact been chest-thumping about the "bravado" of the operations, promising returns from a supposed 50 million barrels of Venezuelan oil which they claim to now control.
This came at the heels of the US intercepting a China-bound oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast.
What is the real cost of Trump’s latest new adventures to Americans?
1. Trump’s ambitious plan about Venezuelan oil has been benefitting Russia directly, even as big oil companies like ExxonMobil shattered Trump’s fancies about exploiting Venezuelan oil saying the country was “univestable”.
New data about the shadow fleet of vessels operating from Venezuela has shown that an increasing number of tankers are now seeking the protection of Moscow by changing their flag of registration to Russia.
“We have seen an accelerated shift of vessels changing to the Russian flag over the past month,” said Richard Meade, editor-in-chief of Lloyd’s List to CNBC. “Seventeen shadow fleet tankers changed fraudulent flags to join the Russian flag in the past few weeks alone”, according to Meade, and 40 were reflagged to Russia last year.
These ships expected protection from Russia in a bid to escape U.S.-imposed sanctions, only adding on to Russia’s “shadow fleet”.
2. Trump’s imperial ambitions to kick China, Russia, Cuba and Iran out of Venezuela are not going to be taken lightly because imperialism has no place in the new world order. Trump seems to be forgetting that those times are long gone.
Earlier, both China, Russia issued warnings to the U.S. on the seizure of oil ships from Venezuela with China’s foreign ministry saying in December that the seizure of another country’s ships was a serious violation of international law, after the US intercepted a China-bound oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast on Saturday.
In the latest, the capture of the Russian-flagged Marinera, a senior Russian official accused the U.S. of “piracy” and suggested a military retaliation, going as far as threatening a nuclear strike against the U.S. for its unilateral actions. The official noted that the US seemed to be in a state of “euphoria of impunity” following Venezuelan leader' Maduro’s arrest, Russian media reported on January 7.
“We need to provide a military response: attack with torpedoes or sink a couple of American boats,” said Aleksey Zhuravlyov, the first deputy head of the Russian State Duma’s defense committee.
Yet, Trump’s adventures don’t seem to be stopping anytime soon.
The U.S. Coast Guard went on to seize ‘Veronica’, the sixth ship intercepted since December which had officially registered as a Russian-flagged vessel in early January and been renamed the Galileo.
With this Donald Trump has opened up a new front for tensions with a foreign nation – something that the U.S. just doesn’t need at a time when healthcare and housing costs are through the roof back home.
Trump’s actions have not only tensed up the U.S.’ relations with Moscow but are also likely to affect the fate of his bid to end the 4-year long Russia-Ukraine war.
Responding to the seizures, the Russian Foreign Ministry has reportedly warned the U.S. in unambiguous terms that its reckless actions “can only lead to a further escalation of military and political tensions in the Euro-Atlantic region, as well as a visible lowering of the ‘threshold for the use of force’ against peaceful shipping”.
A reckoning the world will not avoid
Unless Trump is stopped, and soon, the United States risks being dragged into a spiral of confrontation driven not by national interest or collective security, but by the fragile ego of a single man who confuses dominance with destiny.
History shows that empires do not fall only because of external enemies; they collapse when hubris replaces wisdom, when force replaces law, and when personal vanity replaces institutional restraint.
Trump’s actions in Venezuela and against Russian- and China-linked shipping are not isolated incidents but reflective of a pattern of reckless unilateralism that erodes international norms and invites dangerous retaliation.
This is because the world today is no longer a playground for imperial experiments, but a tightly interlinked system where miscalculation can trigger cascading economic, humanitarian and military crises.
There are enough proofs of this already, be it Israel’s attack on Gaza, or Russia’s on Ukraine.
The Trump administration is continually lowering the threshold for the use of force, and normalizing behavior that once would have been considered acts of war. This endangers not only distant nations but ordinary Americans, whose prosperity and security depend on global stability.
The international order will not bend forever to one man’s delusions of grandeur. And when it finally pushes back, the cost will be borne not by the architects of aggression, but by the people they claim to represent.