After World War II, the US faced an arguably unprecedented situation. With the world in chaos and only the US in a position to lead it, the American political leaders deliberately (and nearly unilaterally) created a new international system. Organizations like the UN and the World Bank were meant to constitute a system that would prevent another world war. It would provide security and prosperity through a rules-based order, binding on all states, great and small. The late 19th and early 20th century balance of power alliance system had failed to prevent World War I, and the Versailles system failed to prevent World War II. This one, it was hoped, would prevent World War III. It was the beginning of what Time magazine publisher Henry Luce dubbed the "American Century."
Perhaps it is nothing more than good luck, but 80 years later, there has been no World War III. After two cataclysmic world conflicts in 25 years, 80 years without one is nothing to sneer at.
That is why it is so startling to anyone who knows anything about international relations to see Trump throw that entire system in the trash. He is deliberately ending the American century.
That effort has been ongoing ever since he first came to power in 2017 and immediately began to undermine NATO, the cornerstone of the US security system. But the action in Venezuela makes crystal clear, like nothing before, that Trump has embraced an unbridled, 19th-century imperial style of foreign policy, based on the idea of spheres of influence. It is one in which great powers are bound by nothing but the limits of their own power: “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
A cynic can say that has always been true and that Trump is only discarding the veneer of a rules-based order and revealing what has always been true. Certainly, the US has repeatedly acted unilaterally in pursuit of what it believed to be its national interests throughout the last 80 years, with Vietnam being the most obvious example.
So yes, there was always some American hypocrisy in its insistence on abiding by international rules. But “hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue." There is something to be said for upholding the value of an ideal that one does not consistently achieve. But as he always does, Trump dispenses with any tribute to virtue. He pays tribute to vice. He revels in it. While figures like Secretary of State Marco Rubio presented this action as the start of restoring democratic rule to Venezuela (and Cuba, too, he suggested), Trump made clear that it was about securing Venezuela’s oil for US oil companies. He did not support the purported winner of the 2024 election, Edmundo González, as Venezuela’s new ruler, or the opposition leader who was barred from running, María Corina Machado, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. He declared that she “doesn't have the support within or the respect within the country," taking it on himself to make that determination. Instead, he said, the US will run Venezuela. The US will decide the country’s political future.
This is pure, 19th-century imperialism. It is obvious that Trump will not allow anyone to rule Venezuela who does not bow down to his will. If the current vice-president strikes a favorable deal on oil, he may let her stay. If she doesn’t, she’ll be the next target. The price of coming to power will be acquiescence to US control of the Venezuelan oil industry to enrich the oil executives who supported Trump’s election. He is turning Venezuela into a protectorate of the US.
It is worth noting that what the US did in Venezuela is what Putin tried and failed to do in Ukraine. He hoped to capture President Zelensky within days and impose his will on the state. He failed. The difference is not in leadership or values—it is in capacity. The US military is far stronger and more capable than the Russian. It did what Russia could not.
Trump never had any objection to Putin’s attack on Ukraine. His first reaction to the news was “This is genius.” “He used the word ‘independent’ and ‘we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna help keep peace.’ You gotta say that’s pretty savvy.” His instinct was not to condemn the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country. It was to praise it. That is who he is. His policy toward the war since returning to office reaffirms that he does not disapprove of the invasion. He has repeatedly sided with Putin in his so-called “peace” proposals. With this Venezuela attack, he demonstrates that approval by mimicking Putin’s actions in Ukraine.
That is the real significance of what Trump has done. He agrees with Putin that great powers can attack small ones without consequence. He has agreed, either tacitly or explicitly, to return to a spheres of influence international system in which great powers do what they like within their spheres, with no concern for international law or organizations. The recently released National Security Strategy makes clear that the US will retreat from global leadership, focusing on the western hemisphere as it did in the 19th century. Putin can do as he likes within his sphere, China’s Xi what he likes within his, and Trump as he likes within his. The only limit on the great powers is what they can get away with.
The point of a rules-based order is that even great powers are restrained in their actions. FDR and his advisors in 1944-1945 saw the wisdom of establishing such a system, even if it sometimes limited US actions, even if it placed actual economic and military burdens on the US. Truman and his successors built on that system. Their long-term vision was that the short-run sacrifices required by world leadership and restraint would be more than worth it if the result was a relatively stable international order that prevented another cataclysmic world conflict. They saw that the “fortress America” attitude of the American past was no real protection in the modern world. Two world wars proved the point. Twice the US declared neutrality, twice it eventually ended up at war. The only way to avoid US involvement in World War III was to create a system that would prevent it from ever happening.
Trump’s revival of the “America First” mentality—which in 1940-1941 unapologetically argued that the US could do business with a Hitler-dominated Europe and the Japanese empire in Asia—is a huge gamble. Its premise is that the system created by the US after World War II either did not actually keep the peace all these decades, or, if it did, no longer can. It is a bet that a retreat to the western hemisphere can keep the US both at peace and prosperous. All the US needs to do is dominate and control the resources of the Americas (including, by the way, Greenland and Canada—what seems like Trump’s irrational obsession with annexing those territories is a natural extension of this idea of dominating and controlling western hemisphere resources in a spheres of influence world).
In this view, American support for European security since World War II was nothing but the US acting as “Uncle Sucker”—being taken advantage of by wily Europeans. (That’s exactly what the America First crowd said about aid to Britain before Pearl Harbor.) That view explains why Trump is constantly complaining about American allies “ripping off” the US. He fails to see the immense benefits this system has brought the US for 80 years. All he sees are costs—the costs of military security, the costs of free trade. That is why he imposed punishing tariffs on American allies. He thinks they are preventing the US from having the same unnatural and unsustainable dominance it enjoyed when he was a child in the 1950s. Like the short-sighted businessman he is and has always been, he is concerned not with long-term stability, but a quick score. With the capture of Maduro, he has one. If his bet is a bad one, the rest of us (like the creditors in his multiple business bankruptcies) will be stuck with an incalculable bill.
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