Trump claims US control after raid on Venezuela and signals wider territorial aims

The attack on Venezuela and the seizure of its president opened 2026 with the US president saying his government was “in charge” of Venezuela and that US companies were poised to extract the country’s oil wealth, the Guardian reports. Donald Trump, speaking to reporters on Air Force One the day after the operation, said the action had involved no US fatalities but several Venezuelan and Cuban ones, and warned that “Cuba is ready to fall” and that Colombia’s leader would not “be doing it for very long”.

He also said he would delay by “20 days to two months” any talks about taking Greenland, but insisted he was determined to seize it for US “national security”. The administration has framed the moves in explicitly expansionist language. The state department posted “This is OUR hemisphere” on X, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told CNN that “we live in a world…governed by strength, by force, by power.” Miller has argued in social media posts that the West should stop apologising for its imperial past.

The White House national security strategy published in November established a “Trump corollary” to the Monroe doctrine to “restore American pre-eminence in the western hemisphere”, and the president has referred to the idea as the “Donroe doctrine”.

Key Topics

World, Donald Trump, Venezuela, Greenland, Cuba, Monroe Doctrine