Americas first
Boots on the ground?
Hello from Melbourne,
In this first Irregular column of the year, I want to do a few things that are perhaps even more irregular than usual, which feels appropriate, given the dramatic events of the first week of January and the broader moment we appear to be living through.
First, I want to offer a short assessment of the United States’ actions against Venezuela. Not a blow-by-blow of the operation itself or any definitive predictions dressed up as certainty, but an outline of the uncertainties that matter most – and some questions that business leaders, investors and citizens alike should be asking themselves right now.
Second, I want to invite you to a special Substack Live event that our Chief Strategist, Michael Feller, and I will be hosting next week, where we will discuss the implications of the United States’ approach to the “Western Hemisphere” and answer any questions you may have.
We have been running sessions like this with private clients over the past few days, but the significance of what has happened warrants making a public session available to all readers. Save Tuesday 13 January at 8am ET / 2pm CET / midnight AEST. You will receive an invitation via email as soon as the event goes live.
Hit the road
Third, I want to announce something we have been quietly planning for some time – a series of political study tours run (if we can still use that word) by former diplomats in nations where they have served.
Our first tour will be to Venezuela, Colombia and Cuba - countries chosen, evidently, for their rising geopolitical significance.
Anyone who joins us will not be on the tourist trail but signing up for around a week of structured exposure, analysis and immersion. You will meet local politicians, officials, businesspeople, cultural figures, journalists, and civil society leaders. You will learn about each nation’s distinct history, culture and political worldview. And you will come back, we hope, with a much deeper and more textured understanding of the geopolitical, business and investment environment – all borne of what we would endeavour to make an unforgettable experience.
If you would like more information about Geopolitical Strategy’s upcoming study tours to Venezuela, Colombia and Cuba, register your interest using the button below, and we will send you more information. Also consider joining the Substack Live event on Tuesday 13 January, where we will discuss this and the United States’ approach to the Americas in more detail.
Quick take
Back to that other visit to Venezuela.
The particulars are well-known. The United States arrested, grabbed or abducted – depending on whose recounting you prefer – a sitting head of state and transferred him to New York to face trial on long-standing narcotics charges. This occurred following decades of animosity and geopolitical misalignment between the Chavista regime and successive American administrations, years of mounting American frustrations over migration, and months of increasingly serious gunboat diplomacy, military planning, and provocative presidential dance moves.
Above all, however, the “special military operation” – to borrow a Russian phrase – creates three important questions business leaders and anyone interested in the fate of nations should seriously consider – and that we will address in the upcoming Substack Live discussion.
The most immediate question is what, exactly, is the United States trying to achieve in Venezuela, and how far is it prepared to go to achieve those objectives?
More specifically, is this an attempt at regime change or an exercise in coercion? Is Washington seeking to reorder Venezuela’s political system or simply to force outcomes on a narrower set of issues, including narcotics trafficking, migration flows and the terms on which Venezuela’s resources are brought back into global markets? And if it’s principally about resources, is it exclusively about oil or also critical minerals?
The distinction matters because the tools required are different.
Forcing concessions on drugs and migration can, in principle, be achieved through pressure and bargaining with the existing power structures. Remaking a state cannot. The former favours negotiation and selective coercion, very much in line with Trump’s art of dealing; the latter almost inevitably pulls in questions of security guarantees, force posture, and, eventually, boots on the ground — a position inconsistent with Trump’s personal predilections and MAGA’s philosophical, psychological and political base.
And so amidst the various motivations suggested by commentators – from distracting the populace from the Epstein affair to removing an insolent, taunting ideological enemy to flexing muscle in the region – my own view is that it’s best to take Trump at his word. And that would suggest, whatever the views of his entourage - and whatever the realities of energy economics as my colleague Michael Feller wrote on Monday - Trump is largely motivated by securing resources for the United States, denying them to its adversaries, and making money in the process. No real estate developer worth his salt can resist an underpriced asset and the opportunity to take a clip.
(But we’ll discuss the various theories in more detail during the Substack Live.)
“Talk loudly and carry a big stick”
The second key question is what does this episode reveal about how the United States now sees the “Western Hemisphere” and how it could act towards the other nations of the Americas?
Most important in thinking about this question is acknowledging that the events in Venezuela should not be read in isolation.
The kidnapping sits against a much broader backdrop. The administration’s National Security Strategy, published in November, makes the Americas the clear foreign policy priority. Over the last year, Trump has mused openly about “annexing” Greenland and Canada. The president has made explicit threats towards Colombia’s president. The Defence Department has been renamed the Department of War. And, more broadly, the Trump administration has consistently framed foreign policy in openly transactional, resource-focused terms and rarely shied away from pursuing its goals.
Taken together, these are not random impulses.
They point to a view of the Americas as a strategic backyard in which the United States feels entitled to act unilaterally, coercively, and at speed — particularly where resources, migration or perceived strategic encroachment are concerned.
Trump’s National Security Strategy explicitly invokes the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, which asserted the Western Hemisphere was closed to further colonisation and interference by European powers. While not mentioned, it is closer to the so-called Roosevelt Corollary of 1904, which went further in claiming the US a right to intervene in Latin American affairs to stabilise them.
Trump’s version, as stated in the National Security Strategy, goes further still:
We want to ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains reasonably stable and well-governed enough to prevent and discourage mass migration to the United States; we want a Hemisphere whose governments cooperate with us against narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organisations; we want a Hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets, and that supports critical supply chains; and we want to ensure our continued access to key strategic locations.
This is the first of five “core, vital” national interests. And so it is well worth reading closely.
Clearly, the Trump administration’s worldview is focused much more on longitude than latitude. But it acts on longitude with a lot of latitude – paying very little, if any, regard to the views of other nations about how it should act on the continent.
This matters enormously. Now that the United States has articulated prioritising its interests in the Americas and proven – not just in Venezuela but over the course of 2025 on so many issues – that it is ready, willing and able to use the full force of its power to promote its interests, the world should take much more seriously Trump’s stated desires for the continent.
Very uncomfortably, that means dusting off statements about Canada, Greenland, Mexico, and Colombia. It means reading them not just seriously, but literally. And, for Western observers in particular, it means asking ourselves how we would interpret such comments if they had come from leaders like Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping.
Gangsters’ paradise
The third question is how might the events in Venezuela and the broader shift in American foreign policy shape great-power relations — not just with Russia and China, but with America’s own allies?
Much of the immediate commentary has focused on questions of precedent (what this might “license” Russia to do in Europe or China to do in its own neighbourhood?), “spheres of influence” (might China, Russia and the United States expressly or tacitly agree to limit themselves to regional hegemony?), and the fate of international law (where does it live on the spectrum between dead and alive?).
These are all interesting, but slightly overblown questions. In practice, how the United States acts in Latin America is unlikely to radically change Moscow’s or Beijing’s core calculus. They already assume a world in which power, not principle, decides outcomes, and each circumstance — including, say, whether to invade Taiwan — depends on its particular facts, balance of interests, and signalling by other parties. Spheres of influence tend not to arise overnight; and there are few identifiable incentives pushing in favour of some sort of “grand bargain” between the United States, Russia and China. And, as for international law, great powers have forever ignored rules that do not align with their interests.
What may change, however, is how seriously – and how literally – all the great powers take American threats from now on. This applies as much to Europe as it does to China and Russia. And with far greater consequence.
For Europe and other Western allies, Venezuela reinforces extremely difficult questions that have been building for some time:
How viable is the alliance model in a world where the United States is willing to act unilaterally, without consultation, and potentially even against allied interests — including, conceivably, in places like Greenland and Canada? At what point do values trump more narrowly defined interests? And do European nations have to seriously consider whether the United States might ‘flip’ and conceive its own interests as more aligned with Russia than Europe?
History is replete with instances of great powers suddenly ‘changing sides’ – and leaders being blindsided, despite myriad warning signs much more easily visible in retrospect.
Might a National Security Strategy with three pages bemoaning Europe’s trajectory and no mention of Russia (apart from in the context of Europe’s poor relationship with it) be such a signal? How might an inaugural address expressing a desire to “annex” Canada look to future historians? How seriously should outlandish threats previously written off be taken after a year of Trump, by and large, following through on his threats? And should America First be interpreted narrowly as the United States relinquishing its ‘global policeman’ role or might it be better viewed as having taken up a ‘global mob boss’ one?
We will address these, and other, questions during the Substack Live next Tuesday and, of course, later in the year with “boots on the ground” for those interested in joining us for an immersive geopolitical learning experience.
Best wishes,
Damien
A reminder: If you would like more information about Geopolitical Strategy’s upcoming study tours to Venezuela, Colombia and Cuba, register your interest using the button below, and we will send you more information.
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