The first week of 2026 began with a lesson on crude power, involving an American military operation in Venezuela and the abduction of its president, Nicolàs Maduro. Diplomacy, it seems, has evolved. It no longer requires talks, treaties, or even constitutional niceties. Invading somebody else's territory is not war. It has become a Kafkaesque version of aggressive and pre-emptive peace ̶ the kind of peace that arrives courtesy of Donald Trunp, the would-be Nobel Peace Prize winner.
It was not regime change, though the American President said the US will "run" Venezuela. It was not about deciding who should lead a new government in Venezuela, though Trump immediately made it clear that it wouldn't be Nobel laureate Maria Corina Machado as he judged that she neither has the support nor respect of the Venezuelan people. It was not about oil, though the same president said the US will be "taking care" of the country's oil infrastructure. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth added that it was about "oil prosperity" for America, echoing Trump's claim that the purpose of the operation was not just to capture President Maduro but to reclaim "the oil, land, and other assets that they previously stole from us."
Naturally, this raises the question: who's next? Strategic maps are being dusted off. Probably Greenland, though it is nervously pretending it didn't hear anything. It has minerals and strategic positioning ̶ and most dangerously of all ̶ Trump has already set his sights on it. Or could it be Canada? It too is rich in minerals, including oil, gold, uranium, nickel and rare earths. Trump already considers it the 51st state.
The implications of the US action will reverberate way beyond Venezuela's borders. Trump has taken the Monroe Doctrine ̶ a declaration made by President James Monroe in 1823 that the Western hemisphere was America's exclusive sphere of influence ̶ and replaced it by the Donroe Doctrine. Under this new version, the USA could consider countries in Latin America and in Europe not just as its backyard but practically as vassals.
In fact, in the astounding Mar-a-Lago press conference and his Fox News interview, Trump said that the President Gustavo Petro of Colombia had to "watch his ass" and that "something's going to have to be done with Mexico." Cuba is undoubtedly also on the US agenda, being of special interest to State Secretary Marco Rubio, whose parents are Cuban-American.
What makes the new doctrine so dangerous is that America's record of achieving regime change by force in the last 30 years is disastrous. In Chile, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, armed intervention by the USA on its own or with its allies, rather than ushering in a better future, led to unbroken misery for various peoples, failed states dominated by armed gangs, and the emergence of terrorist groups.
It is worth remembering that, as recently as 2 November, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair that land strikes in Venezuela would require the approval of Congress. She said that if Trump "were to authorise some activity on land, then it's war, then (we'd need) Congress." Days later, Trump administration officials privately told members of Congress much the same thing - that they lacked the legal justification to support attacks against any land targets in Venezuela. Yet, just two months later, the Trump administration did what it previously indicated it couldn't. It purposely didn't notify Congress ahead of time, which is generally the bare minimum in such circumstances, the excuse given being that Congress leaks.
In 1989, Panama's leader at the time, Manuel Noriega, was under US indictment for drug-trafficking, like Maduro in Venezuela. Like in Venezuela, the operation was less a large-scale war than a narrowly tailored effort to remove the leader from power. At the time, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in 1980 had concluded that the FBI didn't have the authority to apprehend and abduct a foreign national to face justice.
However, a memo written by William P. Barr, who would later become attorney general in that Bush administration and Trump's first administration, said a president had "inherent constitutional authority" to order the FBI to take people into custody in foreign countries, even if it violated international law to do so.
In the light of Maduro's abduction, it is legitimate to ask whether the US can now abduct Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez of Spain for being friendly to Maduro (some right-wing influencers have already suggested this) or for not contributing enough to the NATO alliance. Or could it be that exercise of the USA's Donroe Doctrine would justify the abduction of Ursula van der Leyen for introducing digital regulations that allegedly discriminate against American tech giants, or for fining such companies when they break the rules, or for allegedly shutting down freedom of expression.
These may have sounded as far-fetched scenarios until a few weeks ago, but now they seem more realistic. After all, the Trump Administration's extraordinary new National Security Strategy published last November attacks European integration and claims that the activities of the European Union "undermine political liberty and sovereignty". Europe, we were told, is on a trajectory towards nothing less than "civilisational erasure", so the USA could well argue that its dominance of the Western hemisphere entitles it to reshape Europe in Trump's ideological image while at the same time abandoning it militarily.
Alternatively, it could be that the Donroe Doctrine would entail the abandonment of Europe to a worse fate ̶ that of becoming Russia's playground. US troop withdrawals from Europe have been a particularly recurring MAGA. Steve Bannon and others have openly argued for "hemispheric defence" - defending the Americas, not Europe. On his War Room podcast, Bannon insisted that: "We're a Pacific nation ... the pivot, the strategic heartland of America, is actually the Pacific." Two years ago, Elbridge Colby, the principal adviser on defence and foreign policy at the Pentagon, had written a policy paper "Getting Strategic Deprioritization Right," in which he and his co-authors posited that China is the decisive theatre, not Europe, and US attention and assets must shift accordingly.
A friend of mine who is involved in scenario-building in France told me the other day that there are reasons to believe that the US will not abandon Europe completely. He rightly reminded me that protecting roughly $4tn in US investments on the continent remains a key interest.
However, once Washington retrenches militarily in Europe, it will push its other levers more forcefully: financial power, diplomatic pressure, export controls, trade measures, and secondary sanctions. These instruments will be deployed to steer Europe in the political direction the US wants. The risk is that Europe will become collateral damage in a prolonged US-China confrontation while the security umbrella above Europe becomes threadbare. That is a brutal, lose-lose position.
It is no wonder that large majorities in five western European countries think Donald Trump is a threat to peace and security in Europe. According to one survey, that sentiment was weakest in Italy at 58%, rising to 69% in France, 74% in Germany, 75% in Spain and 78% in the UK.
Meanwhile, in our fair land ̶ or should I say fairyland? ̶ these huge tectonic shifts seem to be a tv reality show to watch, mattering little to an island surrounded by the sea and supposedly protected by its neutrality. We have no minerals, no tech giants, no strategic value ̶ ergo, we should be fine. Who wants to occupy Malta, when there's Germany or Italy or France for the taking?
It always amazes me how a people who are completely dependent on the outside world can be so insular. Some friends of mine whom I consider very intelligent even tell me that we stand to gain from other people's troubles. They subscribe to the idea of fairy tales having a "good" ending. Of course, this is what usually happens in sanitised Disney versions where the protagonists live "happily ever after". However much I try to be positive, I remind them that there are many fairy tales that feature grim, tragic, or morally complex conclusions.
For example, in an early version of "Little Red Riding Hood" both the girl and her grandmother are eaten by the wolf and are not saved. In some versions of "Cinderella," the eyes of the stepsisters are pecked out by birds as punishment. Then, in the original Italian tale of "Sleeping Beauty" the princess is not woken by a kiss but is sexually assaulted by a king while she is unconscious and only wakes up after giving birth to twin babies.
I rather think that the latter grim endings might prevail in the emerging phase of escalation where force is replacing diplomacy. The defining feature of this new phase is that it's all about systems and risk. Fragility means small shocks can cause huge damage. We are fragile because the systems we operate in are destabilising: resources are under strain, political trust is collapsing, violence is being normalised, and reckless leadership is rewarded.
Being small in a dangerous world is not an advantage. On the contrary, it is a huge problem. Malta could collapse not because it is attacked by somebody, but by the sheer weight of the stresses and conflicts elsewhere. Our trade, investment, economic growth and standard of living, not to mention security, are entirely dependent on what happens elsewhere, and neutrality is largely irrelevant to them.
Instead of trading barbs about the long queues in Gozo over the Christmas period, or whether new gardens are in reality small patches of concrete and greenery, or which of the two political leaders is the best bodybuilder, can we spare some thought for strategic thinking? Instead of being ego-centric, could we instead consider how a tiny rock can survive in a turbulent Europe and the world?