Donald Trump had just fired the opening shot of a new campaign against “terrorist” cartels in Latin America. The strike, he declared, was “only the beginning”.
By this week he had ordered his tenth strike on boats carrying drugs north, each one accompanied by a grainy video circulated far and wide.
This is Mr Trump’s war on narco-terrorism, packaged neatly for the nightly news bulletins and social media generation.
Yet behind the unclassified footage lies an intricate policy that fuses an 18th-century war-time law, spy craft, and trade deals that is fast re-establishing America’s sphere of influence.
The overall plan has been dubbed the “Donroe Doctrine” by insiders, and its aim, in part, is to rid America’s backyard of Chinese influence.
The Venezuela question
The strikes on drugs boats can be traced to one of the unusually large fleet of US warships, drones and troops that have converged off Venezuela’s coast in recent weeks.
Eight warships, including three destroyers, three amphibious assault ships, a cruiser and a smaller littoral combat ship now make up the largest US military presence in the region in decades.
They are joined by a squadron of F-35B Lightning II jets and a handful of Reaper drones, which are capable of flying long distances and carrying up to eight laser-guided missiles. B-2 bombers have also been spotted flying off the coast.
On Friday, Trump announced the USS Gerald Ford, the navy’s newest aircraft carrier, was also en route to the territory.
It is quite the counter-narcotics operation. The sheer scale of the fleet has convinced Venezuelans and many others that Trump is, in fact, preparing a ground assault.
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“It is as a show of force, sabre rattling, gunboat policy intended to put pressure on Mr Maduro with the goal of forcing him to step down and convince him to step down and take a golden exit. If that fails emboldening those in his government, who might topple him.”
The aspiration for regime change is hardly hidden. The president has linked Mr Maduro’s regime with criminal cartels and approved the CIA to conduct covert missions in the hopes of toppling him.
“He doesn’t want to f— around with the United States,” the president warned recently, a line as much for Caracas as for his many other adversaries.
Yet there is another layer to consider.
Some sources close to the Trump administration point out that assembling an invasion fleet may be helpful for Mr Trump to solve a separate policy headache: immigration.
Declaring war could help with the revival of the Alien Enemies Act, last used to intern Japanese, German and Italian nationals during World War Two, to detain and deport Venezuelan nationals en masse.
Under the 17th-century law, a president can target citizens of a hostile nation in times of declared war or if an enemy government mounts an “invasion or predatory incursion”.
Early in his second term, the president dusted off the war-time law but was later blocked by the court of appeal.
The two architects of the Venezuela campaign are Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, and, interestingly, Stephen Miller, the man known as “Trump’s Brain” on all things immigration.
Venezuela and the drug boats thus become a complex fusion of Trump’s great fixations; national security, immigration and the need to revive American dominance.
The Donroe Doctrine
Venezuela under Mr Maduro, who now has a $50m bounty on his head, has become something of an open shop for America’s adversaries.
China has poured millions into Venezuelan oil projects and loans while Russia has armed Mr Maduro with Sukhoi fighter jets, helicopters, tanks, and air defence systems.
Experts say Mr Trump’s push into the region is part of an attempt to revive the Monroe Doctrine, the 19th-century principle that views Latin America as America’s backyard and that declares the Western hemisphere as off limits to adversaries.
Project 2025, the Trump long-thought blueprint for his second term, calls it “re-hemisphering”.
It calls for the capture of supply chains in the region as a requirement of US economic security.
Mr Trump has signed off on economic punishment targeting Venezuelan oil with a broader goal of reasserting US dominance.
Meanwhile, he told his generals last month: “We’re restoring a needed focus on defeating threats in the Western Hemisphere.”
“All the adversaries we’ve got have a significant presence in Venezuela. And that’s why back in 2019 and today, removing Maduro is such a priority,” John Bolton, Mr Trump’s former national security adviser, said.
“It’s long overdue and in the case of Venezuela, it’s not just China, they’re the late comers,” Mr Bolton told The Telegraph.
The Donald Doctrine has become a rallying cry across the GOP base.
“I’m at least thrilled that we’re finally using military force in our own hemisphere against people that would have done harm against the American homeland,” popular conservative Charlie Kirk told his podcast a week before he was shot dead.
Beyond Venezuela
Venezuela, which has the biggest oil reserves in the world, is just the latest example; part of a pattern by the administration to pick off countries with ties with China.
Guyana and Suriname, small South American states adjacent to Venezuela, have newly discovered oil reserves which have attracted a large amount of Chinese investment.
Just four months into the job, Mr Rubio was dispatched on a Caribbean tour to ramp up engagement in the Western Hemisphere by promoting energy independence, curbing illegal migration and drug trafficking.
In Guyana, Mr Rubio signed a defence agreement that enhanced intelligence sharing and military-to-military cooperation.
Since ExxonMobil made its major oil discovery in Guyana in 2015, Venezuela has revived a century-old territorial dispute with Guyana and taken steps to annex the remote Essequibo region, which comprises about two-thirds of Guyana’s land mass.
Mr Rubio warned it would be a “very bad day” for Venezuela should that happen.
Meanwhile, China bristled at the strengthening ties. Beijing does $1.4bn in annual trade with Guyana and has invested in a string of major infrastructure projects that Chinese firms are undertaking.
By rallying a mini-coalition of neighbouring states, Mr Trump is isolating Mr Maduro and signalling to the rest of the hemisphere that aligning with the US can prove to be valuable and secure.
“It’s clearly a view of our enemies abroad that the Western Hemisphere is strategically important,” Andrés Martínez-Fernández, senior policy analyst for Latin America at the Allison Centre for National Security, said.
“The Trump administration recognises the importance of economic vitality and connectivity within our own hemisphere. For our national security, the rare earth minerals certainly are a core part of that.
“That is something President Trump is clearly trying to get Washington to wake up to that fact. And so I think that’s kind of undergirding the, what you could call a new Monroe Doctrine, or this is pivoting to our hemisphere.”
Just as Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, has managed to leverage his influence to expand his dominance, Mr Trump has sought to offer a lifeline to those in need of American intervention in return for loyalty.
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In Buenos Aires, Mr Trump is planning to buy Argentine uranium in a deal with Javier Milei to counter China’s influence.
Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, has pushed to expand US access to the country’s valuable uranium supply in return for a $40bn lifeline for Argentina’s flailing economy.
China has poured tens of millions into projects into the South American nation, becoming its second largest trading partner and the top buyer of its agricultural exports.
Mr Milei, who has sought to align himself with Mr Trump, has turned to the president for help with his country’s currency crisis after some of the world’s highest inflation rates and a government debt crisis saw the value of the peso plunge.
The approach, the administration says, is yielding results. After visits from Mr Rubio and Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, Panama announced it would withdraw from Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
But critics argue that conditioning US friendship on ideological alignment risks undermining credibility in the region.
“This is much more partisan in its shape, and it’s much more politically punitive,” Christopher Sabatini, senior research fellow for Latin America at Chatham House, said.
The Global Pivot
Beyond the Americas, the White House’s strategic pivot includes strengthening ties with Africa’s 54 nations, which has become the new scene of competition between Washington and Beijing.
From the start of his second term, Mr Trump has pursued deal diplomacy, cutting international aid in favour of infrastructure and mining investments.
The focus has been on shoring up supply chains to rare earth minerals like cobalt and lithium which are vital to consumer electronics and the American tech industry.
China’s restrictions on the export of rare earth minerals in its tit-for-tat trade war with the United States has forced the administration to look elsewhere, namely Africa.
In June, Trump helped broker a peace agreement between the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda. It was not only pitched as a ceasefire but as a gateway to American investment.
The deal aims to attract Western investment to a region rich in tantalum, gold, cobalt, copper, lithium and other minerals. According to Human Rights Watch, it is “a mineral deal first, an opportunity for peace second”.
Behind the scenes, US officials have flagged Africa as the next source of strategic increase in the ongoing technical rivalry with China.
A policy paper by Bookings, a non profit based in Washington DC, noted that Africa’s “critical minerals, human capital potential, untapped innovation, and fast growth make Africa essential to America’s economic future”.
“We will see how long it continues. I think people want to get the trade issue resolved, they want it settled,” Mr Bolton added.
“They don’t like the tariffs, but they fear the uncertainty more with good reason.”
Gunboats
In Latin America the airstrikes on drug boats keep coming.
On Wednesday, two targets were destroyed in the Pacific for the first time, with the US defence secretary calling the drug runners the “Al Qaeda of our hemisphere”.
There have been two survivors of attacks on drugboats.
They were picked up by the US military before being swiftly deported.
One left police custody in Ecuador this week after there was no evidence found of links to drug running.
Another lies in hospital in Bogota, critically injured.
Putin has finally pushed Trump too far – and will pay the price
Russian president Vladimir Putin is attempting to overcome many seemingly impossible tasks in his drive to challenge the West and re-establish Moscow’s dominion over its former empire. But in at least one, he seems to have succeeded. With Wednesday’s announcement by the United States that it would impose sanctions on two major Russian oil companies, Putin’s intransigence appears, finally, to have overcome the extreme reluctance of Donald Trump to use any of the enormous power of the US against Moscow.
The sanctions, levied against the energy giants Rosneft and Lukoil, effectively cut the firms off from American banking systems and financial institutions.
They follow the latest iteration of a repetitive cycle of Trump calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine, and Putin declining to cooperate. On all previous occasions, Trump’s promises of consequences for Russia have turned out to be empty; and the US president’s apparent frustration with Putin has meant little compared to the underlying tide of US decisions curtailing support for Ukraine and Europe.
But in this instance, the final straw may have been the promise of a meeting between Trump and Putin in Budapest, called off after it became clear that there was nothing to discuss.
The latest twist will again lead commentators to announce that Putin has “miscalculated”. But this time, finally, they may be correct. Putin has consistently played on Trump’s misplaced respect and deference for him – publicly demonstrated once again after their meeting in Alaska in August, when Trump proudly displayed a photograph of the two men together supplied by the Russian side.
Until the latest US decision, it appeared that Putin had allowed Trump to believe in the prospect of another summit, got what he wanted, and then didn’t even need to turn up.
Putin may well have never been interested in travelling to a summit in Europe at all, given the risk that countries he would have to overfly would not be willing to overlook the fact that he is an internationally wanted war criminal whose aircraft are banned from EU airspace.
Instead, the new US sanctions on Russia mark a dramatic break from the previous pattern of the Trump administration putting pressure only on Ukraine.
It also suggests a tacit admission by Washington that Trump’s consistent claims about Russia being interested in a ceasefire, or finding a “deal” with Trump, have little basis in reality. Russian officials are, for once, telling the truth when they point out that throughout Trump’s repeated U-turns on what he is demanding from Ukraine and requesting from Russia, Moscow’s position has remained entirely consistent.
In fact, there’s been no reason at all to think that Russia was interested in a ceasefire, other than Trump saying so. Meanwhile, last night, as every night, Russia continues its mass strikes against the most vulnerable in Ukrainian society, including a drone strike on a kindergarten in Kharkiv.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/trump-putin-sanctions-oil-ukraine-b2850710.html
Seems in a war of attrition, Moscow will loose. The USA has the petro dollar and the Saudi’s and other oil kingdom’s on their side. What real advantages do the Russians have? More North Koreans for the meat grinder? What else?
My only conclusion here is simple. The major powers are going for broke and the recalcitrance will accelerate. It’s as if they know something’s coming and need to act in an expedient manner. I don’t know what else to think at this point. I don’t have answers, only observations.
Russia’s population is shrinking rapidly. Putin is trying to put a stop to that
Independent
For a quarter of a century, President Vladimir Putin has grappled with Russia’s declining and ageing population.
The demographic crisis predates his ascent to power, with the nation recording its lowest birth rate in 1999, the year before he took office.
In 2005, Mr Putin acknowledged the issue, stating that these demographic challenges necessitated maintaining “social and economic stability.” He reiterated his concern in 2019, admitting the problem still “haunted” the country.
Most recently, on Thursday, he addressed a Kremlin demographic conference, emphasising that increasing births was “crucial” for Russia’s future.
To combat this trend, Mr Putin has introduced various initiatives, ranging from providing free school meals for large families to reinstating Soviet-era “hero-mother” medals for women who bear 10 or more children.
“Many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had seven, eight, and even more children,” Putin said in 2023. “Let’s preserve and revive these wonderful traditions. Having many children and a large family must become the norm.”
At first, births in Russia grew with its economic prosperity, from 1.21 million babies born in 1999 to 1.94 million in 2015.
But those hard-won gains are crumbling against a backdrop of financial uncertainty, the war in Ukraine, an exodus of young men and opposition to immigration.
Russia’s population has fallen from 147.6 million in 1990 — the year before the USSR collapsed — to 146.1 million this year, according to Russia’s Federal Statistics Service. Since the 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea, it has included the peninsula’s population of about 2 million, as well as births and deaths there, in its data.
The population also is significantly older. In 1990, 21.1% was 55 or older, government data said. In 2024, that figure was 30%.
Since the 2015 peak, the number of births has fallen annually, and deaths are now outpacing births. There were only 1.22 million live births last year — marginally above the 1999 low. Demographer Alexei Raksha reported the number of babies born in Russia in February 2025 was the lowest monthly figure in over two centuries.
Russia is trying new restrictions to halt the backslide and embrace what it calls “traditional family values” with laws banning the promotion of abortion and “child-free ideology” and outlawing all LGBTQ+ activism.
Officials believe such values are “a magic wand” for solving demographic problems, said Russian feminist scholar Sasha Talaver.
In the government’s view, women might be financially independent, but they should be “willing and very excited to take up this additional work of reproduction in the name of patriotism and Russian strength,” she said.
In Russia, as in much of the West, shrinking births are usually linked with economic turbulence. Young couples in cramped apartments, unable to buy their own homes or who fear for their jobs, usually have less confidence they can afford raising a child.
But Russia is saddled with a harsh demographic history.
About 27 million Soviet citizens died in World War II, diminishing the male population dramatically.
As the country was beginning to recover, the Soviet Union collapsed, and births tumbled again.
The number of Russian women in their 20s and early 30s is small, said Jenny Mathers of the University of Aberystwyth in Wales, leaving authorities “desperate to get as many babies as possible out of this much smaller number of women.”
Although Russia has not said how many troops have been killed in Ukraine, Western estimates have put the dead in the hundreds of thousands. When the war began, many young Russians moved abroad — some for ideological reasons like escaping a crackdown on dissent or to avoid military service.
Article continues;
“https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-birthrate-population-putin-deaths-b2852033.html
Coincidentally, RFK and Trump highlighted a similar problem in the US, even announced a program to subsidize IVF for all women. Prior to that they gave a nod to the Amish (fertility rate >3) at the Tylenol/Autism presser. The state never acknowledges the Amish, pro or con so that was a new one.
I often think of Daniel 11 when I observe the actions of Donald Trump.
That’s right! Look at what he is doing in the middle east. Peace, peace… Someone will be the man of sin and lawless one, although he may be one of many. Who ever it is, his actions will reveal his identity!
The only aspect of Daniel 11 that makes me take pause is the fact that Trump loves women. He loves women.
True. I have also considered that the word and phrasing translated desire could have the meaning of despise woman. So, he likes woman, but treats them like dirt and like sluts. That would fit like a glove!
I had understood woman in the Bible to mean church. Woman came out of Man, Jesus called his mother Woman instead of mother or mom. Mary is #1 in the universal church so that checks. The common misinterpretation in Ephesians is that women should be obedient (and they should for many reasons) – I think it actually means that church should be about Jesus the husbandman instead of the idolatry of Diana (Mary).
Perhaps woman in Daniel 11 has the same meaning. Bob Prevost is no fan of Trump, at least not overtly.
Based on President Trump’s Western hemispheric aspirations, China has all the justification it needs to invade Taiwan. Russia has all the justification it needs to retake the Warsaw Pact nations.
The drug boat story isn’t convincing. The Coast Guard does a fine job, so an Aircraft Carrier fleet is absurd. The national media acts like there are tons of drug boats on the way to America and It’s just not true. The idea of getting ahold of the oil reserves and minerals is more believable.
I think this is all leading to the North American Union which is an economic and political continental union of Canada, Mexico and the United States. Possibly parts of South America are included. Then States will be disassembled and Zones like the time zones we now have, will be set up within the USA.
No disagreement from me. It’s the establishment of Oceania. It may not be called that, but that is what it essentially will be. It will all be engineered through the guise of fighting big bad Russia and China.
Eric Blair or George Orwell highlighted the three global military blocs. Oceania comprised the Western hemisphere and Great Britain as well as I think the Commonwealth Nations.
All the nations of Oceania transacted in a single currency called “the dollar”. In the book, the region formerly known as Britain transacted in the dollar as well.