For the whole of 2026 – and for at least the next fifteen years to follow – it will be good practice to read and re-read the document, published by the White House last December, “US Strategy for National Security” which outlines and describes, with a lot of realism, no do-goodism and in great detail, what the United States of Donald Trump – and perhaps also of the next President JD Vance – intends to do in and of the world. The new US Strategy for national security overturns Washington’s geopolitical hierarchies: it archives liberal universalism (remember Bill Clinton and Barack Obama?) and concentrates power on the Western hemisphere, putting at the center of its action a close confrontation with China – and in the background with Russia – essentially in defense of its own internal economic sovereignty. One of the most surprising and, at times, terrifying characteristics of the Trump administration is the immediacy of action compared to the externalization of intentions. For example, in just a few hours, Venezuela became the most brutal testbed of the new US force projection in its “own” hemisphere, precisely on the basis of the intentions of the New US strategy. With a surprise blitz, the USA removed President Nicolás Maduro, regaining the leadership of a country that had long ago entered the Chinese sphere of influence. All this, disguising the military initiative as an operation against Maduro’s “narco-dictatorship” and as a necessary act for the security of the entire continent.

The Monroe Doctrine of the 21st Century

The Venezuelan blitz is most likely destined to enter the history books as the first founding act of the new world order by the United States. An act of aggression that clarifies Washington’s intentions on the international stage: to focus its political-military action on the Western hemisphere, keeping at bay all those elements that could endanger the security of the USA. A redefinition of the Monroe Doctrine – the motto of 1823 read “America for Americans” – which identifies not only its territory as the living space of the USA, but the entire Western Hemisphere, leaving the Eastern Hemisphere to China. In a vision of non-interference between the two superpowers. In this new vision and, therefore, world order, the whole of South America is seen as a zone of US influence – Latin America is explicitly sucked into an “exclusive” US sphere of influence – leaving Taiwan, for example, to China, as well as Ukraine to Russia. As long as neither of them dares to enter into US affairs (of course, China has made its complaints about the Venezuelan blitz, but it is clearly a game of parties). And it is precisely from this perspective that the orientation of Trumpian diplomacy towards Vladimir Putin can be understood: everything is negotiable, there are no unquestionable principles. Trumpian diplomacy deals only with the strong, leaving the weak to their fate.

For Washington, the real adversary is Beijing

In this new American doctrine, Europe is downgraded and, if anything, becomes a region to be secured with shared costs (see Washington’s continuous request to increase the percentage of military spending). The stabilization of Europe serves the USA to free forces and resources for the true and only priority of its international policy: the Indo-Pacific and the maintenance of the hegemony of the Western hemisphere. The Indo-Pacific remains the epicenter of systemic competition with China, where military alliances and selective economic schemes are being strengthened, from the Aukus (trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, announced on September 15, 2021 which includes the development of nuclear-powered submarines, as well as cooperation on advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, cyberwarfare and underwater capabilities) to technology partnerships. The European allies – and note that the US Strategy never speaks of the European Union – are asked to take on a “significantly greater” share of their own defense and if they really want to support Ukraine, they should do so at their own expense – perhaps by purchasing armaments from the United States. Putin’s Russia is also downgraded, no longer being the main international adversary of the USA, but rather one of the many threats to be managed and contained, in order to prevent the United States from being absorbed by the “European quagmire”, taking away resources from the confrontation with the real adversary: ​​Beijing.

The world according to Trump

From this perspective, we understand how and why Donald Trump decided to start 2026 with the attack on Caracas: in the new Trump doctrine, Latin America is considered a sort of “front line” of national security, to be protected from the penetration of “non-hemispheric” powers, first and foremost China and, to a lesser extent, Russia. Hence the call for a “Trump corollary” of the Monroe Doctrine: no tolerance for military bases, control of critical infrastructures or technological levers in extra-Western hands. The crackdown on migration, which becomes a problem of security rather than social, and the promise to “neutralize” cartels, narco-terrorism and transnational criminal networks also through a more casual use of the military instrument, fit into the same framework. Here the blitz against Venezuela is a logical and immediate consequence. Trump’s America is, therefore, a less missionary and more selective power, which accepts a fragmented world – based on bilateral negotiations, to the detriment of multilateralism and the related international organizations that support it – in order to protect its borders, technological supremacy and the value chains considered essential to its national security. A logical consequence is that, for example, the Middle East and Africa are managed, from time to time, through flexible strategies to balance Chinese influence, giving priority to tangible economic and military gains over abstract moral principles. In short, the supplies of energy, raw materials, maritime and land corridors matter more than institutional engineering or the democratic crusades of the past.

Europe: from protagonist to spectator of history

And Europe? Having said that this is put into second order by the Trump doctrine, it is clear that it can no longer benefit from the effects of the old world balance resulting from the post-World War II period – from Yalta and Potsdam, through the NATO agreement (1949), up to the United Nations Charter and the establishment of the WTO in 1995 – but must decisively and definitively renew its physiognomy, tools and purposes. More than anything, where the USA does not even mention the European Union in its Security Strategy – and in fact continues to negotiate bilaterally with individual states, day in and day out insulting even the community institutions and the “Europeans” as parasites on the American body – China tends to ignore it and Russia suffers as a sworn enemy and threat to its own national and spiritual unity, it is necessary that this be rethought. It is necessary to equip itself with a foreign policy and a common army. A United States of Europe is needed. If that is ever possible. Otherwise, the condemnation will be to become spectators of history. Let us remember that this new world order does not provide for the “good/bad” dichotomy, but only “weak/strong”. With the consequences of the case.