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Opinion
Run Venezuela? They Can’t Even Run The United States
With all our disasters at home, it’s a safe bet we’re not wanted in Venezuela for our management expertise. In fact, most Venezuelans don’t want us there at all.
Jan 04, 2026
Read it in the news:
“Economic Confidence Drops to 17-Month Low”
—Gallup, December 4, 2025
“Satisfaction with U.S. healthcare costs is the lowest Gallup has recorded … since 2001.”
—Gallup, December 15, 2025
“ACA credits expire, leading to sharp rise in health insurance premiums.”
—WANF TV Atlanta, January 1, 2026
“We’re going to run (Venezuela) until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.”
—Donald Trump, January 3, 2026
The commentary pretty much writes itself. As surely as night follow day, the Trump Administration was bound to do something to distract Americans from their well-founded economic fears—especially from a health cost crisis Trump’s party just made vastly worse. And all that Venezuelan oil looks mighty attractive from an oligarch’s perspective.
But “run Venezuela”? Shouldn’t they do a better job running this country first? Let’s start with healthcare. The Affordable Care Act is what programmers used to call a “kludge”; it’s a Rube Goldberg contraption whose goal is to mitigate the pain caused by America’s so-called healthcare “system.” America’s healthcare crisis can’t truly be fixed until the profit motive is removed.
Nevertheless, the ACA has provided at least some healthcare coverage to millions of people. That’s better than nothing—much better. The premium tax credits are a wealth transfer from the public to the private sector. But without them—and with no other system in place—millions of people will soon face disastrous monthly premium hikes. If they don’t pay them—and many won’t be able to afford it—they’ll face financial ruin if they become sick or injured.
We can recognize the flawed nature of the ACA and still see that these Republican cuts are inhumane and indefensible.
“We can’t afford it,” the Republicans argue. But that raises the obvious question: If not, then how can we afford to “run Venezuela”? Besides, they’ve got work to do right here.
Sure, the economy is doing pretty well—for the investor class. But even that limited success is hanging by a thread. It’s driven by an AI bubble that will almost certainly burst, wreaking economic havoc when it does. Meanwhile, millions of households are struggling with the cost of living (click on images to expand):
Visual Capitalist/StatistaMore than 43 million Americans live in poverty, including one child in seven:
Source: Annie E. Casey FoundationThe housing shortage is causing widespread pain as homes become increasingly unaffordable for most workers:
The labor outlook is “cooling,” as the economists say. But even that doesn’t count the most critical element of the job market, which is the ability to find jobs that actually pay a living wage:
Young people are especially hard-hit:
“Energy affordability” is a growing crisis, too. The average American household paid $124 per month more on its utility bill in the first nine months of 2025 and rates are still rising, with no end in sight:
Oh, and the New START treaty will expire in a few weeks, leaving the world with no meaningful limits on the possibility of a new nuclear arms race:
Nuclear catastrophe? It’s not impossible. Doesn’t that warrant some attention from this country’s leaders?
You get the idea. With all these problems to solve, our leaders have decided the right thing to do is—invade Venezuela. That won’t be an easy ride. It’s a country of 28 million people and its terrain that includes jungles, deserts, and mountains.
With all these disasters at home, it’s a safe bet we’re not wanted in Venezuela for our management expertise. In fact, most Venezuelans don’t want us there at all:
Most Venezuelans think the US is only doing it “because of the oil”:
The question, translated: “Do you believe that a potential military invasion against Venezuela would aim to overthrow the president in order to seize the oil, or do you think it would be to combat drug trafficking?” The headline: “90% believe that an invasion would aim to overthrow Maduro because of the oil.”
To be fair, we are only doing it because of the oil. Mostly, anyway.
Most Americans don’t want us in Venezuela, either:
In fact, most Americans are sick of our government’s seemingly endless addiction to foreign military adventurism:
And yet, here we are.
This is a desperate resource grab by Trump and the other overseers of this dying economic system. It’s also an obvious and deliberate distraction from the many problems here in the United States. And we all know they’re doing it for their benefit, not ours.
Like the saying goes: it’s all about the grift. But at what price for the rest of us?
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The Horror of Trump's Press Conference From a Venezuelan Perspective
This press conference wasn’t just about Venezuela. It was about whether American empire can say the quiet part out loud again, whether it can openly claim the right to govern other nations and expect the world to shrug.
Jan 04, 2026
I listened to the January 3 press conference with a knot in my stomach. As a Venezuelan American with family, memories, and a living connection to the country being spoken about as if it were a possession, what I heard was very clear. And that clarity was chilling.
The president said, plainly, that the United States would “run the country” until a transition it deems “safe” and “judicious.” He spoke about capturing Venezuela’s head of state, about transporting him on a US military vessel, about administering Venezuela temporarily, and about bringing in US oil companies to rebuild the industry. He dismissed concerns about international reaction with a phrase that should alarm everyone: “They understand this is our hemisphere.”
For Venezuelans, those words echo a long, painful history.
Let’s be clear about the claims made. The president is asserting that the US can detain a sitting foreign president and his spouse under US criminal law. That the US can administer another sovereign country without an international mandate. That Venezuela’s political future can be decided from Washington. That control over oil and “rebuilding” is a legitimate byproduct of intervention. That all of this can happen without congressional authorization and without evidence of imminent threat.
To hear a US president talk about a country as something to be managed, stabilized, and handed over once it behaves properly, it hurts. It humiliates. And it enrages.
We have heard this language before. In Iraq, the United States promised a limited intervention and a temporary administration, only to impose years of occupation, seize control of critical infrastructure, and leave behind devastation and instability. What was framed as stewardship became domination. Venezuela is now being spoken about in disturbingly similar terms. “Temporary Administration” ended up being a permanent disaster.
Under international law, nothing described in that press conference is legal. The UN Charter prohibits the threat or use of force against another state and bars interference in a nation’s political independence. Sanctions designed to coerce political outcomes and cause civilian suffering amount to collective punishment. Declaring the right to “run” another country is the language of occupation, regardless of how many times the word is avoided.
Under US law, the claims are just as disturbing. War powers belong to Congress. There has been no authorization, no declaration, no lawful process that allows an executive to seize a foreign head of state or administer a country. Calling this “law enforcement” does not make it so. Venezuela poses no threat to the United States. It has not attacked the US and has issued no threat that could justify the use of force under US or international law. There is no lawful basis, domestic or international, for what is being asserted.
But beyond law and precedent lies the most important reality: the cost of this aggression is paid by ordinary people in Venezuela. War, sanctions, and military escalation do not fall evenly. They fall hardest on women, children, the elderly, and the poor. They mean shortages of medicine and food, disrupted healthcare systems, rising maternal and infant mortality, and the daily stress of survival in a country forced to live under siege. They also mean preventable deaths, people who die not because of natural disaster or inevitability, but because access to care, electricity, transport, or medicine has been deliberately obstructed. Every escalation compounds existing harm and increases the likelihood of loss of life, civilian deaths that will be written off as collateral, even though they were foreseeable and avoidable.
What makes this even more dangerous is the assumption underlying it all: that Venezuelans will remain passive, compliant, and submissive in the face of humiliation and force. That assumption is wrong. And when it collapses, as it inevitably will, the cost will be measured in unnecessary bloodshed. This is what is erased when a country is discussed as a “transition” or an “administration problem.” Human beings disappear. Lives are reduced to acceptable losses. And the violence that follows is framed as unfortunate rather than the predictable outcome of arrogance and coercion.
To hear a US president talk about a country as something to be managed, stabilized, and handed over once it behaves properly, it hurts. It humiliates. And it enrages.
And yes, Venezuela is not politically unified. It isn’t. It never has been. There are deep divisions, about the government, about the economy, about leadership, about the future. There are people who identify as Chavista, people who are fiercely anti-Chavista, people who are exhausted and disengaged, and yes, there are some who are celebrating what they believe might finally bring change.
But political division does not invite invasion.
Latin America has seen this logic before. In Chile, internal political division was used to justify US intervention, framed as a response to “ungovernability,” instability, and threats to regional order, ending not in democracy, but in dictatorship, repression, and decades of trauma.
In fact, many Venezuelans who oppose the government still reject this moment outright. They understand that bombs, sanctions, and “transitions” imposed from abroad do not bring democracy, they destroy the conditions that make it possible.
This moment demands political maturity, not purity tests. You can oppose Maduro and still oppose US aggression. You can want change and still reject foreign control. You can be angry, desperate, or hopeful, and still say no to being governed by another country.
Venezuela is a country where communal councils, worker organizations, neighborhood collectives, and social movements have been forged under pressure. Political education didn’t come from think tanks; it came from survival. Right now, Venezuelans are not hiding. They are closing ranks because they recognize the pattern. They know what it means when foreign leaders start talking about “transitions” and “temporary control.” They know what usually follows. And they are responding the way they always have: by turning fear into collective action.
This press conference wasn’t just about Venezuela. It was about whether empire can say the quiet part out loud again, whether it can openly claim the right to govern other nations and expect the world to shrug.
If this stands, the lesson is brutal and undeniable: sovereignty is conditional, resources are there to be taken by the US, and democracy exists only by imperial consent.
As a Venezuelan American, I refuse that lesson.
I refuse the idea that my tax dollars fund the humiliation of my homeland. I refuse the lie that war and coercion are acts of “care” for the Venezuelan people. And I refuse to stay silent while a country I love is spoken about as raw material for US interests, not a society of human beings deserving respect.
Venezuela’s future is not for US officials, corporate boards, or any president who believes the hemisphere is his to command. It belongs to Venezuelans.
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The Renewable Energy Revolution Is Unstoppable
By every measure, shifting from fossil fuels to electrification, renewables, and energy efficiency and conservation is far more beneficial to most people than following the same fossil-fueled road.
Jan 04, 2026
There’s good news and bad news on the climate front. Unfortunately, the bad news is horrific, as accelerating extreme weather-related events and other unfolding climate catastrophes show. But there are signs of hope. We just have to stop dragging our feet.
“We are already facing danger,” a scientists’ statement from the November COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil warned, adding, “COP30 has a choice—to protect people and life or the fossil fuel industry.”
Too many governments, including Canada’s, appear to be leaning toward the latter.
“We need to start, now, to reduce CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, by at least 5% per year,” the scientists wrote. “This must happen in order to have a chance to avoid unmanageable and extremely costly climate impacts affecting all people in the world.”
The only ones who benefit from continuing to exploit polluting, climate-altering fossil fuels are greedy industry profiteers and short-sighted politicians who would trade human health, economic resilience, and survivability for a handful of short-term jobs and limited economic boosts.
Studies show that “rising heat is killing roughly one person per minute, and air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels claims an estimated 2.5 million lives every year,” DW news reports. It was also “costing as much as $304 billion in global economic losses last year.”
We’ve already passed one climate “tipping point,” with warming oceans causing irreversible mass coral reef die-offs, and we’re nearing others, including Amazon rainforest devastation and collapse of crucial ocean currents.
Coral reefs support one-quarter of all marine life, and the Amazon rainforest has more animal and plant species than any other terrestrial ecosystem. It also regulates global climate and weather and holds one-quarter of the planet’s available freshwater. Ocean currents also regulate global climate and weather.
Even though emissions continue to rise as the world refuses to halt fossil fuel development and forest and wetland destruction, investments in and growth of renewable energy technology are exceeding expectations, now outpacing fossil fuel investments.
DW reports that “in 2024, the world experienced its largest-ever increase in renewable energy generation, which now provides 40% of global electricity. In the first half of this year solar and wind exceeded all demand growth for electricity, surpassing coal for the first time.” Solar capacity is doubling every three years. Wind power has tripled since 2015. The International Energy Agency reports that global renewable energy investments exceeded US$2 trillion last year, double the amounts committed to coal, oil, and gas.
To increase energy security in the face of a growing global energy crisis and reduce their reliance on increasingly expensive, inefficient fossil fuels, countries that import oil, gas, and coal are rapidly advancing electrification and renewables.
Analysis from COP30 also shows that “sticking to three key climate promises—on renewables, energy efficiency, and methane—would avoid nearly 1°C of global heating and give the world hope of avoiding climate breakdown,” the Guardian reports.
But the world continues to burn dirty, polluting coal, gas, and oil at deadly rates and has increased subsidies to the fossil fuel industry—the most profitable enterprise in history!
Canada has failed to live up to its promise to phase out fossil fuel subsidies. The federal and provincial governments are supporting expanded development of methane gas exploitation and liquefaction, and are proposing pipelines to ship more dirty bitumen from the Alberta oil sands to British Columbia ports for export, where it will be burned in other countries and not counted in our emissions reporting.
Canada’s expansion of liquefied “natural” gas production is not only economically suspect, it also makes methane-reduction pledges more difficult to meet, as LNG is almost entirely methane, and leaks and emissions occur at every step of the process, from fracked extraction and transport to liquefaction and burning.
Although 160 countries, including Canada, have signed a Global Methane Pledge, promising to cut methane emissions by 30% from 2020 levels by 2030, emissions continue to rise and countries, including Canada, continue to underreport them.
By every measure, shifting from fossil fuels to electrification, renewables, and energy efficiency and conservation is far more beneficial to most people than following the same fossil-fueled road. The only ones who benefit from continuing to exploit polluting, climate-altering fossil fuels are greedy industry profiteers and short-sighted politicians who would trade human health, economic resilience, and survivability for a handful of short-term jobs and limited economic boosts.
Regardless of what roadblocks fossil-fuelled governments throw in the way, the renewable energy revolution is unstoppable.
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Trump Promised Peace, But His Moral-Free Foreign Policy Encourages Militarism
Instead of a values-based foreign policy, what has come out of the Trump White House this past year was a steady drumbeat of aggressive militaristic taunting.
Jan 04, 2026
Americans long have wrestled with balancing power politics and moral concerns in their approach to foreign policy. An accounting of the second Trump administration’s first year in office, however, suggests that those leading in Washington today may not be all that concerned with such dynamics. This should cause concern. As US foreign policy became less guided by moral ambitions in 2025, it became, perhaps inevitably so, more militarized.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, laying out the new administration’s priorities in January 2025, mandated that US foreign policy should answer “three simple questions: Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?” Nowhere in this guidance did Rubio speak of setting an example based on moral virtues, on values that might favor diplomacy over raw military power within the international arena. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the latest National Security Strategy, published in November, remained equally silent on morality’s role in defining American grand strategy.
Instead of a values-based foreign policy, what has come out of the Trump White House this past year was a steady drumbeat of aggressive militaristic taunting, much of it threatening military violence and economic sanctions while politicizing the nation’s armed forces, both at home and overseas. These actions, of course, sit at odds with the president’s 2025 inaugural address in which President Donald Trump, evoking Richard Nixon, argued that his “proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.”
A chaotic year in, one might question that historical inheritance. Conjuring a near existential threat at the nation’s southern border, for instance, the president began his term by ordering the Pentagon send some 1,500 active-duty troops to assist with border patrolling and “alien” deportation missions.
If the Trump administration spies a dangerous world beyond its shores, then a foreign policy lacking in any moral principles hardly will dispel those threats, as real as they may be.
Equally belligerent language targeted Denmark over the intent to take Greenland, with Trump declining to rule out the use of military force to achieve his aims. Nearly a full year later, the president is still arguing that the world’s largest island is “essential” to US national security, suggesting that forcible annexation of an ally’s territory is warranted as long as the commander-in-chief deems it so.
Closer to home, the administration also set its sights on the Western Hemisphere, claiming the United States’ command of the Panama Canal despite a 1977 treaty guaranteeing its neutrality. Then, with little restraint and less legal authority, the Department of Defense began attacking suspected drug-smuggling craft off the coast of Venezuela, escalating tensions throughout the second half of 2025 that led to a blockade of the South American country and the CIA carrying out drone strikes on its coastal port facilities.
The devaluation of diplomacy also marked Trump’s first year in office, as the State Department abruptly paused all foreign aid and assistance with little to no warning soon after inauguration, with critics lamenting the impact such suspensions have had on global health programs over the course of 2025.
Such breakneck, unprincipled flexing of American power abroad arguably was matched by a similar lack of moral concerns at home. The pardoning of domestic terrorists who attacked the US capitol on January 6, 2020—with far-right extremist groups like the “Proud Boys” vowing revenge for their jail time—and the unlawful militarized policing of American cities were but just two examples of an administration acting with few self-imposed ethical guardrails.
But morals matter, both at home and abroad. They always have, even if the United States historically has not always lived up to its idealistic founding principles. Morality is not irrelevant to a nation’s foreign policy, despite noted State Department diplomat George Kennan once arguing that the “interests of the national society” such as “military security” and “the integrity of its political life…have no moral quality” of their own.
Of course, power matters, too. But power unhinged from ethical reasoning (and restraint) leads to a dark world in which military power becomes the inevitable answer to nearly any foreign policy question. Even a realist like Hans Morgenthau, author of the 1948 Politics Among Nations, counseled that the “aspiration for power” should, in some sense, be “in harmony with the demands of reason, morality, and justice.” As the famed political scientist put it, morality, mores, and law reinforced each other and offered “protection to the life of society and to the lives of the individuals who compose it.”
More recently, Joseph S. Nye, Jr. argued that we should consider the potential benefits of “maintaining an institutional order that encourages moral interests.” In short, the tension between morality and power has been healthy in our past debates over foreign policy. (Even if Morgenthau himself warned against the “intoxication with moral abstractions.”) Historically speaking, moral aims have set examples abroad, highlighted the values of human rights across the globe, and informed critiques against those who support more imperialistic and militaristic policies.
But what happens when the president of the United States, in both rhetoric and deeds, flaunts power and interests above all else? When morals are deemed an inconvenience at best, a threat to rational decision-making at worst? The likely result is the militarization of the nation’s foreign policy.
True, Mr. Trump has boasted that his dealmaking has ended eight wars while complaining that he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. Yet motives matter when it comes to moral concerns. Was the president seeking peace or adulation? Moreover, Mr. Trump has seemed reluctant to wade into the details for achieving lasting peace in the Middle East or for holding Vladimir Putin to task for Russia’s unbridled aggression against Ukraine.
In a world deemed existentially dangerous, then only war and the threat of war, the flawed argument goes, will keep the nation safe when morals no longer matter. Seemingly, Mr. Trump sees the world this way. In his inaugural address, the president stressed his responsibility to “defend our country from threats and invasions… at a level that nobody has ever seen before.” Such martial rhetoric has been reinforced this past year by Secretary of Defense (“War”) Pete Hegseth who, in critics’ eyes, views military morality through the lens of “might makes right.”
In our heated, if not fractured, political moment, debating the value of morals guiding our nation’s foreign policy will be a difficult task. Indeed, even finding consensus today over what we mean by “moral behavior” seems a fraught enterprise. But the discussion is needed. Surely, President Barack Obama’s drone-based “targeted killing program” or Joseph Biden’s “unconditional” support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s exterminationist policies against the Palestinians warrant examination, if not condemnation. So too the militarized actions of the Trump administration this past year. In short, effective American leadership is moral leadership, both at home and abroad.
Moreover, a nation broken free of its ethical moorings will engender only resentment and retaliation on the world stage. In such a scenario, a reliance on military force likely will grow as fears of America losing its “greatness” feed into themselves. If the Trump administration spies a dangerous world beyond its shores, then a foreign policy lacking in any moral principles hardly will dispel those threats, as real as they may be. Indeed, those threats will likely only escalate.
If we can agree with the proposition that power and morals can—and should—reinforce each other, then the opening weeks of the second Trump administration serve as a warning sign for the coming implications of a nation’s foreign policy bereft of moral criteria. Militarization surely will follow immorality.
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