By James J. Devine
In a move that has blurred the lines between social media bravado and hubristic autocracy, President Donald Trump shared an image to his Truth Social platform this week depicting an altered Wikipedia entry that listed him as the “Acting President of Venezuela, incumbent January 2026”.
Trump’s ‘sabre-rattling and aggressive rhetoric’ raises fears about a potential confrontation with Iran, Colombia, Mexico, Russia, China, Cuba, or even NATO, as his violent ICE deployments invite Americans to entertain civil war.
This digital assertion of South American authority follows a military operation on January 3rd in which U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, flying them to New York to face federal drug trafficking and firearms charges.
Trump’s military adventurism has been condemned by nations from China to Cuba as a blatant violation of international law, even as the White House struggles to articulate a clear plan for the South American nation’s future.
The factual ground is less ambiguous than the presidential post suggests. Following Maduro’s capture, Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal directed Vice President Delcy Rodríguez to assume the duties of acting president.
Rodríguez has explicitly stated that “no foreign agent” is running Venezuela and that her constitutional government remains in charge.
This stands in direct contradiction to Trump’s initial declaration that the U.S. would “run the country” and his subsequent interview remarks suggesting American oversight could last for years.
“Even by the record of American imperial interventions in Latin America, this is quite breathtaking,” says Queen Mary University international relations professor Lee Jones, who suggested that Trump’s actions in Venezuela are making the US a “rogue state.”
Trump is methodically building a world where war is perpetual, having cynically abandoned his promise to move U.S. foreign policy away from endless wars and embrace diplomatic peace.
Trump’s demand to inflate the Pentagon budget by 50% is the unambiguous fuel for a new era of endless war, transforming the military from a defensive shield into a permanently deployed offensive weapon.
This colossal investment doesn’t prepare for conflict—it guarantees it, locking the nation onto a path of irreversible global militarization.
Trump’s plan for the United States to seize control of Venezuela’s oil reserves for years threatens to entangle the military in a costly and open-ended occupation, mirroring past quagmires.
His strategy is faltering at the outset due to the apparent reluctance of major American oil companies to risk capital investment and expertise in such a volatile venture.
Trump has also chillingly proposed transforming American cities like Chicago and Portland into live-fire “training grounds” for a domestic military force, while purging officials who might stand in the way of his schemes should they decline to follow illegal orders.
Under his orders, federal agents, operating with opaque authority and emblematic of an encroaching police state, have killed American citizens for protesting the brutal deportation campaign that has shredded constitutional liberties, defied the courts, and drawn stark comparisons to the terror tactics of the Nazi Gestapo.
Trump’s Middle East peace plan, adopted as U.N. Resolution 2803, risks creating a U.S.-run occupation despite findings of genocide in Gaza, placing Washington in charge of the aftermath.
Officials in the Trump administration are weighing various military options, including large-scale airstrikes and cyber operations, especially in response to the Iranian government’s crackdown on domestic protests.
The Trump administration has issued threats against Cuba, hoping that pressure from actions in Venezuela might lead to the communist regime’s collapse or force a deal.
Trump’s barbaric desire to seize Greenland has included threats to do it the “hard way” if a deal cannot be reached, sparking international concerns that an attack on a NATO ally would “finish” the alliance.
There is a risk of the Ukraine conflict intensifying to a point that could draw the U.S. into a direct military confrontation with Russia, such as through expanding attacks on critical infrastructure.
While rated as having a low likelihood for 2026, a crisis in the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea remains a potential flashpoint for a high-impact conflict that could involve the U.S. and China.
Trump even stated the U.S. would “start hitting land” against cartels as a literal war on drugs, which raises the risk of direct military intervention in Mexico, where President Claudia Sheinbaum has flatly rejected that notion.
His Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has offered a more tempered stance, speaking of using “leverage” to guide the country’s direction.
Beneath the political theater lies a stark economic motive. In a meeting at the White House, Trump urged top U.S. oil executives to commit at least $100 billion to revitalize Venezuela’s crippled oil industry, warning those reluctant that he had others eager to take their place.
Venezuela sits on the largest proven oil reserves on Earth—approximately 303 billion barrels. The Trump administration has signaled plans to control and sell Venezuelan crude, with proceeds held in U.S.-controlled accounts.
This would amount to a modern form of imperialism, plundering a nation’s sovereign wealth as a prize to be seized, treating oil as war loot to be sold, and justifying the wholesale theft to feed the coffers of a foreign empire.
This push comes despite expert warnings that ramping up production of Venezuela’s uniquely “dense, very sloppy, very hard” and sulfur-heavy crude could have catastrophic environmental consequences, consuming a significant portion of the world’s remaining carbon budget to limit global heating.
The international reaction has been one of unified reproach. China has demanded the immediate release of Maduro.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez stated the U.S. has “no moral authority to point fingers at Cuba on anything,” framing the action as part of a 66-year history of aggression.
Within the hemisphere, the operation has sown deep anxiety, with the Trump administration issuing threats against Colombia and even reviving discussions about acquiring Greenland, prompting a sharp rebuke from European allies.
Here in the United States, the episode unfolds like a farce penned by a cynical satirist. The President shares a fabricated credential while his administration negotiates with the very foreign government it claims to supersede.
He champions the release of Venezuelan political prisoners as a gesture of peace, while the man he deposed sits in a Brooklyn detention center.
Meanwhile, environmental scientists calculate the planetary cost of accessing what they call “the filthiest oil in the world,” and comedy hosts joke about a presidential “noncompete” clause.
Trump’s actions reflect a foreign policy approach that often relies on an unpredictable use of military power without consistent regard for traditional international law or congressional approval.
He has become an arrogant dictator, virtually daring America’s global adversaries or his domestic political opponents to remove him from the picture.
The question is no longer about who edits Wikipedia, but who writes the next chapter of international law—and whether it will be a work of history or of fiction.
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