Donald Trump's Global War on Terror

On the intervention in Venezuela and the revisionist take on the 2016 election that explains American foreign policy.

In the early hours of January 3rd, 2026, our so-called pro-peace president committed yet another once-unthinkable act of military aggression. With a rapidfire midright raid in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, the United States capped off decades of tensions and months of strikes and massacres with the brazen kidnapping of the sitting president and first lady of a sovereign country. Although he did not go so far as to leave troops in the country, Donald Trump has left no ambiguity about what his actions mean: America runs Venezuela now. Without any prior announcement, without approval from Congress, and without any successful effort to persuade the public of the necessity of intervention, the United States is now set to be intimately involved in the internal affairs of yet another far-off country for the foreseeable future, with further escalation appearing nigh-inevitable.

Why did he do it? Do the classic Iraq-era analyses that it’s just a war for oil or a bid for votes still add up, even when the president himself essentially confirms them? The answer isn’t as simple as it may seem. In stark contrast to 1991 or 2003, when the country had a clear need for a secure supply of oil, America today enjoys the energy independence that past politicians coveted for so long. Thanks to the shale boom, we’ve exported more petroleum products than we’ve imported since 2021. Among our corporate masters, the large American companies that Trump has said he wishes to open the Venezuelan market to have shown little enthusiasm towards the prospect of investing billions in an unstable country while oil prices are at record lows—especially given how hard Venezuelan crude is to refine and transport. And while Trump may very well be desperate for a distraction of any kind in the current political environment, there is absolutely no world in which any kind of foreign intervention would have been a helpful one. American voters across party lines were overwhelmingly opposed to any kind of involvement in the country before the attack and still disapproved of the operation afterwards despite its perceived tactical success. For as out-of-touch as the Trump administration may be, it’s still hard to imagine even them misreading public opinion that profoundly.

Is it possible to square this circle without resigning oneself to simply concluding that Trump has lost his mind and actually did start a war because he didn’t like the way someone danced? I believe that it is. Beneath all of the fascistic chest-thumping and hurried declarations of a new world order, the Trump administration has been following a political playbook that is simultaneously so old it isn’t taken seriously and so integral to the success of Trumpism that they can’t ever quit it.

They are trying—and failing—to create a new terror scare.

I understand that this may not be the most exciting explanation for Trump’s foreign policy decisions. It is undoubtedly far more narratively interesting to cast his actions as a repudiation of everything that has been done under past presidents. But at every moment in the past decade of politics, at every stage of his career, our 45th and 47th president has been as politically reliant on popular fears about terrorism as any other leader in the history of this country. It is by far the most overlooked reason behind his win in 2016, and he has never forgotten it. After failing to keep fears elevated during his first term, he is now using every tool in his power to bring public fear of terror to the same levels that they were in the mid-2010s.

Now, because of his own ineptitude and his destruction of social trust, he may very well bring the entire style of politics to a long-overdue end.

Why Trump Needs Terror, or; the Skeleton Key to Understanding the 2016 Election and Foreign Policy Today