If the Trump administration continues to move in this direction, the global situation is more likely to descend into chaos or conflict than to achieve stable equilibrium.
Time:
The message is clear: Washington will throw its weight around in the Western Hemisphere and it wants rivals located elsewhere, China and Russia especially, out—or at least out of critical sectors. It’s a doctrine elaborated clearly in an otherwise muddled national security strategy. In a nod to old-school gunboat diplomacy, it rests on threats and acts of violence. At least part of the point of the smash-and-grab operation in Venezuela was to display raw military power.
When senior officials in the Trump Administration suggest that might makes right, that international law is irrelevant, and that small states are expendable, they are not just undermining the international order underwritten by the U.N. Charter, they are providing a soundtrack that plays beautifully in the Kremlin and the Chinese halls of power.
That said, what matters most to Xi and Putin is not what Trump does in America’s vicinity but what he does in Europe and the Asia-Pacific—regions in which they see their own spheres of influence. It’s those signals
Attempting to reorganize the world around spheres of influence is a recipe for disaster. We’re not there yet. But Trump’s Venezuela raid has brought us a big step closer.
Read the whole article:
Comfort Ero and Richard Atwood, Time: Trump and the dangers of spheres of influence https://time.com/7344540/trump-venezuela-maduro-sphere-of-influence/
US National Security Strategy: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf