A few days after Donald Trump ordered air strikes on Iran in June with the aim of destroying its atomic programme, Vice President JD Vance met Republican political donors for a dinner in Ohio to outline how he believed the administration approached military force.
“Number one: you articulate a clear American interest,” he told a fundraising dinner in Lime, adding that in that case, the US “red line” was that Tehran could not be allowed to gain a nuclear bomb.
“Number two, you try to aggressively diplomatically solve that problem. And number three, when you can’t solve it diplomatically, you use overwhelming military power to solve it and then you get the hell out of there before it ever becomes a protracted conflict.”
While the US President’s actions have been labelled erratic and impulsive, what Vance described as a new “Trump doctrine” helps explain the approach the administration has pursued in recent days in Venezuela, ratcheting up military pressure on the government of President Nicolás Maduro over months before delivering a lightning operation that seized the Venezuelan leader and flew him to the US for trial.
As of Monday, all US troops involved in the raid had withdrawn from Venezuelan soil, with the US “in control” of that nation. But for all the talk of the US remaining “in charge” of Venezuela, Trump and those around him are more realistically hoping for a deal with Maduro’s former colleagues that will reduce Russian and Chinese influence in Venezuela as well as drug exports.
It is a strategy that is heavily dependent on force, intimidation and often messy dealmaking – as well as a mounting range of risks. At the very least, it guarantees Trump and his administration plenty of headlines – and he hopes it will bring political and economic victories.
He has long pursued this approach with sanctions, tariffs, trade wars and other tools, and now seems increasingly comfortable using some level of military action to meet his aims of reordering the world.
Trump has made it clear he expects a post-strike Venezuela to commit its energy reserves to the United States through US oil firms, and facilitate the return of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan refugees now on US soil. None of that is inevitable, particularly if Moscow and Beijing persist in their support for Maduro’s former deputy and now de facto national leader Delcy Rodríguez.
As with the US strike against Iran in June, the administration hopes to be able to use that successful show of force to influence and intimidate other potential US foes across the western hemisphere, which Trump has made clear it intends to dominate.
The fact that probably includes Greenland – desired by the US President, administered by Denmark and worrying many EU and Nato members, already unnerved by talk within the US national security strategy last month pledging support to right-wing European parties.
Even a limited Greenland row could be catastrophic for Nato unity and decades of transatlantic defence aimed at deterring Russia – and after a year in which the US has pulled back in supporting Ukraine, at worst emboldening Russia for further land grabs.
Even within the US military, there is surprise and a degree of disquiet at how US power is being used – against smaller countries and particularly the Americas – rather than to maintain deterrence against Russia and, even more importantly, China.
For now, the Pentagon is continuing military drills on both sides of the world aimed at building its own and allied capability to hold back China and Russia. But pulling forces – including aircraft carriers – to the Middle East and Caribbean inevitably pulls them from Europe and the Pacific, widely seen as the two most important theatres for deterring great power conflict.
Trump’s supporters and officials – particularly Secretary of War Pete Hegseth – argue that the US administration’s more aggressive moves should also give Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin pause for thought, “restoring US deterrence” in a way that offers the best chance of stopping attacks against Taiwan or Nato states in Europe.
That may contain some truth, but also certain irony. During the Biden administration, then US defence secretary Lloyd Austin responded to talk of US military overstretch by saying the US could “walk and chew gum at the same time” while handling simultaneous crises. Many around Trump accused the Biden team of letting the US become overstretched – but with Trump over Christmas threatening military action in Nigeria to protect Christians, something similar may be happening again.
Not everyone thinks Trump is bothered about leaving allies in the lurch, particularly if he believes they offer the US relatively little. Certainly, he has shown little self-doubt over what his actions might produce. “Sounds good to me,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One late on Sunday when asked if he was considering military strikes against Colombia, also suggesting the Cuban government might soon be falling.
Hours before his action in Venezuela, Trump warned the US was “locked and loaded” to act against Iran if it used excessive force against rising domestic protest. But that served as an awkward reminder – if one was needed – that the Tehran government remains less cowed than Washington had hoped following US air strikes in June.
Similar awkward truths arose from “Operation Rough Rider”, the three months of US strikes ordered by Trump last year against Yemen’s Houthi rebels. They were broadly successful in prompting the Houthis to cease missile attacks on US and allied Red Sea shipping, but it took months of further negotiations before the Houthis also cut back attacks on Israel.
That operation, like the strikes against Iran, used up considerable quantities of US weaponry, deepening concerns among US officials that they might not have deep enough weapons stockpiles to deter a larger war with China.
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In a broader sense, the last few years in the Middle East offer a pointed reminder of the limits of pure military power. Israel has successfully used overwhelming force to reduce the threat from its regional foes, including Hezbollah and Iran – but has not solved the underlying problems. And while its actions in Gaza have wiped out many Hamas fighters and facilities, they have also almost certainly left a legacy of hatred and fury.
In Gaza too, Trump has used the periodic threat of US military action – as well as the reality of what Israel has been doing – to successfully force peace talks and concessions including release of hostages. His public quest for a Nobel Peace Prize continues expanding that approach into other conflicts.
Many of those actions already looked dubious under international law – something plenty of US allies including the UK have decided not to comment on. But even more than the legality, it is the effect on the real and wider world that we should seriously begin to consider.
Peter Apps is a global defence columnist for Reuters, a British specialist reservist and author. His next book The Next World War: The New Age of Global Conflict and the Fight to Stop it will be published on 29 January by Headline books
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