It didn’t take long for the new year to get interesting.
Donald Trump wasted no time asserting himself as the strong man of the world, allies and competitors be damned. And for better or worse, he’s dragging the rest of us along for the ride.
Still, I actually have two sincere compliments for Trump regarding his military takedown of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro.
First, he picked a target few will mourn. Maduro was a despotic ruler, widely despised both internationally and by many Venezuelans themselves. Removing a dictator like that comes with political cover. It’s hard to defend a strongman who’s already hollowed out his own country.
Second, and more surprising, Trump was honest.
He said out loud what American presidents haven’t in recent memory. Once the fuzzy talk of drug boats and security threats was no longer required, he told us plainly why this happened: oil. Venezuela has the largest known oil reserves on Earth, and the United States intends to reclaim control of them.
No George W. Bush yellowcake uranium. No mobile weapons labs. No weapons of mass destruction. Just this: You have something we want, and we’re taking it because we can.
As cynical as that is, the candor is almost refreshing.
We’ve spent decades being sold wars wrapped in moral language that later collapsed under scrutiny. This time, the mask was never worn. Trump didn’t pretend this was about democracy or values. He told us it was transactional power, exercised openly.
And that’s where the trouble begins.
What comes next? Do we have a plan, or just bravado mixed with a plan for a plan?
Trump has already made clear this wasn’t about Venezuelan self-determination. He’s willing to work with the next regime, as long as it does what we tell it to do. The implication was unmistakable: Comply, or suffer a worse fate. That isn’t diplomacy. It’s mafia-style language from the Oval Office.
We’re told American oil professionals will rebuild the infrastructure and get production flowing again. That we will “run the country,” and that we’re not afraid of “boots on the ground.”
This, from an administration that has spent years mocking the idea of nation-building after the catastrophes of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Fighting is easy. Governing is harder.
Anyone my age knows what “boots on the ground” really means. It means dead soldiers and dead civilians and suffering loved ones. It means enemies created faster than they’re eliminated. It means massive, permanent damage to our budget, already staggering under debt approaching $40 trillion.
And it would be naive to assume there won’t someday be business connections between American political power brokers and Venezuelan oil, courtesy of America’s military.
That pattern here is not new, only more brazen.
In the same breath that oil was mentioned over and over again, Trump also rattled sabers toward other nations, including Denmark, a NATO ally. Early-20th-century gunboat diplomacy, resurrected. When coercion fails, force follows.
This is America in 2026: powerful, blunt and increasingly unconcerned with the consequences.
I once learned how false that thinking is.
Years ago, a man worked for me. He was quiet, competent, and kept to himself. When the first Gulf War began, many of us were impressed by America’s “shock and awe,” by the precision and technological dominance on display. I was one of those hu-rah observers cheering it on.
That employee was a Vietnam veteran.
When I expressed my enthusiasm, he went silent. He didn’t argue. He didn’t engage. He walked outside and lit a cigarette for a long break. He’d seen what “surgical strikes” actually look like on the ground. He knew that “collateral damage” isn’t abstract. It’s men, women, children, and memories that never leave you.
He died 10 or 15 years later. I believe it was one more veteran suicide.
Some lessons are only learned through experience.
Trump famously avoided Vietnam through a questionable “bone spurs” medical exemption. One does not learn restraint from wars one never fought.
Yes, Maduro had it coming. Dictators usually do. But like the old Pottery Barn rule, once you break something, you own it. And we may be acquiring far more broken dishes than we realize.
Meanwhile, Americans at home remain crushed by health care costs, affordability crises, privacy erosion, and a growing anxiety about the health of our own democracy.
It might have been nice to begin the new year addressing some of those problems, before reminding the world that if you have something America wants, we are prepared to take it.
What we just saw may be power.
It just isn’t greatness.
Gary Horton is chairman of the College of the Canyons Foundation board. His “Full Speed to Port!” has appeared in The Signal since 2006. The opinions expressed in his column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Signal or its editorial board.
