Trump Looks to Reposition America
Donald Trump is overseeing a marked shift in U.S. grand strategy in the Western Hemisphere that could have profound implications for decades to come.
In taking Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores into custody, Trump threw a single stone that has the potential to kill many birds. The substantial flow of drugs and immigrants into the U.S. will be reduced. Trump’s bold move also helps weaken China’s ambitions to establish a naval port in South America and retake Taiwan in the short term.
Once Venezuela’s oil infrastructure is fully revitalized—which will be a difficult task according to U.S. oil executives—U.S. gas prices could plummet to levels unseen in well over two decades. But even if that doesn’t happen, our ability to squeeze both the oil supplies of Russia and China has already greatly expanded. As national security strategist J. Michael Waller has noted, “With pro-American governments expected to run Venezuela and Iran soon, Trump will be able to regulate a good 70% of Communist China’s present-day oil needs.”
Additionally, the United States has already started selling Venezuelan oil, completing a $500 million deal on Wednesday. And this came after Trump announced that, according to a Fox News report, the U.S. would be receiving “between 30 million and 50 million barrels of sanctioned oil…worth about $2.8 billion at current market prices.”
Trump’s incursion into Venezuela is likely only the first of a series of strategic moves to reset the balance of power in the Western Hemisphere. No longer the world’s policeman, the U.S. will look to be hegemon over a far smaller, yet still sizable, sphere in its own backyard.
Gone is the Cold War model of seemingly permanent international alliances that look to keep great powers in check. Especially with the publishing of the 2025 National Security Strategy, the administration recognizes that the world has changed in marked ways since the fall of the Berlin Wall. This necessitates defending our core national interests far closer to home rather than keeping ourselves spread thin across most of the world. With that being said, the U.S. will certainly retain a strong influence on the larger international stage as long as the dollar remains the world’s reserve currency.
Though Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine” arguably may not be quite a return to traditional American foreign policy before the advent of the more expansive aims of the early Progressives, it has the benefit of recognizing what foreign policy elites still ignore. Putin’s Russia is not the USSR. As much as Anne Applebaum and Max Boot would like to think, it’s not always Munich 1939. And per Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 6 and 11, the dream of spreading democracy through the free market was never going to work.
Instead, a presidential administration is finally coming to grips with the fact that an order created for an entirely different set of circumstances no longer obtains. For all the worship of progress today, not many can even see our present reality, much less where things might be headed. They’re stuck in old paradigms that they have taken to be first principles, a stance that has repeatedly harmed our interests.
Part of the Trump administration’s calculus to extradite Maduro involved rendering hard medicine to the Communist regime that’s been ruling Cuba ever since Fidel Castro and his guerrillas overthrew Fulgencio Batista in 1959. The small island nation that sits 90 miles south of Miami has been the source of countless problems for the U.S. It’s helped transform Latin American countries like Venezuela that were once prosperous and well-run into havens for almost incomprehensible levels of corruption and graft. Cuba has helped spread leftism throughout the southern continent in the second half of the 20th century. Now, however, right-wing leaders like Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, Javier Milei in Argentina, and José Antonio Kast in Chile are beginning to turn the tide.
Most Americans are likely unaware that Cuba has sophisticated intelligence operations, which have helped undermine regimes and influenced others going back nearly seven decades. Approximately 32 Cubans, who served either as military or police in Venezuela, were killed in Operation Absolute Resolve. (Maduro himself was reportedly helping Cuban intelligence by roping in then-military commander Hugo Chávez.) Doctors, government officials, lawyers—Cuban elites have been flooding into Venezuela, reshaping the country into their own image.
Cuba’s intelligence operations have affected the U.S. as well. There have been government-backed efforts to share training tactics and strategies with leftist activists in America. It’s likely that the efforts of ICE Watch and other groups that have impeded law enforcement officers and caused violence in Minneapolis can be traced in part back to Cuba. The pro-Palestinian uprisings at universities like Columbia were likely fueled in part by Cuba’s influence. Black Lives Matter, with its Marxist rhetoric about abolishing the family, is another ploy that could very well feature the fingerprints of Cuban intelligence.
Additionally, Cuba has also granted asylum to some of America’s worst criminals in the 20th century. Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur (née Joanne Chesimard) fled to Cuba after being broken out of prison in 1979, where she was serving a life sentence (plus 26-33 years) for the murder of State Trooper Werner Foerster, among other charges. Shakur died in Havana on September 25, 2025.
Ishmael LaBeet and others killed eight white tourists and employees on St. Croix in the Fountain Valley massacre. On New Year’s Eve in 1984, LaBeet hijacked American Airlines Flight 626 while in federal custody, forcing the pilot at gunpoint to fly to Havana, where he served 10 years only for the hijacking and was then released. He had previously been sentenced to eight consecutive life sentences for his role in the anti-white St. Croix massacre.
But Cuba’s time as a major influence on the course of Latin American politics may soon be coming to an end. J. Michael Waller has pointed out that due to Trump’s operation in Venezuela, “the Cuban Communist regime, constantly suckling at a wealthy patron’s teat for 65 years, now faces a fatal weaning.” As the oil spigot turns off, Cuba’s energy crisis will worsen exponentially, likely causing increased levels of civil unrest that could eventually topple the ruling regime.
A major thorn in the U.S.’s side may soon vanish.
Shifting to the North
Greenland needs to be considered in light of Trump’s goals to reposition the U.S. as the dominant power in the Western Hemisphere.
The president has been intensely interested in adding the world’s largest island to the United States, despite Denmark’s strong pushback. As he recently told reporters on Air Force One, the U.S. needs Greenland to counter Russia and China and obtain the country’s rare earth minerals. Scott Greer points out other considerations, including the U.S.’s ability to control Arctic sea lanes.
Though Trump’s rhetoric has signaled the possibility of a military incursion of some kind, this is likely another case where the president needs to be taken seriously, not literally, as Salena Zito famously pointed out back in 2016. Paying an exorbitant sum or a vote by the people of Greenland will be far more likely the means through which the U.S. will draw Greenland closer into its orbit.
Though the Danes have balked at the idea of selling, Foreign Minister Lars Rasmussen announced that after meeting with the U.S., a working group will be formed to consider ways to help ameliorate the U.S.’s security concerns. However, it is unlikely that Danish security forces will give the president the kind of assurances he’s looking for.
“I can’t rely on Denmark being able to fend themselves off,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “They were talking about [how] they would put an extra dog—and they were serious about this—they put an extra dog sled there last month, they added a second dog sled. That’s not going to do the trick.”
Don’t be surprised if President Trump is ultimately able to make a deal of some kind with Denmark for Greenland—a move not only that no one saw coming, but that no one else even considered making. It strains credulity to its limits to imagine the Biden administration doing anything this creative.
The administration’s extradition of Maduro and his wife likely caught CPP strategists completely off guard. Is it so hard to believe that another previously unthinkable move could take place? Taking actions that catch your adversaries by surprise, after all, is part of the art of statesmanship.
If the U.S. ends up buying Greenland, such a possibility is well within our history. We are used to making deals like this—even with the Danish government. The Dutch themselves bought Manhattan in 1626 before the U.S. eventually got it after winning the Revolutionary War. In 1917, Denmark sold the Danish West Indies (St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix) to the United States for $25 million. After the sinking of the Lusitania, the Wilson administration wanted to prevent any possibility of a German incursion into the hemisphere, where they could launch direct attacks against the United States.
And that’s not the only deal the United States has made to continue our geographic expansion. Hawaii was incorporated as a U.S. territory under the McKinley administration and then became a state in 1959. The U.S. bought Alaska in 1867 for a little over $7 million in what was then thought of as a major blunder by Secretary of State William Seward.
The Trump administration’s signaling in the case of Greenland represents a return to the pioneering spirit that’s been a crucial part of the American way of life for generations. Just as we drove west over dangerous terrain and fought hostile peoples, built enormous public works projects, including the Hoover Dam and the interstate highway system, and went to the moon, the urge to explore new frontiers and expand our reach has been seared into America’s DNA. Recovering the American spirit of exploration is in stark contrast to the bloodless bureaucracies, HR harridans, and scolding politicians that modern liberalism has produced.
Whether Trump’s gambit will pay off in the long run remains a question. But there is no doubt that the president is operating in a more familiar playbook that’s connected to the best of America’s traditions.
