by Asad Mirza
Trump’s return to the White House is marked by military aggression, economic coercion, and Latin America-focused power projection, revealing a resource-driven strategy masked as peacemaking
During the past year, perhaps no other man has garnered as many news headlines and taken up as much space as the American President, Donald Trump. This is not due to any humane policies or pro-people announcements, but solely because of his quirky and unpredictable executive orders, which undermine global rules-based governance in politics, diplomacy, and economics, or reflect a lack of comprehension about how to run a superpower.
After a hiatus of four years, Trump returned as the 47th American president, promising to end the 14-year-old Russia–Ukraine war within 24 hours of assuming office, though nothing of that sort has happened in the last year.
Immediately after assuming office, he started a whimsical tariff war against almost every nation and vowed to colonise Greenland and run over Mexico. The latest folly this foaming-at-the-mouth American president has committed is a completely flagrant violation of international norms and respect for any sovereign country.
Trump’s second term is marked by aggressive foreign actions, including the military capture of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro and threats towards Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, and renewed interest in Greenland, sparking global backlash and concerns over US power projection.
At his inauguration in January 2025, Donald Trump pledged to be a “peacemaker and unifier”. Although he has claimed to have brokered several, and in some cases short-lived, peace deals, including a self-claimed one between India and Pakistan, he also carried out military interventions with relish, bombing seven countries during the first year of his second term.
During his first stint as US president, Trump dramatically ramped up strikes against jihadists in Somalia. He has intensified this air campaign again since returning to the White House, with 118 strikes conducted in 2025, more than the Bush, Obama, and Biden administrations combined.
Trump launched a wave of air and naval strikes against targets in Houthi-controlled Yemen in early 2025, pledging to “annihilate” the Iran-backed militia group after it hit Israel and targeted Red Sea shipping in retaliation for the war in Gaza.
In March last year, a US airstrike killed a senior leader of Islamic State (IS) in Iraq. The operation was carried out with Iraq’s intelligence services. Trump wrote on social media that it exhibited “peace through strength”.
During Israel’s short war with Iran in June, the US struck three Iranian nuclear facilities. B-2 stealth bombers dropped bunker busters, and cruise missiles were launched from a submarine. Trump claimed the country’s nuclear programme had been “completely and totally obliterated”, although the extent of the damage is still unclear.
After IS killed two US soldiers and a US civilian interpreter in central Syria on December 13, 2025, Trump authorised more than 70 strikes on the group. His rebranded “war secretary”, Pete Hegseth, described them as a “declaration of vengeance”.
In Nigeria, a US ship stationed in the Gulf of Guinea launched more than a dozen cruise missiles at two IS training camps on Christmas Day. Trump said the aim was to protect Christians who MAGA figures say are being targeted for their faith. Nigeria’s government denies this, but acquiesced to the strikes.
The US began attacking alleged drug boats off Venezuela’s Caribbean coast in September, carrying out 33 known strikes and killing at least 112 people so far. US forces also docked two sanctioned oil tankers, pursued a third, and hit a Venezuelan port facility with a drone before last Saturday’s operation.
America against Venezuela
Donald Trump’s second term as United States president is increasingly being defined by an aggressive projection of power far beyond America’s borders. Following the dramatic US military operation in Venezuela and the capture of President Maduro, Trump has signalled that his ambitions stretch across the Western Hemisphere and into the Arctic, triggering alarm from Latin America to Europe.
He has also mused about the idea of kidnapping another president, Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, and said Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, will suffer “a fate worse than Maduro” if she fails to fall in line.
Further, Greenland is not the only country feeling the pressure. Trump’s rhetoric following the Venezuela operation has been especially sharp towards Colombia. Even as US forces were bringing Maduro to New York, Trump warned Colombian President Gustavo Petro to “watch his ass”.
Maduro’s ouster has been justified in the name of combating “narco-terrorism”. He has been called the “narco-dictator” of a “narco-regime”. Maduro’s government was indeed up to its neck in drug smuggling. But the stress placed on this issue reflects a persistent failing in the US approach to Latin America—what we could perhaps call narcolepsy. This seems to be the greatest undoing of US foreign policy: remaining sound asleep when it comes to Latin America, except when occasionally awakened to deal with narco-trafficking. Otherwise, public opinion in the United States studiously ignores the one region, excluding Mexico, with which the US has run a consistent trade surplus.
Trump’s focus on Latin America
Trump’s wrath against Latin American countries started with his spat with Mexico and operations to take control of the Panama Canal.
But why is Trump adopting an aggressive posture against Latin American countries? The reason mostly lies in his temperament to treat every issue in economic terms and his promise of MAGA.
It is no hidden fact that over the past 25 years, China has made inroads into virtually every Latin American country, just as it has in Asia and Africa. China runs its bases and companies in almost every Latin American country. Trump’s game plan, therefore, is not just to occupy or subjugate Venezuela for its oil, but, as evident from his statements, to ramp up the American presence across Latin America.
Why? Because most of these nations also form the backbone of Chinese expansionism and its control over global rare earth minerals. Mexico is the largest global producer of silver, much of which it exports to China, and with the imminent Chinese export order banning the export of silver, this could ultimately create Chinese hegemony over the global supply of the metal. Further, Bolivia has vast lithium resources, while Chile and Peru have large deposits of copper.
Trump knows very well that if American dominance over global AI, supercomputers, and other technological equipment is to continue, it must be backed by control over the global supply chain of rare earth minerals.
So, in essence, it is not a strategic or geopolitical blitzkrieg that Donald Trump has launched against Latin American countries, but a bombastic show aimed essentially at controlling global rare earth minerals.
(The writer is a New Delhi-based senior commentator on national, international, defence and strategic affairs, environmental issues, an interfaith practitioner, and a media consultant. Ideas are personal.)
