The Machtpolitik of Trump-Politik!

 

“God has a Special Providence for fools, drunks and the United States of America”.

Otto von Bismarck

Geo-business!

January 5, 2026. Thucydides once wrote that the powerful do as they will whilst the weak do as they must.  Many centuries later J.K. Galbraith wrote that power is as power does.  Does international law really exist if the only enforcement is by self-appointed Hobbesian Leviathans who do not believe they are subject to it?

It is in that light that Trump’s attack on Venezuela and the defenestration of President Nicolas Maduro must be seen. You’ve all heard of Machtpolitik – might is right. It is the use of all forms of coercive and inductive power to attain grand strategic ends. Trump-Politik is the use of all forms of coercive and inductive American power by an American president in pursuit of immense geo-economic, geo-political, and both geo and narrow business ends. 

Trump’s aim is to become a geo-business Leviathan to an end of national aggrandisement and personal enrichment (or is that the other way round?). The rest? Irrelevant. Geo-business is how Trump sees ‘power’. All the recent US strikes have been on oil-rich states, Iran, Nigeria and now Venezuela.  Even Trump’s ‘peace’ offer to Ukraine is essentially an extractive business deal. He believes that ‘geo-business’ is the very stuff of geopolitics in a zero-sum power ‘game’ of grand strategic competition between those who can do ‘business’ in this world – i.e. China and Russia.  For Trump only China and Russia have the means and the will to compete in what Trump believes to be an anarchical market. 

Thomas Hobbes wrote in Leviathan, “Covenants without the sword are but words and of no use to any man”.  In the aftermath of the Delta Force ‘exfiltration’ (what a bloody word!) of Maduro the airwaves are full of mainly Europeans bleating about an ‘illegal act’.  How can an act be illegal if there is no law?  After all, international law is merely a potpourri of conventions and treaties that has been inflated into a body of law that the truly powerful routinely ignore.  The UN Charter is only observed in the breach.  It is the last refuge of the weak who see law is an alternative to the power they lack.  It masks the tragic paradox of the weak in that power can only be ‘legitimate’ if enough of the truly powerful agree to enforce it.  The Americans, Chinese, and Russians are demonstrating by their actions that they do not, and that there is no international law rather anarchy. 

The ends justify the means

In Trump-Politik the ends justify the means and thus for him the only logical way to judge his actions are whether or not he delivers the outcomes he seeks – strategic domination of the Western Hemisphere, the maintenance of the US as the world’s pre-eminent power, and Trumpian control over global hydrocarbons and Rare Earth Metals as a grand strategic lever on his competitors.  That will not be so easy.

First, colonising a country, for that is what the Americans are doing, requires a lot of time, resources and pragmatic courting/buying off of those with power within it.  Ask the British! It is thus far too early to tell if the removal of Maduro has also removed the regime. The only way to ensure there is no prolonged struggle for power between a Venezuelan resistance and US occupiers is for the Americans (for that read the CIA) to remain fully engaged until all elements of Maduro’s junta are caught and the Venezuelan Army backs a US-imposed leader.  Afghanistan 2?

Second, will the colonisation of Venezuela also assure US dominance of the Western Hemisphere by locking out strategic competitors?  In fact, the Americans are already the dominant geoeconomic and business power in the region, but Trump-Politik will certainly re-ignite ‘anti-Gringo’ feelings across much of Latin America. Latin America might be America’s backyard and thus part of a Trumpian sphere of influence, but it is a bloody big one!

Third, the rules-based order has been replaced by a no-rules order, or rather a Trump rules global order. Trump Venezuela’s colonisation is a test of Trump-Politik and its fusion of geoeconomics, geopolitics, and geo-business. By doing this Trump is also sending a powerful message to the Chinese and Russians that the US accepts in both principle and fact that spheres of influence are the real currency of geopolitical business.

Trump is also making it clear to Xi and Putin (and Iran which has agents in Venezuela) that the US will not tolerate their presence in strength in Latin America.  Trump will also make the cost of doing geo-business-high for both Beijing or Moscow, which is why the Americans are arming Taiwan and Ukraine.  However, Trump is also implying that the US will not interfere in the respective strategic backyards/near abroads/renegade regions of China and Russia. Trump-Politik thus has profound implications for Taiwan and Ukraine?  Clearly, if Chinese push comes to American shove over Taiwan Trump will only shove so far.

Europe and Trump-politik?

How long will it take for European leaders to realise that virtue signalling is no substitute for power in this world? Europe's self-obsessed elites are playing slow, soft chess whilst Putin, Xi and Trump play hard power poker.  Probably as long as it takes for Trump to seize a Greenland rich in hydrocarbons, rare earth metals and critical minerals. Western European leaders are lost in an anachronistic post-World War Two age in which their aversion to what many still see as militarism and a desperate need to avoid World War Three in Europe is making such a war more likely.  Whither NATO?  Certainly, Trump-Politik is the deepest divide that has ever existed in the transatlantic relationship. 

Too many European leaders are also obsessed with ‘institutionalism’ and have forgotten that ‘law’ only works in conjunction with power NOT as an alternative to it.  This is precisely the mistake the human rights lawyer pretending to run Britain makes. The ‘deal’ to hand the strategically critical Chagos Islands to China proto-colony Mauritius is just the latest in a series of cack-handed actions by a London driven by the dangerous confusion of values with interests.  The rules-based order they espouse is a myth precisely because they have made it so.  They are lost in a League of Nations-style conceit that ‘the court of world opinion’ will constrain the Dictators...and Trump, just as it constrained (not) Hitler, Mussolini and Togo.

Shining City on the Hill?

What price will America pay? Trump-Politik marks the end of America as the Shining City on the Hill.  Trump has made the US a fully signed-up member of those who espouse MACHTPOLITIK especially if a target state is rich in hydrocarbons.  The ultimate irony is that the EU could become the new Potemkin Village on a Hill because the whole concept of American exceptionalism was built at a time when the US was not a global power and was colonising itself.  Trump-Politik is thus a very old fashioned and very old European past in which might is right driven by the false justification of all empires that colonisation is advancement. Two hundred and fifty years on from America’s rejection of empire is America becoming one?

Ultimately Trump-Politik is an extension of Trump himself and the way he does ‘business’.  It is the geopolitics of a New York real estate dog-eat-dog salesman for whom the mantra is ‘if you can take it, take it1.  Bismarck would have well understood such an idea of power but at least he was clever about it.  As for ‘international law’ it cannot exist if an American president believes he is Leviathan. Two questions remain. First, is Greenland next?  Second, is Trump-Politik how Americans want America to be?

Julian Lindley-French