The original intention of this editorial comment was to make a simple point: that politics in 2026 will more volatile and unpredictable than ever before. But no sooner had a draft been written, than events provided a violent confirmation of that basic idea.
On his Substack blog, US journalist, Seymour Hersh asked “What chaos will Trump unleash in 2026?” Hours later, he had his answer. On only the second day of the new year, US forces bombed Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, and kidnapped President Nicolas Maduro and his wife. They are to be taken to the United States, to face trial over alleged drug trafficking.
The charges against Maduro have been in place for five years, but these are in reality a pretext: after all, a real drugs trafficker, former President of Honduras, Orlando Hernández, was pardoned by Trump only weeks earlier and released from his 45-year sentence in a US jail. The real aim of the military aggression against Venezuela is to engineer regime change.
The interests of the United States, especially in oil, have been blocked for decades, first by the regime of Hugo Chavez, and then following his death, by Maduro. Trump sees all politics in transactional terms and his real aim, like his proposed ‘peace-plan’ for Ukraine, is to get access for US companies to natural resources.
Oil is the prize, not ‘democracy’
In this case, it is Venezuelan oil reserves, which are the biggest in the world. At his subsequent press conference, Trump mentioned “oil” dozens of times – and protested the past seizure of “our” oil by “socialist” governments.
Like other western capitalist states, the USA has backed various pretenders to the Venezuelan presidency, although opposition spokesperson, María Corina Machado, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is for some reason out of favour with Trump. The hope of the White House is that without Maduro, the Caracas government will collapse and its military will back down to allow the installation of some US puppet – and the hope is that all of this will be accomplished quickly, smoothly and without any serious hitches.
“We are going to run the country until there is a transition”, Trump declared in his press conference. US oil companies will run Venezuelan oil facilities. Moreover, he added, “we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if necessary”.
This relatively limited US operation, styled Absolute Resolve, was based on overwhelming military superiority. But in this military intervention, Trump is taking a huge political risk. There are all kinds of scenarios that may unfold, many of which could come back to haunt him. Three months from now, what will be the upshot of this adventure? What will it have achieved? And how much will it have undermined Trump’s personal interests and those of the USA?
In the USA there is not likely to be much opposition from a largely supine Democratic Party, too spineless and tied to the interests of US capitalism to offer any meaningful protest to the events in South America. But a few weeks of waving the stars and stripes will not improve the living standards of the mass of voters who are increasingly disillusioned with Trump’s claim that things are getting ‘better’. Operation Absolute Resolve will not help Trump’s declining fortunes at home.
From Left Horizons website 3 January 2026