Ego Ergo Empire

It’s sadly hilarious watching Trump supporters jump through hoops trying to justify his Venezuela coup and Greenland bluster, because the truth is there are no national security interests being served. This isn’t about “America First”; this is all about Trump’s pride.

Saving democracy? Trump doesn’t care about the welfare of a bunch of foreigners. He’s already said he’s ready to accept Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s anti-democracy vice president, as Venezuela’s next leader (and snubbed Nobel Peace Prize winner María Machado). Oil? We have plenty of that, and Venezuelan oil isn’t free; there are still production and transport costs. And how much would we get? Currently, Trump says he’s demanded 30 to 50 million barrels from Venezuela, but America uses about 20 million barrels per day. Stopping drugs? Venezuela is not a major source of illegal drugs. Most fentanyl is produced in Mexico from chemicals imported from China and India. Small amounts of cocaine are moved through Venezuela, but it isn’t a big player with the drug cartels. Trump’s own Justice Department has dropped an early claim that Maduro led a cartel named “Cartel de los Soles.” (Cartel de los Soles wasn’t a real cartel; rather, it was a Venezuelan nickname for corrupt officials who had gotten involved in the drug trade.)

So why illegally send the U.S. military in to kidnap Maduro, given the high diplomatic cost of alienating allies and the likelihood of destabilizing Venezuela even further?

I have no sources at the CIA, but I’m pretty sure the real reason for the Venezuelan operation is ego. Trump wanted to feel important, and so his staff manufactured a fake conflict over trivial amounts of drugs so that they could then justify Maduro’s kidnapping. They might have sold themselves some blather about “America asserting itself” or “preempting Chinese influence”—Stephen Miller might even believe it—but it’s all garbage. Trump wanted to look big, and Maduro was an easy target. The talk about democracy and oil was just Trump and Co. trying to justify what they already planned to do.

At least during the Cold War, we overthrew Latin American governments in order to fight communism. True, most of those countries weren’t actually in any danger from Marxism, but at least the Soviet Union was more than an imaginary threat. This time, we’re staging a coup just to make our narcissistic leader feel better about himself.

The same is even more obviously true about Greenland. In 2019, someone brought the big chunk of ice to Trump’s attention, and it captured his wandering imagination. On Twitter, he riffed about the possibility of buying it, even tweeting a picture of a Trump hotel on stony Greenland soil.

When Denmark reacted with shocked disapproval, Trump felt miffed. He canceled a planned state visit and brooded over the insult.

“Greenland was just an idea, just a thought. But I think when they say it was ‘absurd’ and it was said in a very nasty, very sarcastic way, I said, ‘We’ll make it some other time.’”

Some other time has come. Then it was just an idea, but now it’s his wounded vanity that needs soothing. Trump may never actually use force against Greenland—that would be crazy, even for Trump—but I wouldn’t bet my life savings on it. Just ask Nicolás Maduro how far Trump will go to feel better about himself.