Has any year in memory started with such a bang as 2026? In little over seven days, Donald Trump’s America has captured the Venezuelan president and declared control of the country and its oil. The president has tossed out threats to Cuba, Colombia, Mexico and Greenland, and warned Iran’s leaders that America is ready to intervene if they kill domestic protesters. The US has seized two oil tankers linked to Venezuelan oil exports — one reportedly escorted by a Russian submarine. And in one move this week it withdrew from some 66 UN and international organisations.
So startling has been the opening of January that US air strikes on Nigeria, on December 25, already feel like the distant past. Trump started the new year in a confident mood, and the success of his Venezuelan gamble — which could easily have backfired — has emboldened him further. The world is dealing with a Trump unbound: a president who feels unconstrained at home and is asserting America’s right to act internationally as it sees fit — not just within the western hemisphere over which he has asserted US dominance, but wherever it can get away with it.
This amounts to a sharp escalation in Trump’s America First foreign policy. But the president continues to throw his weight around at home — from pressing the US oil industry to pile back into Venezuela despite the lack of legal protections, to a misguided move to ban big institutional investors from buying single-family homes in an effort to boost housing supply. The heavy-handed tactics of his Immigration and Customs Enforcement goons have led to an unarmed woman in Minneapolis being shot dead, sparking protests. Videos raised doubts over Trump’s claim that she ran over an ICE agent.