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Trump’s new American Empire is increasing the instability of the world order

John Rees (Counterfire) 7 January 2026

Trump’s announcement was that he is taking possession of some fifty million barrels of Venezuelan oil ‘for the benefit of the Venezuelan and American people’. This move involves the United States redirecting Venezuelan oil exports to Washington and away from China. The deal would require cargoes that were originally bound for China to be rerouted.

This prospect brought an angry response from China. ‘I would like to stress that the legitimate rights and interests of China and other countries in Venezuela must be protected,’ Chinese foreign-ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a regular news briefing. Cooperation between China and Venezuela ‘is a cooperation between sovereign states, and is protected by international law and the laws of both countries’, she added.

The conflict with Venezuela is also threatening to become a direct conflict with Russia. The US navy has been following a tanker previously used to carry Venezuelan and Iranian oil, originally called the Bella 1, in the Atlantic for days. That ship has now re-flagged as a Russian vessel and Russia has sent a submarine and other Russian ships to escort the tanker. But now US forces have boarded the tanker, threatening a naval standoff between Moscow and Washington.

‘At present, our vessel is sailing in the international waters of the North Atlantic under the state flag of the Russian Federation and in full compliance with the norms of international maritime law,’ the Russian foreign ministry said. ‘For reasons unclear to us, the Russian ship is being given increased and clearly disproportionate attention by the US and Nato military, despite its peaceful status,’ it said.

But it’s not just among the US’s traditional rivals that Trump’s new imperial drive is causing disquiet. The US President followed the military action in Venezuela with renewed demands that Greenland should come under his control. He threatened that military action could be on the agenda if his demand is not met.

Greenland is a quasi-independent territory that is part of Denmark. And Denmark is a member of Nato. So Trump is now directly threatening the use of force against a Nato ally. This was too much even for those European leaders who have been quiescent in the face of the attack on Venezuela. From one end of Europe to the other, leaders have been echoing Keir Starmer’s very rare contradiction of Trump when he insisted that Greenland and Denmark alone should decide their future. And in another consequence of Trump’s new imperial design, US forces are flooding into military bases in the UK.

But this diplomatic hiccough will not interrupt the European leaders’ appeasement of Trump for very long. They all agree with Trump’s fundamental attitude to Europe: that the continent must rearm, militarise, and that it must do so without US financial aide. In pursuit of this policy conscription, or conscription-lite, schemes have been announced in Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, and, most recently, in the UK.

Starmer is also happy for the UK to enhance its traditional role as the US’s aircraft carrier. US warplanes and an elite strike force recently arrived at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire and RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk. The deployment includes ten C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft and a pair of AC-130J Ghostrider gunships.

This follows evidence that US nuclear weapons, specifically B61-12 gravity bombs, have likely returned to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, for the first time since 2008, following infrastructure upgrades and transport flights, marking a shift in Nato’s nuclear posture amidst rising tensions, though official confirmation is withheld by both US and UK governments.

In response to this, European anti-war activists are gathering in Paris this week to organise for the forthcoming International Peace Conference in London planned for 20 June. This will be a major labour-movement mobilisation in line with the TUC’s wages-not-warfare policy adopted at its last Congress.
https://www.counterfire.org/article/trumps-new-american-empire-is-increasing-the-instability-of-the-world-order/

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