Trump’s Empire of Hubris and Thuggery

The president’s latest National Security Strategy memorandum treats the freedom to coerce others as the essence of US sovereignty. It is an ominous document that will—if allowed to stand—come back to haunt the United States.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, December 13, 2025, https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/trump-national-security-strategy-memo

The 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) recently released by President Donald Trump presents itself as a blueprint for renewed American strength. It is dangerously misconceived in four ways.

First, the NSS is anchored in grandiosity: the belief that the United States enjoys unmatched supremacy in every key dimension of power. Second, it is based on a starkly Machiavellian view of the world, treating other nations as instruments to be manipulated for American advantage. Third, it rests on a naïve nationalism that dismisses international law and institutions as encumbrances on US sovereignty rather than as frameworks that enhance US and global security together.

Fourth, it signals a thuggery in Trump’s use of the CIA and military. Within days of the NSS’s publication, the US brazenly seized a tanker carrying Venezuelan oil on the high seas—on the flimsy grounds that the vessel had previously violated US sanctions against Iran.

The seizure was not a defensive measure to avert an imminent threat. Nor is it remotely legal to seize vessels on the high seas because of unilateral US sanctions. Only the UN Security Council has such authority. Instead, the seizure is an illegal act designed to force regime change in Venezuela. It follows Trump’s declaration that he has directed the CIA to carry out covert operations inside Venezuela to destabilize the regime.

American security will not be strengthened by acting like a bully. It will be weakened—structurally, morally, and strategically. A great power that frightens its allies, coerces its neighbors, and disregards international rules ultimately isolates itself.

The NSS, in other words, is not just an exercise in hubris on paper. It is rapidly being translated into brazen practice.

A Glimmer of Realism, Then a Lurch into Hubris

To be fair, the NSS contains moments of long-overdue realism. It implicitly concedes that the United States cannot and should not attempt to dominate the entire world, and it correctly recognizes that some allies have dragged Washington into costly wars of choice that were not in America’s true interests. It also steps back—at least rhetorically—from an all-consuming great-power crusade. The strategy rejects the fantasy that the United States can or should impose a universal political order.

But the modesty is short-lived. The NSS quickly reasserts that America possesses the “world’s single largest and most innovative economy,” “the world’s leading financial system,” and “the world’s most advanced and most profitable technology sector,” all backed by “the world’s most powerful and capable military.” These claims serve not simply as patriotic affirmations, but as a justification for using American dominance to impose terms on others. Smaller countries, it seems, will bear the brunt of this hubris, since the US cannot defeat the other great powers, not least because they are nuclear-armed.

Naked Machiavellianism in Doctrine

The NSS’s grandiosity is welded to a naked Machiavellianism. The question it asks is not how the United States and other countries can cooperate for mutual benefit, but how American leverage—over markets, finance, technology, and security—can be applied to extract maximal concessions from other countries.

This is most pronounced in the NSS discussion of the Western Hemisphere section, which declares a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. The United States, the NSS declares, will ensure that Latin America “remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets,” and alliances and aid will be conditioned on “winding down adversarial outside influence.” That “influence” clearly refers to Chinese investment, infrastructure, and lending.

The NSS is explicit: US agreements with countries “that depend on us most and therefore over which we have the most leverage” must result in sole-source contracts for American firms. US policy should “make every effort to push out foreign companies” that build infrastructure in the region, and the US should reshape multilateral development institutions, such as the World Bank, so that they “serve American interests.”

Latin American governments, many of whom trade extensively with both the United States and China, are effectively being told: you must deal with us, not China—or face the consequences.

Such a strategy is strategically naive. China is the main trading partner for most of the world, including many countries in the Western hemisphere. The US will be unable to compel Latin American nations to expel Chinese firms, but will gravely damage US diplomacy in the attempt.

Thuggery So Brazen Even Close Allies Are Alarmed

The NSS proclaims a doctrine of “sovereignty and respect,” yet its behavior has already reduced that principle to sovereignty for the US, vulnerability for the rest. What makes the emerging doctrine even more extraordinary is that it is now frightening not only small states in Latin America, but even the United States’ closest allies in Europe.

In a remarkable development, Denmark—one of America’s most loyal NATO partners—has openly declared the United States a potential threat to Danish national security. Danish defense planners have stated publicly that Washington under Trump cannot be assumed to respect the Kingdom of Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland, and that a coercive US attempt to seize the island is a contingency for which Denmark must now plan.

This is astonishing on several levels. Greenland is already host to the US Thule Air Base and firmly within the Western security system. Denmark is not anti-American, nor is it seeking to provoke Washington. It is simply responding rationally to a world in which the United States has begun to behave unpredictably—even toward its supposed friends.

That Copenhagen feels compelled to contemplate defensive measures against Washington speaks volumes. It suggests that the legitimacy of the US-led security architecture is eroding from within. If even Denmark believes it must hedge against the United States, the problem is no longer one of Latin America’s vulnerability. It is a systemic crisis of confidence among nations that once saw the US as the guarantor of stability but now view it as a possible or likely aggressor.

In short, the NSS seems to channel the energy previously devoted to great-power confrontation into bullying of smaller states. If America seems to be a bit less inclined to launch trillion-dollar wars abroad, it is more inclined to weaponize sanctions, financial coercion, asset seizures, and theft on the high seas.

The Missing Pillar: Law, Reciprocity, and Decency

Perhaps the deepest flaw of the NSS is what it omits: a commitment to international law, reciprocity, and basic decency as foundations of American security.

The NSS regards global governance structures as obstacles to US action. It dismisses climate cooperation as “ideology,” and indeed a “hoax” according to Trump’s recent speech at the UN. It downplays the UN Charter and envisions international institutions primarily as instruments to be bent toward American preferences. Yet it is precisely legal frameworks, treaties, and predictable rules that have historically protected American interests.

The founders of the United States understood this clearly. Following the American War of Independence, thirteen newly sovereign states soon adopted a constitution to pool key powers—over taxation, defense, and diplomacy—not to weaken the states’ sovereignty, but to secure it by creating the US Federal Government. The post-WWII foreign policy of the United States government did the same through the UN, the Bretton Woods institutions, the World Trade Organization, and arms-control agreements.

The Trump NSS now reverses that logic. It treats the freedom to coerce others as the essence of sovereignty. From that perspective, the Venezuelan tanker seizure and Denmark’s anxieties are manifestations of the new policy.

Athens, Melos, and Washington

Such hubris will come back to haunt the United States. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides records that when imperial Athens confronted the small island of Melos in 416 BC, the Athenians declared that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Yet Athens’ hubris was also its undoing. Twelve years later, in 404 BC, Athens fell to Sparta. Athenian arrogance, overreach, and contempt for smaller states helped galvanize the alliance that ultimately brought it down.

The 2025 NSS speaks in a similar arrogant register. It is a doctrine of power over law, coercion over consent, and dominance over diplomacy. American security will not be strengthened by acting like a bully. It will be weakened—structurally, morally, and strategically. A great power that frightens its allies, coerces its neighbors, and disregards international rules ultimately isolates itself.

America’s national security strategy should be based on wholly different premises: acceptance of a plural world; recognition that sovereignty is strengthened, not diminished, through international law; acknowledgment that global cooperation on climate, health, and technology is indispensable; and understanding that America’s global influence depends more on persuasion than coercion.

December 17, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

A New UN Secretary-General Needs the Blessings of the US–or Get Vetoed.

“The new SG will need to be someone Trump allows, as he has a veto,”

By Thalif Deen, https://www.ipsnews.net/2025/12/a-new-un-secretary-general-needs-the-blessings-of-the-us-or-get-vetoed/?utm_source=email_marketing&utm_admin=146128&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=A_New_UN_SecretaryGeneral_Needs_the_Blessings_of_the_US_or_Get_Vetoed_Sindh_Peoples_Housing_Redefine

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 11 2025 (IPS) – When there was widespread speculation that a UN Under-Secretary-General (USG), a product of two prestigious universities—Oxford and Cambridge—was planning to run for the post of Secretary-General back in the 1980s, I pointedly asked him to confirm or deny the rumor during an interview in the UN delegate’s lounge.

“I don’t think”, he declared, “anyone in his right mind will ever want that job”.

Fast forward to 2026.

As a financially stricken UN is looking for a new Secretary-General, who will take office beginning January 2027, the USG’s remark in a bygone era was a reflection of a disaster waiting to happen.

The current Secretary-General is facing a daunting task battling for the very survival of the UN, with a hostile White House forcing the world body to sharply reduce its staff, slash funding and relocate several UN agencies, moving them out of New York.

The bottom line: the incoming Secretary-General will inherit a virtually devastated United Nations.

Addressing the General Assembly last September, President Trump remarked, “What is the purpose of the United Nations? It’s not even coming close to living up to [its] potential.”

Dismissing the U.N. as an outdated, ineffective organization, he boasted, “I ended seven wars, dealt with the leaders of each and every one of these countries, and never a phone call from the United Nations offering to help in finalizing the deal.”

Whoever is elected, the new UN chief will have to faithfully abide by the ground rules of the Trump administration virtually abandoning what the UN stands for, including racial equality and gender empowerment (DEI)

“Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies that were adopted to address historical and structural injustices are being vilified as unjust,” says Volker Turk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In his 345-page book titled “Unvanquished: A US-UN Saga,” released in 1999, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a former Secretary-General, points out that although he was accused by Washington of being “too independent” of the US, he eventually did everything in his power to please the Americans.

But when he ran for a second term, the US, which preaches the Western concept of majority rule, exercised its veto even though Boutros-Ghali received 14 of the 15 votes in the Security Council, including the votes of the other four permanent members of the Council, namely the UK, France, Russia and China.

In such circumstances, tradition would demand the dissenting US abstain on the vote and respect the wishes of the overwhelming majority in the Security Council. But the US did not.

Unlike most of his predecessors and successors, Boutros-Ghali refused to blindly play ball with the US despite the fact that he occasionally caved into US pressure at a time when Washington had gained a notoriety for trying to manipulate the world body to protect its own national interests.

Jesselina Rana, UN Advisor at CIVICUS’ UN Hub in New York and the steering committee of the 1 for 8 Billion campaign, told IPS when key international norms are being openly flouted by certain member states and the veto is used to undermine the very principles the UN was built on, will structural reforms alone be enough to restore trust in the institution?”

Can the UN80 process genuinely rebuild trust in multilateralism, she asked, when the process itself has been opaque and has lacked meaningful civil society participation?

“An accountable and transparent Secretary-General selection process requires stronger and more explicit support from member states.”

A process that is open and inclusive of civil society and grounded in feminist leadership will strengthen the UN’s ability to navigate today’s difficult geopolitical conditions and help rebuild trust in multilateralism, she argued.

After 80 years of male leadership, the next Secretary-General should be a woman with a proven record on gender equality, human rights, peace, sustainable development, and multilateralism, declared Rana.

Felix Dodds, Adjunct Professor at the Water Institute, University of North Carolina and Associate Fellow, the Tellus Institute, Boston, who has written extensively on the UN, told IPS the UN is experiencing challenging times, living through what are probably the most difficult times since the Cold War.

It may not be a bad idea to move some UN bodies. UNDP did a lot of that under Helen Clarke—being closer to the people you are working to help, maybe it is a cost-cutting issue, but it may also be something that should have been considered before.

“The new SG will need to be someone Trump allows, as he has a veto,” he pointed out.

“Of the candidates we looked at before, the only one that is realistic is Rebeca Grynspan from UNCTAD. She has shown herself to be a good bureaucrat and has led UNCTAD well, as she did for Costa Rica when she was the Deputy President, said Dodds, City of Bonn International Ambassador.

“We may be looking at a man again,” he said.

Clearly, the new secretary-general taking over in 2027 has a daunting task ahead. Whoever it is will have had to make concessions to the P5 on the size and reach of the UN. The present cuts may be just the first set to come down.

“A UN with a clearer mandate on what it will do may be a result. Stakeholders need to, of course, defend the UN as a critical body for multilateral affairs BUT they must at the same time be putting forward reforms that are simple and strengthen the area they are working on.”

There is no way we can get security reform through—it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be proposed, but what is realistic in the areas being reformed is that stakeholders and governments can work together on it.

Ultimately, the driving force should be a more effective UN delivering on the ground. Do reform proposals do that? he asked.

“The organization has always worked in a world of political pressures. I agree the body should be a place for dialogue and protection of the most vulnerable. UN80 offers an opportunity for dialogue on realistic proposals. The question is, what are they in the different areas?” he said.

Dr. Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he serves as coordinator of the program in Middle Eastern Studies, told IPS following the Napoleonic Wars, the Council of Europe largely kept the peace until the Central Powers decided it no longer worked for them. The result was World War I.

The League of Nations then set up a framework to keep the peace until the Axis powers decided it no longer worked for them. The result of World War II, he said.

“We are now at a similar crossroads, where the United Nations system is being challenged by both Russia and the United States which–as demonstrated through the invasions of Iraq and Ukraine—no longer feel constrained by the prohibition against aggressive war.”

December 13, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

Venezuela and the colonial enterprise

By Ben Laycock | 11 December 2025, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/venezuela-and-the-colonial-enterprise,20471

When small nations resist the United States, democracy becomes a game of pressure, writes Ben Laycock.

U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP claims his belligerence towards Nicolás Maduro is in the noble cause of restoring democracy to Venezuela, but history shows us that the U.S. is no friend of democracy in Latin America.

The U.S. is renowned for interfering in the democratic process in every single country south of the border of America. It is common knowledge that it is nigh on impossible to maintain power in any Latin American democracy if the U.S. decides it is time for you to go.

The way the world economy works like this rich countries make products that poor countries need, like technology. To afford those products, poor countries must offer something the rich folks need. This is usually minerals or fossil fuels. If the rich folks don’t like the way you run your country, basically, if you don’t run your country the way they tell you to, they use their immense economic power to cripple your economy by cutting off the most vital thing you need, finance. The rich folks control the money supply. They turn off the tap. Your country goes broke, the people get angry and throw you out. The U.S.-backed mob get in, the tap is turned on again. The anger of the masses subsides, the status quo returns, without a shot being fired, all perfectly democratic.

A nation cannot maintain its independence via democratic means if the powers-that-be object to that independence, as they so often do.

The only way to maintain your independence is to suspend normal democratic rights and be prepared to defend your country via military means. If you take this drastic course of action, you will face the approbation of the entire “democratic” world. You will no longer be seen as a legitimate state. That is when they really turn the screws, imposing an economic blockade on your struggling little country. This forces you to turn to less popular regimes for life support, thus placing you firmly in the enemy camp, ripe for full-scale military invasion.

The U.S. imposed an extremely strict economic blockade on Cuba in 1962. That blockade is ongoing, the longest economic blockade in history. No company that trades with Cuba can trade with the U.S., full stop.

But only a fool would think these actions have anything to do with democracy. Here in the rich world, democracy is a game we play. If we are losing the game, that’s when things get serious. The USA is going through the painful process of shedding long-held notions of democracy at this very moment.

Donald Trump’s best friends are not leaders of democracies: Mohamed Bin Salman, his present best friend, is a Prince. Saudi Arabia and all the other Gulf states are monarchies, ruled by kings. His other bosom buddy is Benjamin Netanyahu, a man who runs a brutal military dictatorship over many of his subjects, divided along racial lines. Israel reserves democratic rights for Jews only, plus a small minority of arabs that they neglected to exterminate long ago (something they have come to regret). The rest of their subjects are subject to military dictatorship. All Jewish people are allowed to vote, no matter where they live in Palestine. Arabs citizens are allowed to vote unless they live in Gaza or the West Bank. There are 9.5 million citizens in Israel (this includes Jewish settlers in the West Bank), two million of them are Arabs. Until recently, there were over two million people living in Gaza. (The I.D.F. is going to extraordinary lengths to reduce that number). There are 2.5 million people living in the West Bank. That makes a total population under Israeli control of 14 million, 9.5 million of whom have the right to vote, the other 4.5 million are living in an extremely brutal military dictatorship, and have been for generations.

So we can say that the land of Israel is 63 per cent democracy and 37 per cent military dictatorship.

This is not so different to how Australia was run until quite recently.

Our nation began as a military dictatorship. Eventually, the invaders and settlers were allowed to vote, while the indigenous population continued to be ruled by a brutal military dictatorship right up until 1967. The “blackfullas” were seen as the enemy, to be shot on sight. The last recorded massacre was the Conniston Massacre in 1928. It is a rule of thumb for any self-respecting colonising power to keep the local indigenous population out of the democratic process until you have reduced their numbers to the point where they no longer pose a threat to your idea of “civilisation.”

A colonial enterprise must reduce the ratio of locals to interlopers. This is achieved by two simultaneous methods: Reducing the population of locals via extermination, whilst flooding the place with immigrants from “the home country.”

When Captain Cook arrived in Australia, there were around one million blackfullas. This number was swiftly and efficiently reduced to a far more manageable size. In Tasmania, the number of full-blood blackfullas was reduced to zero. In Victoria, it was reduced to three. Yet it still took nearly 200 years before the interlopers felt safe enough to grant the last indigenous remnants their democratic rights.

To return to Palestine. The interlopers arrived en masse around 1947-8. They immediately set about adjusting the ratio of locals to invaders (following the colonial textbook to the letter) via a campaign of mass terror. The Zionists expelled over one million Palestinians from their homes, at gunpoint, with nothing more than they could carry on their backs. They then blew up their homes and planted booby traps so they could never return. This is how the state of Israel was founded, on ethnic cleansing. Since that time, some 80 years ago, the Palestinians have lived under brutal military rule, but until now, there has been little attempt to get rid of them altogether. That policy has changed. The Arab Palestinian cohort is growing faster than the Jews. Partly because the Arabs are outbreeding the Jews about 3-1, well done team! But also because Israel is no longer such a popular place to come and live, for obvious reasons. The Israeli regime is aware that it cannot maintain a Jewish state once the Arab population approaches parity. So they are now talking about expelling the Arabs from the Israeli enclave, as well as from Gaza and the West Bank. In their eyes, this would reduce the threat of violence that is putting off potential immigrants, whilst freeing up new lands to give them, problem solved!

December 12, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

Oil and gas industries join with nuclear to fight renewable energy.

 For decades oil, gas and coal backers were locked in a rivalry with nuclear interests, competing for shares of America’s energy grid; but today many on both of those sides have teamed up to counter the rise of renewable power.

Bloomberg Businessweek previously reported on how the
backers of a politically connected nuclear startup are working, at times covertly, to neutralize the industry’s chief regulator, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Many of the nuclear industry’s most energetic backers are simultaneously engaged in efforts to kill the competition—wind and solar.

Bloomberg 9th Dec 2025, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-12-09/nuclear-energy-fossil-fuel-interests-join-forces-against-renewable-energy

December 12, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

Russia says it awaits an answer from the US on New START as nuclear treaty ticks down.

By Guy Faulconbridge and Lucy Papachristou, December 10, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/china/russia-says-it-awaits-an-answer-us-new-start-nuclear-treaty-ticks-down-2025-12-10/

• Summary

• New START expires on February 5
• Russia awaits an answer from US, top official says
• Putin has proposed keeping the treaty’s limits
• Trump has said it is a good idea

MOSCOW, Dec 10 (Reuters) – Russia on Wednesday said it was still awaiting a formal answer from Washington on President Vladimir Putin’s proposal to jointly stick to the last remaining Russian-U.S. arms control treaty, which expires in less than two months.

New START, which runs out on February 5, caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the United States and Russia can deploy, and the deployment of land- and submarine-based missiles and bombers to deliver them.

Putin in September offered to voluntarily maintain for one year the limits on deployed strategic nuclear weapons set out in the treaty, whose initials stand for the (New) Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

Trump said in October it sounded “like a good idea.”

“We have less than 100 days left before the expiry of New START,” said Sergei Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s powerful Security Council, which is like a modern-day politburo of Russia’s most powerful officials.

“We are waiting for a response,” Shoigu told reporters during a visit to Hanoi. He added that Moscow’s proposal was an opportunity to halt the “destructive movement” that currently existed in nuclear arms control.

NUCLEAR ARMS CONTROL IN PERIL

Russia and the U.S. together have more than 10,000 nuclear warheads, or 87% of the global inventory of nuclear weapons. China is the world’s third largest nuclear power with about 600 warheads, according to the Federation of American Scientists, opens new tab.

The arms control treaties between Moscow and Washington were born out of fear of nuclear war after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Greater transparency about the opponent’s arsenal was intended to reduce the scope for misunderstanding and slow the arms race.

U.S. AND RUSSIA EYE CHINA’S NUCLEAR ARSENAL

Now, with all major nuclear powers seeking to modernise their arsenals, and Russia and the West at strategic loggerheads for over a decade – not least over the enlargement of NATO and Moscow’s war in Ukraine – the treaties have almost all crumbled away. Each side blames the other.

In the new U.S. National Security Strategy, opens new tab, the Trump administration says it wants to “reestablish strategic stability with Russia” – shorthand for reopening discussions on strategic nuclear arms control.

Rose Gottemoeller, who was chief U.S. negotiator for New START, said in an article for The Arms Control Association this month that it would be beneficial for Washington to implement the treaty along with Moscow.

“For the United States, the benefit of this move would be buying more time to decide what to do about the ongoing Chinese buildup without having to worry simultaneously about new Russian deployments,” Gottemoeller said.

December 11, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment