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| -Land of the Free | ||
| In snatching Maduro, Trump pulled the linchpin holding China's global strategy together.-...allows Trump to exert unanticipated leverage over both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. | ||
| 2026-01-08 | ||
| [AmericanMind] The “Donroe Doctrine” In Action The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine was barely a month old when the president ran a successful one-hour military operation, with no American casualties, that captured Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro. Most of the responses thus far have been one-dimensional, for better or worse: “Trump grabbed a wanted narcoterrorist cartel leader to stand trial.” “He’s starting another war for oil to help his capitalist cronies.” “He’s getting us into another war of choice.” “He’s betrayed his base and done a regime change as a tool of the (insert hidden hand here).” These arguments are simple and easy to understand. They range from the politically and legally tidy to stale anti-imperialist Marxism and paranoid isolationism, which often sound like the same thing, to the ragebait trolling of the gullible. But they all fail to understand the full gravity of the administration’s accomplishment in Venezuela. In capturing Maduro, Trump has removed a key pillar that, if played wisely, could compromise the web of entangling alliances of many of our most dangerous adversaries. Operation Absolute Resolve, paralleling the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Iran, just might have forestalled Communist China’s expected invasion of Taiwan. The synchronicity is perfect. Maduro joins Iran’s mullahs in a pas de deux to the bottom, while the Cuban Communist regime, constantly suckling at a wealthy patron’s teat for 65 years, now faces a fatal weaning. Ordinarily, these would be historic wins for Trump and the United States. And indeed they are. However, this trifecta of victories is merely a prelude to greater potential wins ahead.
The administration’s move to take Maduro now allows Trump to exert unanticipated leverage over both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. CCP war planners almost certainly never thought the U.S. would depose Maduro. Xi is unlikely to invade Taiwan under these new conditions, and Trump’s dominance over China’s oil supply can dent Xi’s seeming invincibility as party leader and the patron of the Global South, which is already bleeding. Beijing buys as much oil as it can that is not subject to American pressure—oil that cannot be sold just anywhere because it is sanctioned, so it’s unloaded at a heavy discount. Russia is China’s largest foreign oil supplier. China has also been buying between 60% and 90% of Venezuela’s heavy crude and 85% and 90% of Iran’s light crude. This sanctioned oil is cheap twice over for Beijing. First, China gets it at a pirate discount, and second, it generally pays not in American petrodollars but in printable Chinese yuan. Depending on the figures, and factoring in Venezuelan oil shipped to China under a false flag like Malaysia, Venezuela and Iran together provide as much as 30-35% of China’s present oil imports. (Arab countries responsive to U.S. concerns provide roughly another 40%.) With pro-American governments expected to run Venezuela and Iran soon, Trump will be able to regulate a good 70% of Communist China’s present-day oil needs. Russia, by contrast, supplies about 18-20% of China’s oil imports. The expected quick recovery of Iranian oil production, along with the slower, long-term recovery of Venezuela’s decrepit oil infrastructure atop the world’s largest reserves, will keep oil prices down. That’s good for America and terrible for Russia. That also means the U.S. will need to exert less pressure in the Indo-Pacific going forward, which is a net benefit to American NATO commitments in Europe. The United States might even be able to reduce its NATO expenditures further than planned, as most NATO countries spend more on their own defense—a win from Trump’s first term. The reason for this is that the loss of discounted, sanctioned Iranian and Venezuelan oil will give China more leverage to chisel Russia for even steeper discounts. A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM The aftermath of the regime change in Venezuela (and soon in Iran) is unlikely to topple Xi Jinping, the party boss. But a serious disruption to the CCP’s cheap oil flows would undercut Xi’s dominant narrative. It would raise his political risks, erode his room for maneuvering, and expose his weaknesses at home and abroad. All of this would diminish his standing even further if oil instability provoked an economic shock or visible failure in governance. For example, a sudden jolt to the operation of China’s National Oil Companies (NOC) trading or refining would raise energy costs, slow industry, or trigger inflation.
The mere specter of Trump and his successors’ ability to regulate Chinese oil imports will not only likely delay a near-inevitable invasion of Taiwan, and the CCP’s seizure of Taiwan’s massive semiconductor industry, but it will also set back Xi’s plans for other advancements, including building a blue-water navy to project power anywhere in the world and dominating artificial intelligence. Such slowdowns or reversals could mean an end to Xi Jinping’s rule, an end to Communist Party rule in China, and an end to the Chinese Communist Party itself, though Trump has publicly given zero indication of any such intent. Diplomats and markets don’t like to think this way, but they didn’t like Reagan’s loyalists’ idea against the Soviets, either, and those diplomats and markets were wrong. The loss of Venezuela and, ultimately, the Cuba domino, on top of Trump’s decisive move early in 2025 to ensure American interests in the Panama Canal, will deprive the CCP of any hope of establishing naval port access in the Caribbean. This is all, of course, consistent with the powerful restraint philosophy of the Monroe Doctrine, which aimed to protect the independence of new American republics from European empires. The Trump Corollary subtly broadened the Monroe Doctrine to exclude the Chinese Communist empire. It merits mention here that the CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative did not encroach into the Western Hemisphere until 2013, the year the Obama Administration formally renounced the Monroe Doctrine. | ||
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