WASHINGTON — Venezuela dangers “a second strike” if its interim authorities doesn’t acquiesce to U.S. calls for. Cuba is “able to fall,” and Colombia is “very sick, too.”
Iran might get “hit very onerous” if its authorities cracks down on protesters. And Denmark dangers U.S. intervention, as properly, as a result of “we want Greenland,” President Trump mentioned.
In simply 37 minutes whereas talking with reporters Sunday aboard Air Pressure One, Trump threatened to assault 5 nations, each allies and adversaries, with the would possibly of the U.S. navy — a unprecedented flip for a president who constructed his political profession rejecting conventional conservative views on the train of American energy and vowing to place America first.
The president’s threats come as a 3rd of the U.S. naval fleet stays stationed within the Caribbean, after Trump launched a daring assault on Venezuela that seized its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his spouse over the weekend.
The objective, U.S. officers mentioned, was to point out the Venezuelan authorities and the broader world what the American navy is able to — and to compel companions and foes alike to stick to Trump’s calls for by means of intimidation, somewhat than commit the U.S. navy to extra advanced, standard, long-term engagements.
It’s the deployment of overwhelming and spectacular power in surgical navy operations — Maduro’s seize, final yr’s strikes towards Iranian nuclear services, assassinations of Islamic State management and Iran’s prime common in Iraq — that display Trump as a brazen chief keen to danger struggle, thereby successfully avoiding it, one Trump administration official mentioned, explaining the president’s strategic considering.
But consultants and former Trump aides warn the president’s method dangers miscalculation, alienating important allies and emboldening U.S. opponents.
At a Safety Council assembly Monday on the United Nations in New York — known as by Colombia, a long-standing and main non-North Atlantic Treaty Oranization ally to the USA — Trump’s strikes had been extensively condemned. “Violations of the U.N. Constitution,” a French diplomat informed the council, “chips away on the very basis of worldwide order.”
Even the envoy from Russia, which has cultivated traditionally robust ties with the Trump administration, mentioned the White Home operation was an act of “banditry,” marking “a return to the period of illegality and American dominance by means of power, chaos and lawlessness.”
Trump’s threats to annex Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark with huge pure sources, drew explicit concern throughout Europe on Monday, with leaders throughout the continent warning the USA towards an assault that will violate the sovereignty of a NATO ally and European Union member state.
“That’s sufficient now,” Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, mentioned after Trump informed reporters that his consideration would flip to the world’s largest island in a matter of weeks.
“If the USA decides to militarily assault one other NATO nation, then every little thing would cease,” Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, informed native press. “That features NATO, and due to this fact, post-World Struggle II safety.”
Trump additionally threatened to strike Iran, the place anti-government protests have unfold all through the nation in current days. Trump had beforehand mentioned the U.S. navy was “locked and loaded” if Iranian safety forces start firing on protesters, “which is their customized.”
“The USA of America will come to their rescue,” Trump wrote on social media on Jan. 2, hours earlier than launching the Venezuela mission. “We’re locked and loaded and able to go. Thanks to your consideration to this matter!”
In Colombia, there was widespread outrage after Trump threatened navy motion towards leftist President Gustavo Petro, whom Trump accused, with out proof, of working “cocaine mills and cocaine factories.”
Petro is a frequent critic of the American president and has slammed as unlawful a sequence of deadly U.S. airstrikes towards alleged drug boats within the Caribbean and the japanese Pacific.
“Cease slandering me,” Petro wrote on X, warning that any U.S. makes an attempt towards his presidency “will unleash the individuals’s fury.”
Petro, a former leftist guerrilla, mentioned he would go to struggle to defend Colombia.
“I swore to not contact a weapon once more,” he mentioned. “However for the homeland, I’ll take up arms.”
Trump’s threats have strained relations with Colombia, a loyal U.S. ally. For many years, the nations have shared navy intelligence, a sturdy commerce relationship and a multibillion-dollar struggle towards drug trafficking.
Even a few of Petro’s home critics have involves his protection. Presidential candidate Juan Manuel Galán, who opposes Petro’s rule, mentioned Colombia’s sovereignty “have to be defended.”
“Colombia isn’t Venezuela,” Galán wrote on X. “It’s not a failed state, and we is not going to permit it to be handled as such. Right here we have now establishments, democracy and sovereignty that have to be defended.”
The president of Mexico, one other longtime U.S. ally and its largest buying and selling accomplice, has additionally spoken out forcefully towards the American operation in Caracas, and mentioned the Trump administration’s aggressive international coverage in Latin America threatens the soundness of the area.
“We categorically reject intervention within the inner affairs of different nations,” President Claudia Sheinbaum mentioned in her every day information convention Monday. “The historical past of Latin America is obvious and compelling: Intervention has by no means introduced democracy, has by no means generated well-being or lasting stability.”
She addressed Trump’s feedback over the weekend that medicine had been “pouring” by means of Mexico, and that the USA was “going to should do one thing.”
Trump has been threatening motion towards cartels for months, with some members of his administration suggesting that the USA might quickly perform drone strikes on drug laboratories and different targets inside Mexican territory. Sheinbaum has repeatedly mentioned such strikes could be a transparent violation of Mexican sovereignty.
“Sovereignty and the self-determination of peoples are non-negotiable,” she mentioned. “They’re elementary ideas of worldwide regulation and should all the time be revered with out exception.”
Cuba additionally rejected Trump’s risk of a navy intervention there, after Trump’s secretary of State, Marco Rubio, himself the descendant of Cuban immigrants, recommended that Havana could also be subsequent in Washington’s crosshairs.
“We name on the worldwide neighborhood to cease this harmful, aggressive escalation and to protect peace,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel posted on social media.
The U.S. assaults on Venezuela, and Trump’s threats of extra navy ventures, have triggered deep unease in a comparatively peaceable area that has seen fewer interstate wars in current many years than Europe, Asia or Africa.
It additionally triggered unease amongst some Trump supporters, who remembered his pledge to get the USA out of “countless” navy conflicts for good.
“I used to be the primary president in fashionable occasions,” Trump mentioned, accepting the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, “to start out no new wars.”
Wilner reported from Washington and Linthicum from Mexico Metropolis.
