On the back of the dollar bill, the phrase Novus Ordo Seclorum (new secular order) anticipates the key to the new American security doctrine. The attack against Venezuela and the uncertain capture of President Nicolás Maduro they confirm the end of the liberal order, if it ever existed, and the disanchoring of Trump’s United States from the rules-based international order.
The dawn of the new international order is built today on the use of force, revisionism and security on the continent. I point out five consequences of military intervention, five dimensions of analysis of the new order.
1. Expansive presidential power
The attack crowns the new doctrine of a president imperialwhich executes orders without waiting for congressional approval, legal validation, or media opinion. He double-check It is diluted by the expansionism of presidential power. The second Trump administration understands the new order from a security perspective: a nation at war against drugs (or migration) and threatened by new powers, a euphemism for China, which does not respect procedures or times.
Trump self-identifies with historic and founding American presidents: George Washington (1789), Abraham Lincoln (1861) and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1940). All three were charismatic presidents and the 250th anniversary of the republic fits with this Caesarist narrative.
The erosion of the political and legal system is a fact. The president has approved an extensive and varied package of regulations that support the ideas of emergency power, a state of permanent crisis and suffocation of the opposition and the judicial system. The attack on Venezuela is another milestone in the reconfiguration of the presidency’s relations with the legislative and judicial arms of power, in line with the hamiltonian tradition of a strong and unifying executive power.
2. America for Americans?
In the international sphere, the attack on Venezuela advances in a diplomatic manner based on the defense of national interest in the hemisphere. The concept of “America for Americans(Americans)”: Panama, Mexico or Canada pushed to bow to Trump’s mandate. And the US demanding the sovereignty over Greenland.
In the region, while Brazil and Colombia lead the regional opposition, Kast’s new Chile and Milei’s Argentina are ideological allies. On the continent, a shift towards the nationalist, identity-based and anti-migration right is announced.
In Caracas, if the transition is aligned with these values, any hope for national unity and peaceful transition to full democracy will disappear.
3. Master resources
The oil. Again, but for different reasons. Infrastructure, ports or minerals reflect the shift from globalization towards geoeconomics. The United States wants to project its power in energy markets and regulation.
Control of Venezuelan oil, rather than supplying resources to the domestic market, aims to impose prices and dominate supply. The new The United States aligns energy sovereignty, technological development, trade and security.
The model of Pax Silicathe international alliance signed at the end of 2025 and led by the United States to secure the supply chains of critical technologies such as semiconductors and AI, inaugurates the era of transactional diplomacy, chips in exchange for minerals. To the new Venezuela, using its hydrocarbon reserves will allow it to participate in the new power game.
4. Geopolitical rearrangement
The American gaze on the territories feeds a sovereignist and revisionist foreign policy like that of China, Israel or Russia. It imposes the schmittian nomosproposed in the middle of the last century by the German philosopher Carl Schmitt and based on the friendly country-enemy country distinction and not in liberal thought, in which cooperation, international law, democracy and the free market prevail.
Thus, zones of influence appear, resources are distributed and power blocks are balanced. Without opposition, China would dominate the scene in Southeast Asia; Russia would cool the war to occupy 20% of Ukraine and control material resources and energy; and Israel would redesign the Middle East and, sooner rather than later, it would reach trade agreements with neighboring countries.
5. Europe, democracy and Hobbes
Democratic values, the rule of law or free trade fade. Without effective capacity, the European Union suffers in this scenario. As before in Gaza, the European project has a strong ideological disagreement with the great powers, but it fails to gain respect. The effect of military intervention recovers The Hobbesians and their political realismby which freedom is ceded to an absolute sovereign in exchange for peace and security. In the Trumpist order it is presidential authority, not truth, law or democratic values, that makes the law.
What will the polls say?
A final note in US internal key. 2026 is an election year. From March to November, there will be 39 elections for governor and renewal of the chambers. Trumpism debates its succession model in Venezuela. The one led by J. D. Vance does not want problems abroad and wants to renew the industrial economic model, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio is committed to the recomposition of the international order with a strong and dominant United States. The result of the Venezuelan operation can help tip the balance and define the favorite to succeed Trump in the 2028 presidential elections.
In short, the attack on Venezuela is not only an intervention in the region: it also represents the change of era in which we live. The Trumpist narrative, previously dislocated in empty mottos and slogans, seems to have found the first step of its strategy. Soft power, transatlantic relations or the peace zone of the Ibero-American community are left behind. The new order begins.
Juan Luis ManfrediPrince of Asturias Distinguished Professor @Georgetown, University of Castilla-La Mancha
This article was originally published in The Conversation. Read the original.
