What Comes After Venezuela? |
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4 January 2026 - Erlenbach
Is the rules-based international order at an end? Putin's war on Ukraine has all but succeeded in legitimizing the seizing of land. Xi's New Year's address bellicosely said the capture of Taiwan will come sooner rather than later while they continue to press claims in the South China Sea militarily against their weaker neighbors. Rwanda continues to support a proxy army, M-23, capturing territory in Congo. Meanwhile the EU dithers and debates, managing their continued demographic decline. And in the US Trump is throwing out all the rules, the good with the bad, with seemingly random tariffs instead of free trade, unilaterally bombing Iran alongside Israel, and yesterday's invasion of Venezuela. When I read that Maduro and his wife had already been captured and brought to the US I really thought it was fake news. Any moral high ground that the US had in saying Putin was wrong to invade Ukraine or that Xi would wrong to invade Taiwan is gone. Each of these big three powers already has a free had because of UN security council vetos. It seems the race to capture resources is on, which is probably Taiwan's only hope because the US doesn't want to see their semiconductor industry under China's control. Ukraine was already shaken down for resources and then thrown under the bus to accede to Putin's conquests. Rwanda similarly received a blank check from the White House in exchange for resource access. And the US has already said they'll be the ones selling Venezuela's oil now. The realpolitik of power seems to be ascendant. Will the Baltic nations or Poland be the next target for Russia? Will the Panama Canal or Cuba be the next target for the US? Can the little countries do anything? Friday I hiked around the WWII era mountain fortress on Etzel here in Switzerland guarding the pass above the Zürichsee. Would such armed neutrality work today to keep a small country out of war as it worked for Switzerland then? Or were Sweden and Finland right that only abandoning neutrality and banding together with other countries could they hope to defend themselves?
