Trump’s week-long blitz sparks NATO panic. But Venezuela, Greenland and oil seizures are only the start… as his audacious 33-page plan for new world order is revealed
Donald Trump has thrown America’s most sacred alliance into turmoil with an audacious five-day power grab that sparked panic around the world.
The president ordered the seizure of two oil tankers in international waters — the Russian-flagged Bella 1 off the north coast of Scotland and the Sophia in the Caribbean — on Wednesday, just a day after threatening to invade Greenland.
The seizures and threats against Denmark’s Arctic region come less than a week after Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro was captured during a dramatic purse-snatch raid on a military stronghold in Caracas early Saturday.
The relentless barrage of global attacks seems at odds with a president who campaigned on non-interventionist policies and ‘ending wars forever’.
But this is not the chaos it seems.
In his landmark 33-page National Security Strategy published last month, Trump redefined US foreign policy principles, arguing that the Western Hemisphere was now America’s private sphere, free from the malign influence of China and Russia, while post-World War II allies were branded as unreliable spenders overrun by immigrants.
Hours after the Russian tanker was seized, the President launched a blistering attack on NATO, reminding them that allies were ‘not paying their bills’; This showed that only 2 percent of their GDP was spent on defence, well below the 5 percent target set at The Hague last summer.
“Until I show up,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. ‘The USA was foolishly paying the price for these.’
President Donald Trump gestures while addressing House Republicans during the annual affairs conference meeting at the Kennedy Center, which has been renamed the Trump-Kennedy Center by its Trump-appointed board of directors, in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.
French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed British Prime Minister Keir Starmer upon his arrival at the Elysee Palace on Wednesday.
French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen upon her arrival at the Elysee Palace on Wednesday.
US forces attacked a Russian oil tanker off the north coast of Scotland on Wednesday
‘Russia and China have no fear of NATO without the US, and I doubt NATO would be there for us if we really needed them,’ he added.
‘Even if they are not on our side, we will always be on NATO’s side. ‘The only nation China and Russia fear and respect is the USA that DJT has rebuilt.’
The broadside underscored the administration’s ‘burden shifting’ philosophy laid out in the National Security Strategy released on December 2.
Gone are the days when America, as Atlas, kept the world order afloat.
Instead, allies must assume ‘primary responsibility for their own territories’ or face consequences, including losing favorable treatment in trade or technology sharing.
Trump threw decades of precedent out the window in his treatment of NATO and Congress last week.
The president did not consult any party before capturing Maduro, and now he is further chilling relations by threatening to invade Greenland, a neighbor the United States has promised to protect since 1951.
Emboldened by Maduro’s capture, Trump praised President James Monroe’s ‘Donroe Doctrine’, his version of the 1823 policy that warned Europeans against colonialism in the Americas.
“They call it the Donroe Doctrine now… American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again,” he boasted to reporters.
This shift was formalized by the ‘Trump Corollary’ of the Monroe Doctrine, which is the cornerstone of the National Security Strategy.
The strategy makes clear that tensions with Europe run deeper than defense spending.
This photo, published on US President Donald Trump’s Truth Social account on January 3, 2026, shows Maduro aboard the USS Iwo Jima after his capture by the US military
He warns that ‘the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less’ due to migration and declining birth rates.
The document states that ‘it is far from clear whether some European countries will have strong enough economies and militaries to remain reliable allies’.
More provocatively, he questions whether NATO members, who have become ‘mostly non-European’ over the decades, ‘will view their alliance with the United States in the same light as the signatories of the NATO charter’.
The strategy also makes clear that America’s foreign and economic policies are intertwined.
Before Maduro’s capture, the discourse focused on ‘narco-terrorists’ supplying drugs.
But now, with the White House’s intentions on bare display, oil has become the word of the day.
“We’re going to extract a tremendous amount of wealth from the ground,” Trump told reporters.
The management’s approach is ostentatiously mercantilist, reminiscent of the colonial era that collapsed after the Second World War.
This means rivals cannot be allowed to dominate global supply chains, especially at a time when energy and mineral wealth have become critical to the AI revolution.
The seizure of oil tankers in international waters signals that Trump now treats the Atlantic and the Caribbean as American seas, where his troops can board any ship he believes poses a threat.
For Russia and China, this is a ‘stay away’ sign.
As NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte prophetically joked last summer, Trump is proving to be a ‘dad’ to Europe.
American forces capture separate ‘dark fleet’ tanker named M/T Sophia
Ship described as ‘stateless, sanctioned dark fleet motor tanker’
European allies are scrambling to respond.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said this week that the NATO alliance would collapse if the United States seized Greenland.
‘The international community as we know it, the democratic rules of the game, NATO, the world’s strongest defense alliance; “This will all collapse if one NATO country chooses to attack another,” he said.
But some of Trump’s allies are privately enjoying the spectacle, viewing the President’s threats as typically tough negotiating tactics.
“This is 100 percent a negotiating tactic,” a close Trump ally told former Politico reporter Rachel Bade. ‘Everyone was like, ‘Oh my God!’ he says. What, are they going to drop the 82nd Airborne there, for God’s sake? NO.’
The source added: ‘People fall for this kind of thing all the time. No, this is sausage making at its finest… They just increase the pressure.’
Whether it’s a bluff or a real threat, the world takes Trump seriously.
“Don’t play games while this president is in office because things will not end well,” Marco Rubio warned Saturday.
