Trump isn't nation-building; he's puppet-making
By Andreas Kluth / Bloomberg Opinion
Absent a “real” strategy in his aggressive foreign policy, President Donald Trump is nonetheless revealing an emergent style or pattern. From Iran, which he is currently pounding, to Venezuela and perhaps Cuba and other countries, he’s not interested in building democracies, but in erecting puppet states.
“What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario,” Trump told The New York Times in a conversation about his ongoing campaign against Iran. “Everybody’s kept their job except for two people.”
Trump was referring to his recent “decapitation” of the anti-American regime in Caracas, when U.S. forces extracted the dictator and his wife but otherwise left the Chavista government in place. Since then, Trump has done little to help Venezuela’s democratic opposition. Instead, he seems content to retain Delcy Rodriguez, Venezuela’s acting president, as a pliant client, as long as she keeps taking orders on any matter that the White House cares about, starting with Venezuela’s oil.
In Iran, the initial regime decapitation has already taken a more literal form, after the country’s longtime leader, Ali Khamenei, and about 40 of his henchmen were killed in the early rounds of the U.S.-Israeli air strikes. Beyond that tactical success, the Trump administration seems to have given little thought to possible leadership transitions.
Read more at: https://www.heraldnet.com/2026/03/09/comment-trump-isnt-nation-building-hes-puppet-making/
The Banana Republican party wants to bring back the Banana wars.
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