Trump Doctrine and the Destiny of Empire

Cartoon via Countercurrents

By Gabriel Haythornthwaite

In the early morning hours of January 3rd 2026, Trump America launched a sneak attack on Venezuela after months of annihilationist threats, murderous bombings, full-on blockade and high seas piracy. Headlined by an aerial bombardment of Caracas, the capital, an elite American death squad unit succeeded in taking Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro--and his wife, Cilia Flores--hostage and spirited them swiftly to New York to be indicted on multiply ironic trumped-up charges of drug trafficking and corruption.

At a press conference later that morning, Herr Trump gushed with hubris about the operation enthusing, “we are going to run the country”. And that is not all. Trump’s triumph of the will seminar also suggested that Cuba was next on the forcible freedom list, benevolently braying that “we want to help the people in Cuba”. With that cheery New Year’s announcement, the American Empire has fully embraced the mantle of the Fourth Reich, an imperial mission in blood-soaked development since 1945.

This American invasion and hostage-taking of both the President and country of Venezuela signals that America’s bloated billionaire Warlord--son of a Klansman and an open Nazi-talking point maniac--is set upon a full realization of both the Munroe Doctrine (domination of the Americas) and Manifest Destiny (direct control of the entire North American continent).

Trump has also moved quickly to dispatch imperial orders and talking points to his vassals in Europe and Canada. French President Emmanuel Macron effusively endorsed the invasion-kidnap gambit saying that Venezuelans will “rejoice” at Maduro’s ouster. Our very own mountebanker-PM Mark Carney took the time on the Nazi Musk-owned X platform to pontificate about the unparalleled evil of Maduro while urging a “peaceful transition” (memo to Venezuelans: don’t fight back), “respect for international law” (i.e., a free hand for US death squads) and the recognition of Venezuela’s “sovereign rights” (the right to be bombed and robbed at will).

In another cheery New Year’s announcement closer to home, Elections Alberta authorized signature collection for a separation referendum in the province on January 2nd. The sponsor of this Quisling ballot, the 'Alberta Prosperity Project', has recently had its grifter officials openly meet with their Trump bosses to plan the hostile takeover of the first domino in Canada’s shaky confederation set-up. This American ‘color’ counter-revolution front has boasted that they are working towards securing a half-trillion dollar 'line of credit' from Washington for the 51st state of Alberta.

And still Canadians sleep. After all, our Dear Leader Carney has told us since June that Trump is not interested in Annexation, despite the MAGA strongman’s continuing public threats. America’s Manifest Destiny is just an obscure note in the history books and no amount of Trump hostile takeover taunts seems capable of waking liberals from their self-induced slumber.

Liberals are further reassured (read: deluded) that Trump’s European vassals will come to Canada’s aid against the Empire, presumably with the massive infusion of new American military hardware that the UK and EU have bravely agreed to bankroll.

Furthermore, liberals across the country have long signaled their terror of political conflict of any kind which has allowed, since the Convoy COVID takeover experiment, a minority of corporate-sponsored Nazis to increasingly dictate government policy across the board.

Sleep, delusion, paralyzing fear…these are the inducements of the widespread condition of Canadians who insist that It Can't Happen Here.

And yet, the material evidence of an American Annexation ballot in Alberta, which has until May 2nd to collect around 178,000 signatures to trigger a separation vote, demonstrates that…It IS Happening Here…no matter what people want to believe.

The Venezuelan invasion is the indicator that American Nazism is fully on the move. Trump won't need to kidnap 'our' political leaders as Carney is already in harness having endorsed the Orange Ogre’s War spending demands which will push War spending to at least $150b by 2035, more than the entirety of Ottawa’s fiscal transfers to provinces and territories. This beyond-obscene push to massively expand corporate welfare for American military firms is consistent with Carney’s support for Trump’s half-trillion dollar demented doomsday 'Golden Dome' missile scheme.

Add in Carney’s capitulation on trade before a coerced renegotiation of the ‘free trade’ USMCA begins, the ramping up of repressive border policy at Trump’s insistence and PM Carnage going full DOGE in a scorched earth war against public service and provision…and what Trump America has is a very good dog indeed that will make extraordinary rendition unnecessary.

Angry at being left out of the Trump kiss-ass Olympics, Conservative Pierre Poilievre foamed at the mouth on Nazi X about his fascist excitement at the 'fall of socialism' in Venezuela, openly endorsing in the most extreme terms the American assault on Latin America.

The hour is late. Annexation advances under open American sponsorship.

And yet Canadians keep hitting the political snooze bar whether they claim to be 'Woke' or wallow in ideological Fash sewage.

The long deferred Democratic Revolution in Canada now faces the oncoming avalanche of an American Nazi ‘color’ Counter-Revolution. Where is the democratic opposition against the American Annexation operation underway?

Apart from the tragicomic ‘Forever Canada’ counter-ballot effort, which has been squeezed out by the fifth columnists, the silence around this question in Canada is deafening.

The federal Not Democratic Party leadership debate in November was absent of both debate and the question of American Annexation. The liberal NGO-led ‘Draw The Line’ one-day protest in September also assiduously avoided the topic. To the extent there is any comment on Trump’s hostile takeover threats, progressive liberal activists have largely preached indifference to Annexation, echoing Trump's line that Canada is a 'fake' country. As if there is such a thing as a country that is not created by human agency.

While the capital colonial setup of Canadian confederation is not something that any democratic-minded person should support, how is that people do not think that a deeply unjust political and economic order would not get markedly worse in the wake of a Trump USA takeover? Indifference to American Annexation can only mean contempt for the national rights of First Nations, the Métis, the Inuit and the Québécois even to the mild extent they are recognized in Canadian law. Ditto with respect to the wholesale privatization and union busting which would result from ‘harmonization’ with the American government shithole service model. And to hell with Charter Rights; who needs them, right?

Here is where I end with a modest proposition--that to defend ourselves from American Annexation, we need to fight for a genuinely democratic country in Canada; a new federation of free and equal nations whose priorities are determined by our respective working majorities. So, how do we begin to build a democratic country worth defending from Trump’s fascist doctrine of Manifest Destiny?

Gabriel Haythornthwaite is a leftwing writer and political organizer in BC.