Washington’s commitment to international law and multilateralism died long before the emergence of Donald Trump. America’s commitment to upholding global liberal values has always seemed to be largely symbolic and determined by circumstantial events.
Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon all authorized operations within Indochina that violated the laws of war and killed hundreds of thousands. Bill Clinton managed to rack up some rather horrific incidents and boondoggles. And practically no nation in the entire Western Hemisphere has escaped the tentacles of U.S. regime change policies. Thirty-six years to the day before Trump’s military kidnapped Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, Manuel Noriega was detained by George H.W. Bush’s Delta Force in Panama and removed forcibly from power.
Despite these divergences, for decades the Cold War and its myriad proxies helped to provide our government with cover from global criticism. That many of our human rights atrocities and anti-democratic actions were done in opposition to Soviet activity helped to paper over some of our worst deeds. But after the collapse of the USSR, during America’s brush with unipolarity and the war on terror, this pretext for international order collapsed under the weight of new and intractable conditions.
America’s unipolarism before Bush had been a moment of enormous, if contentious, possibility.
George W. Bush’s foreign policy wasn’t an aberration, but it was the moment where, unfettered from Cold War commitments to international law and liberal international order, America began to drunkenly bumble its way through unipolarity. Put simply, Bush’s actions directly paved the way for Trump’s bellicose unilateralism. And many incidents during the Bush years helped to build toward this idea.
The invasion of Iraq was based on false pretenses and an intense penchant for graft. Intelligence reports and National Security Council memos were ignored in favor of contradicting information from less reliable sources. Contractors and hawks came to run our operations in Iraq, with little oversight or constraint. Various laws and human lives were ultimately trampled upon in order to meet preconceived political goals tied to elite economic interests, under the guise of liberating the Middle East from tyranny.
These kinds of graft-ridden foreign boondoggles had happened under previous presidents. But never before had an administration been so overtly and intensely tied to the idea of unilateral intervention. Bush’s foreign policy became fundamentally dependent on democracy being swiftly delivered to Iraq through regime decapitation. On the political surface was a pure love for democracy, but beneath rested something far more sinister.
Within a year of the invasion, the intent and scope of the operation became clearer. Lies over weapons of mass destruction and connections to regional terrorist groups had been used to justify the war. Upon toppling Saddam Hussein, Bush’s promised vision of freedom and democracy did not come to fruition, and in a few years Iraq found itself suffering the damage from this imperial overreach. Sectarian violence erupted throughout the country resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths, while American occupation zones were gradually converted into public-private partnerships between the American military and its plethora of corporate benefactors.
Billions in state-building funds were lost to corruption, oil production was privatized and sold off to foreign bidders, and sectarian skirmishes stunted the region’s political development. Despite these circumstances, no one was ever punished. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld got to live out their post-administration activities in the lap of luxury. All participated in talk shows, wrote books, painted portraits, and engaged in business deals, some of which were tied to their actions in Iraq. The war had been overwhelmingly perceived as a catastrophic mistake, and politically the Republican Party was punished in 2006 and 2008, but in the end, naked unilateral power projections abroad had brought no consequences for those responsible. Halliburton was richer, Iraqi oil was flowing, and Bush was appearing on Ellen to talk about veterans.
America’s unipolarism before Bush had been a moment of enormous, if contentious, possibility. But after 9/11 and Iraq, the avenues for global order became closed off. For the emerging world leaders of the 21st century, America’s excesses in the Middle East and its unilateral power projections were not aberrations, but instead a look into how global politics was evolving.
DONALD TRUMP CAME TO MEET this moment well. Trump campaigned on America First policies like domestic industrialization, anti-immigration, and opposition to foreign wars. He quite famously attacked Bush and other hawks for their foreign-policy agendas. This more isolationist approach appeared at a glance to stand apart from Bush and his neoconservative establishment cadres.
Once in power, however, Trump has taken the lessons of the Bush years in stride, if less subtly. In 2025 alone, America bombed Iran, Venezuela, Nigeria, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. And now, three days into 2026, our country has performed an illegal coup against Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, alongside military strikes in the country. The country is now supposedly set to be run by American officials, though the credibility of these claims seems tenuous. The possibility of a ground war between U.S. forces and Venezuelan militants, if not the actual army, seems far more likely given Trump’s goals. As with Iraq, removal of the dictator alone will probably prove an ineffective strategy, and more resources will be needed to contain the ensuing chaos.
The justifications for these hawkish actions are also blatantly contradictory. We ostensibly invaded Venezuela to engage in regime change and build a new, democratic polity. But after mentioning these necessities of justification, Trump immediately made energetic promises of American occupation and oil privatization. He provided no timetable for the occupation, no information around when elections could be held, and nothing surrounding which “group” would actually be running a country with over 30 million citizens.
Trump has followed the Bush Iraq playbook almost perfectly, and with great speed. Trump has used Bush-era classics to justify the war, such as through his administration’s classification of fentanyl (which isn’t even produced in Venezuela) as a weapon of mass destruction, or of Maduro as a dangerous dictator who must fall to protect our way of life. Further, the threats from Venezuelan cartels, and their supposed connections to Maduro, have been repeatedly brought forth without evidence.
The invasion and coup are about oil and power. During a press conference, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth couldn’t hold themselves back from gushing over the country’s mass oil wealth. The occupation will now pay for itself and “our” oil wealth will be delivered back to us, they said without any hesitation. U.S. government investment, especially into Venezuela’s crumbling infrastructure, was also promised. Within the next few months, the goal is for Venezuela to have a kind of Coalition Provisional Authority, whether on the ground or remotely through a pliant remnant of the Maduro regime, consisting of a broad coalition of Trump and American oligarchs who will help to make Venezuela great again. Again, we’ve seen this show before.
Fundamentally, the operation serves not to prevent drug trafficking or engage in nation building, but as a promise that America will loot an entire country with no repercussions or costs. An ostensible America First agenda will now be delivered through hemispheric control and private oil acquisition. The false pretenses that littered Bush’s promises are still here, but after 20 years, our government cannot even pretend to really care about their implementation. The fundamental logic that drove Bush and his lackeys to exert U.S. power for private gain is still alive and well, but now no effort is made to hide the selfish goals. Iraq was the tragedy; Venezuela is now the farce.
BUOYED BY A SUPREME COURT that has bestowed upon him virtual immunity for official acts, Trump can now openly threaten, bomb, and invade any country that is not capable of defending itself. Graft, and the open promise of enrichment among favorite cronies and political operatives, is now commonplace and normalized.
Ultimately, Trump’s bellicose unilateralism represents not a departure from foreign-policy orthodoxy, but the inevitable result of Bush’s response to American unipolarism. Once intelligence and nominal humanitarian ideals were openly politicized, and once it was revealed that international atrocities could be committed wantonly and without any consequences, the game was set internally. Further, once it was revealed that international law, rather than serving as a universal guardrail, was instead only applied to the weak, conditions globally began to change. Despots and dictators recognized the new rules and reacted accordingly.
For major powers, this logic is rather clear: Might makes right. The U.S. can invade and plunder Venezuela without major consequences. Russia can invade Ukraine and still maintain connections with the Global South, and likely still end up with an outrageously beneficial peace agreement. China can perform domestic atrocities against minority populations and engage in a hegemonic squeezing of Taiwan and Burma with no real pushback. The Saudis, Gulf monarchies, and Israelis can all engage in their own little military projects, inflicting death and destruction against millions, with very little punishment. If you have enough political and economic power, international rules can be entirely ignored, or even directly weaponized to go after enemies and competitors.
Like Bush in Iraq, these imperial incursions may go poorly, leading to quagmires and mass death and unpopularity at home and abroad. But with the levers of democratic accountability broken, it’s not certain what protections this offers weak countries in the crosshairs of the powerful.
Bush set the precedent for all future presidents and world leaders. Unilateral acts of aggression are now only illegal if you cannot back them up with force or leverage. The economic spoils of war are now normalized and quite ubiquitous. Adherence to human rights or freedom is now window dressing, only to be used when politically convenient. The hubris of Bush, and his failed attempt to cement America’s unipolarity through force, has now led to a world where the powerful can act without consequences. Putin can invade, Xi can invade, and Trump especially can invade. Leaders can be abducted overnight. And there seems to be little in the way of stopping these forces from progressing further, dragging us deeper into a world order of chaos and power projection.