2026
by Eduardo del Buey
2026
2026 began where 2025 left off.
Poorly.
Many had expected that once the United States moved against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, they would replace him with the democratically elected duo of Edmundo Gonzalez and Maria Corinna Machado.
The U.S. removed Maduro and his wife from Caracas and arrested them, taking them to New York for an eventual trial.
But anyone who has studied Mr. Trump knows that democracy is not what he seeks.
In Venezuela, he decided to leave Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez and the rest of her murderous regime in place in exchange for Venezuela’s oil. They control the country internally, and the US takes the spoils.
The U.S. has reportedly sold $500 million of Venezuelan oil on the open market and placed the funds in a private account in Qatar, according to various media sources.
Ms. Machado decided to try to change Mr. Trump’s mind by visiting the White House and giving him her Nobel Prize, which is legally non-transferrable.
Her grovelling will erode her credibility significantly, especially since Mr. Trump publicly announced that he is advised that she “doesn’t have the support or respect within the country” and that it would be “tough for her to be the leader”.
But it gets worse.
Mr. Trump wrote to the Norwegian Prime Minister that “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”
Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway?” Trump continued. “There are no written documents; it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also.”
I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you!
President DJT”
So, invading Greenland, destroying NATO, and giving Russian President Putin his geopolitical dream come true, is in Mr. Trump’s mind adequate revenge for the Nobel Prize Committee not awarding him the coveted prize. The Committee is a non-governmental organization with no ties to the Norwegian Government.
Further along around the globe, the Iranian demonstrators, some 16,000 who have been murdered by the regime, still await Mr. Trump’s promise to intervene if one demonstrator is killed.
Indeed, after the US received a $400 billion plane from Qatar last year, (Iran’s major ally in the region and main funder of Hamas and Hezbollah), and promises of billions in investment funding from which Mr. Trump’s family would undoubtedly presonally benefit, I wonder if replacing the Ayatollahs with Reza Pahlavi would not reduce Trump’s ability to control Iran and its massive oil reserves.
Some suspect that Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump’s idol, likes the current political framework in Iran and would look askance at an Iran firmly allied with Israel, an objective Pahlavi has clearly stated would arise from his return to government.
Moreover, Qatar (a close ally of Iran and primary funder of Hezbollah and Hamas) fears the overthrow of an Islamic regime and a return of Persian culture and the elimination of Islam as the governing force in Iran. This would undercore the claim by many that Islam is a colonialist force that can and must be overthrown in the name of freedom and progress, leaving many leaders in the region without the religious crutch on which to lean politically.
Already, mosque attendance in Iran is down significantly, with large numbers of Iranians turning away from Islam, some even back to Persia’s original religion -- Zoroastrianism.
Democracy, international or constitutional law, common sense, or indeed morality have no place in Trump’s thinking. His administration constantly pushes the boundaries and seeks to reverse many of the rights enshrined in the Constitution or in common law. Indeed, one only has to see what he is doing with ICE in Minnesota and other Democrat run states to see his intentions are not in keeping with the spirit of the Constitution.
Indeed, he has often said that there will be no need for another presidential election in 2028 and that there is no need for the midterms scheduled for November.
It is not beyond belief that his overall plan is to create havoc globally and, in the U.S. Indeed, I believe that he is purposely provoking anti-ICE demonstrators in several Democratic run states towards greater radicalism, looking to respond to apparent “violence” against his policies by invoking the Insurgency Act.
This would allow him to use the military as a police force, introduce some form of martial law, and cancel the midterm elections in November that polls indicate he may probably lose.
This way, he would maintain control of both Houses of Congress, preclude any attempt to impeach him, and undermine whatever democratic institutions remained standing.
It may sound wild indeed.
But Mr. Trump himself has stated that he is after absolute power and no one yet, not the Senate, the House, the Military, the Supreme Court, or the Republican Party, appears able or willing to stop him.
Who or what can?
A year from now Trump will begin his assault on Canada. It will begin by creating a false narrative of wildly imaginative fabrications going back decades leading to the imminent threats from China and Russia which the US needs to forestall by embracing Canada both figuratively and literally.
The scenario you describe does not sound wild at all. It is exactly what's unfolding as we speak, before our eyes and quickening daily. At its mildest - a seismic wake-up call, at its harshest - a desolate ongoing nightmare for the American people. As we are increasingly "all in this together", the rest of the world also need to take this seriously and respond, come together in some way. This state of affairs has been coming for over two decades, yet still many do not see or want to seen what's right under their noses.