2026 will be all about hard power
The season of peace on earth and good will to all men did not last long, and while I’ll shed no tears at seeing a corrupt dictator snatched from his lair it’s fair to say that 2026 is off to an uneasy start.
The market response to Donald Trump’s audacious swoop on Venezuela has been predictably muscular, with defence, mining and oil stocks climbing higher. The political fallout is much less clear cut.
The raid to capture President Maduro was followed by unsubtle threats that Uncle Sam could do the same in Colombia and Cuba while the press conference that followed the US operation against the oil-rich but benighted Latin American country was designed to deliver one very simple message: only America has the power to do this.
But do what, exactly? The raid and ‘arrest’ of Maduro was certainly an impressive display of military strength and tactics but it was over in hours, whereas the Trump administration is now on the hook for months and even years of political, financial and, potentially, military engagement. But even as the wreckage of (Russian supplied) Venezuelan air defence systems continued to smoulder, the Trump White House has moved its sights – and European attention – thousands of miles away, to Greenland – a land mass that forms part of Nato ally Denmark but which Trump covets.
Europeans are justifiably aghast at the prospect of an American annexation, but there are other countries and leaders for whom America’s freshly demonstrated ‘kick the door in’ approach to geopolitics ought to cause concern. Russia, China and Iran have all lost an ally in South America. The US display of unparalleled military prowess and the policy choices that deployed it will be pored over in bunkers across the world.
‘Might is right’
There’s no escaping the fact that we are now, in the words of former MI6 chief Sir Alex Younger, living in a “new ‘might is right’ paradigm” – where “if you don’t possess hard power you don’t have a vote.”
Accordingly, sovereign defence capability has rocketed up the agenda of Western and European nations and, to quote once again the UK’s former top spook, “rebuilding our relationship with hard power” must now become an absolute priority.
Venezuela is the latest flash point but the UK faces much more urgent threats from Russia, and these must be met with a much more urgent response.
It’s time to power up.