{"id":196476,"date":"2026-01-11T04:56:43","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T04:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/whos-next-trump-hints-at-military-intervention-beyond-venezuela-usa-today\/"},"modified":"2026-01-11T04:56:43","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T04:56:43","slug":"whos-next-trump-hints-at-military-intervention-beyond-venezuela-usa-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/whos-next-trump-hints-at-military-intervention-beyond-venezuela-usa-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Who's next? Trump hints at military intervention beyond Venezuela – USA Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 If the first year of President Donald Trump\u2019s<\/a> second term was focused on brokering peace<\/a> deals around the globe<\/a>, his sophomore year is gearing up to be one that emphasizes American military power.
That begins with challenging nations in America\u2019s backyard, from adversaries such as Venezuela and Cuba to partners like Colombia and Mexico<\/a> that Trump wants to more forcefully address narcotics trafficking and illegal migration to the United States. It’s becoming a political sore spot<\/a> for Trump, whose foreign forays are beginning to frustrate<\/a> some lawmakers in his own party.
After arresting Venezuelan President Nicola\u0301s Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, in a deadly raid on their compound<\/a> in Caracas, Trump and top U.S. officials warned that other countries in the Western Hemisphere and beyond could be the next targets of U.S. intervention.
The list includes Greenland, a territory of NATO ally Denmark, and Iran, which the U.S. bombed last summer. Trump recently threatened to “knock the hell”<\/a> out of Tehran and said America is<\/a> \u201clocked and loaded and ready to go\u201d if the regime uses deadly force against protesters.
Current and former Trump administration officials say more U.S. military action could very well be in the offing.\u00a0
\u201cI think he is serious about all these things,\u201d Victoria Coates, who served as deputy national security adviser to Trump in his first administration, said of the president.
She called Greenland and the Panama Canal, which Trump has previously talked about reclaiming<\/a> from the Central American country, as “almost strategic imperatives\u201d for the U.S. to acquire.
\u201cI don’t think he felt he was getting very much traction and now wants them to pay attention to this, that he is serious, that he will take action if pushed,\u201d Coates said of Denmark.
She said the Greenland and Panama Canal disputes are \u201cmuch more likely\u201d to be resolved diplomatically than through force. However, the administration refused this week to rule out using the military to take over Greenland,<\/a> a former Danish colony that\u2019s been under home rule since 1979. Trump has sought to acquire the Arctic territory since his first term.
“I would like to make a deal the easy way, but if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way,” Trump told reporters on Jan. 9.
The president has intentionally remained ambiguous about how far he\u2019s willing to go to make nations that are irking him fall in line.
Maduro \u201ceffed around\u201d and found out, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth<\/a> said at a Jan. 3 news conference with Trump, hours after his capture.
\u201cThis is America first. This is peace through strength,\u201d the Pentagon chief said. \u201cWelcome to 2026.\u201d
In the last month, the U.S. has carried out strikes against Islamist terrorist targets in Syria and Nigeria<\/a>, in addition to the attack on Venezuela. Trump said this week if militants in Nigeria kill more Christians, what he hoped would be a one-off \u201cwill be a many-time strike\u201d<\/a> inside the West African nation.
Trump has also suggested that several other nations, much closer to home, could become his next targets.\u00a0
Cuba is a \u201cfailing nation\u201d that\u2019s \u201cvery similar\u201d to Venezuela, he said of the communist country. Colombia is a \u201cvery sick\u201d country, he charged, and \u201crun by a sick man.\u201d\u00a0
Trump accused Colombia\u2019s democratically-elected president, Gustavo Petro, of \u201cmaking cocaine and selling it to the United States\u201d and proclaimed on Jan. 4, \u201cHe\u2019s not going to be doing it very long, let me tell you.\u201d\u00a0
Petro, a leftist who has clashed with Trump, responded that<\/a> the U.S. president should stop \u201cslandering\u201d<\/a> him. He has previously rejected Trump\u2019s accusations<\/a> that he is involved in the drug trade and his government collaborates with the DEA<\/a>.
\u201cMexico has to get their act together,\u201d Trump said at another point, referring to his belief that the neighboring country\u2019s government could do more to stop drug trafficking to the United States. \u201cAnd we\u2019re going to have to do something.\u201d
Backing him up was close ally and hawkish Sen. Lindsey Graham, who stood beside Trump on Air Force One as the president fielded questions from the press.
\u201cYou just wait for Cuba,\u201d Graham chimed in. \u201cTheir days are numbered. We\u2019re going to wake up one day, I hope in \u201826, in our backyard, we\u2019re going to have allies in these countries, doing business with America, not narcoterrorist dictators killing Americans.\u201d
The Republican who represents South Carolina then declared: \u201cThis is a big fricking day. And everybody in the world is thinking differently than they were just a few days ago, because of what you did.\u201d
Venezuela is still the most ripe for additional action, former U.S. officials say, with Trump pledging to make interim President Delcy Rodriguez \u201cpay a big price\u201d<\/a> if she doesn\u2019t cooperate with his administration. He said on Jan. 9 that he canceled a planned second wave of attacks and no longer thought they would be necessary.
\u201cI don’t think we’re going to see any likely in the next few days or weeks, but certainly that’s an option that remains on the table,\u201d said Christopher Hernandez-Roy, a former senior leader in the Organization of American States, a multinational body that aims to strengthen peace and security in the western hemisphere.
Hernandez-Roy noted that Trump has also told Petro, of Colombia, he needs to \u201cwatch his undefined\u201d and sounded off on Mexico<\/a> and Denmark, as the U.S. sought to maximize its leverage following the strike on Venezuela.
In the case of Mexico, Trump is likely trying to squeeze further concessions from President Claudia Sheinbaum\u2019s government on migration, fentanyl and trade.
\u201cSo are we likely to see more acts in the near future? I personally don’t think so, but with the action in Venezuela, the president has signaled that he is in fact willing to use force to achieve certain objectives. And that puts a whole bunch of adversaries and even some friends on notice,\u201d said Hernandez-Roy, who worked on Venezuela at OAS during Trump\u2019s first administration.
Trump laid out his approach to the region that has long been a focus of<\/a> Secretary of State Marco Rubio\u2019s in the administration\u2019s National Security Strategy<\/a>, a 29-page document the White House released in December to little fanfare.
The goal is for the Western Hemisphere to remain “reasonably stable and well-governed enough” to discourage mass migration to the United States” and free from “hostile foreign incursion or ownership” of core assets, strategic locations and critical supply chains.
It goes on to say the United States will \u201cassert and enforce\u201d its modern day take on the Monroe Doctrine, an early 19th century proclamation which holds that the U.S. will stop any foreign power from interfering in the Americas. Trump\u2019s administration argues that adversaries such as China are exercising undue influence in Latin American countries like Venezuela<\/a> and the Panama Canal.\u00a0
Trump has begun publicly referring to his aggressive posture as the Donroe Doctrine<\/a> and said it is in keeping with his administration\u2019s pursuit of peace through a robust demonstration of American strength.
\u201cThis isn\u2019t a country that\u2019s on the other side of the world,\u201d Trump said of Venezuela on Jan. 4. \u201cIt\u2019s in our area. The Donroe Doctrine.\u201d
The military operation around Maduro\u2019s capture, which the Venezuela government says left 100 people dead,<\/a> prompted five Republicans, including Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, to join Democrats in voting for<\/a> a Senate resolution this week that attempts to keep Trump \u201cfrom striking within or against Venezuela\u201d without prior approval from the legislative branch.
Maduro\u2019s apprehension followed months of U.S. missiles hitting Venezuelan boats that the Trump administration alleged were bringing drugs to the United States, killing at least 115 people and plunging the administration into controversy.<\/a>
\u201cIn the Senate, we Democrats are fighting to prevent military adventurism in Venezuela and other countries and endless wars,\u201d Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said at a Jan. 8 news conference.
Trump has said it could take years to solve the problem in Venezuela, Schumer, who represents New York, added. \u201cThat is not what Americans want.\u201d
Vice President JD Vance responded by saying at a White House news conference that the Trump administration does not believe it is legally required to seek congressional approval.
The administration has pointedly said it offered Maduro multiple off-ramps, which he ignored.
Trump said on Jan. 7 he\u2019d be seeking a<\/a> $1.5 trillion budget for the Department of War, which he renamed from the Department of Defense, next year \u2014 a more than 50% increase over what Congress appropriated in 2026.
\u201cIf there is more muscular behavior, it probably is most likely to take place in Latin America because the \u2018Donroe Doctrine,\u2019 as the president described, is specifically about the U.S. neighborhood and taking care of what is close to home,\u201d said Kristine Berzina, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund.
Sheinbaum said this week that she didn\u2019t believe a U.S. invasion of Mexico was likely and didn\u2019t think Trump<\/a> was seriously considering one. Petro called Trump on Jan. 7 and took the temperature down. Trump said afterwards that he would meet with the Colombian president in the near future<\/a> at the White House.
A snatch and grab of the Colombian president was already viewed as unlikely. Historically, the U.S. has had a strong military partnership<\/a> with and deep economic ties to Colombia, and Petro\u2019s term ends in a few months. He\u2019s constitutionally barred from competing in the next election.
\u201cThat’s a situation that may resolve itself politically without a whole lot of effort on our part,\u201d said Coates, now a vice president at the Heritage Foundation.
And unlike Venezuela, the vote that brought Petro to power is not in question nor has he been charged by the U.S. government with drug crimes. The United States justified its attack on Caracas by categorizing it as a law enforcement operation against Maduro. The Venezuelan strongman was an illegitimate president, the U.S. says, whose last election victory was widely disputed by international observers. The Justice Department has indicted Maduro<\/a> on charges of narcotrafficking.\u00a0
Cuba has been so dependent on<\/a> Venezuelan oil, which the Trump administration is taking control over, that the regime could now collapse on its own. Trump indicated<\/a> and regional experts said that weakening Cuba \u2014 which the administration immediately reclassified as a state sponsor of terror following former President Joe Biden’s removal of the designation just before he left last year<\/a> \u2014 may have been a secondary objective of the strike on Venezuela.
Trump’s secretary of state and national security adviser, Rubio, is Cuban American and has long wanted to see a return to democracy on the island, Hernandez-Roy, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, pointed out.<\/p>\n

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WASHINGTON \u2014 If the first year of President Donald Trump\u2019s second term was focused on brokering peace deals around the globe, his sophomore year is gearing up to be one that emphasizes American military power.That begins with challenging nations in America\u2019s backyard, from adversaries such as Venezuela and Cuba to partners like Colombia and Mexico […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":196477,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-196476","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}