Stagecraft and Statecraft

By Brahma Chellaney, The Hill

The U.S. has carried out scores of covert and overt regime-change operations since the last century. Scholarly consensus is clear: such interventions rarely advance U.S. interests and usually produce unintended consequences that recoil on America itself.

Yet President Trump’s administration is engaged in a barely disguised effort to topple President Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela.

The dissonance between Trump’s rhetoric and policy could not be starker. He has repeatedly denounced decades of U.S. intervention abroad, especially military-backed attempts at regime change and “nation-building.” After his 2016 victory, he declared: “We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with.”

But in contrast to this “America First” non-interventionist pose, Trump’s approach to Venezuela has been one of the most sustained U.S. campaigns for regime overthrow in recent memory. His strategy has included crippling sanctions, narcoterrorism indictments against Maduro and his associates, and naval deployments under the fig leaf of an anti-narcotics operation.

In recent weeks, after ordering strikes on Venezuelan boats that killed at least 21 people, Trump dispatched warships, surveillance planes and even an attack submarine — a show of force calculated to weaken and ultimately topple Maduro.

Such adventurism clashes with Trump’s latest bid to crown himself a global peacemaker. At the United Nations, he claimed he had “ended seven un-endable wars” and boasted “everyone” wanted him to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The problem is that some of the seven “wars” never existed, others remain unresolved, and in one case (the Israel-Iran conflict) Trump joined the fight by ordering U.S. bombing of Iranian nuclear sites. In his telling, this was peace by another name.

In 2023, Trump thundered, “Either the Deep State destroys America or we destroy the Deep State.” Yet since returning to the White House, he has often acted as executor of the very Deep State agenda he rails against. His distinction seems to be that the Deep State should confine itself to foreign entanglements while steering clear of domestic politics.

Trump’s Venezuela gambit ignores the long trail of regime-change debacles, from Guatemala and Chile to Afghanistan and Libya. Libya, since the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi, remains a a failed state. The roots of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution can be traced to the 1953 CIA-led Operation Ajax, which ousted a democratically elected prime minister and installed the Shah’s dictatorship.

Similarly, U.S. involvement in the 1973 Chilean coup achieved the goal of removing a socialist president but at the cost of propping up Augusto Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship. The coup stained America’s reputation and left scars that still shape Chilean politics.

Even failed regime-change efforts have produced blowback. Violent jihadism in Syria was fueled by a multiyear CIA program — the second largest in its history after the 1980s Afghan campaign — to topple Bashar al-Assad. Launched in 2012 under Barack Obama, the $1 billion project trained and armed anti-Assad rebels, inadvertently boosting jihadist forces and helping spawn the Islamic State. Trump himself shut it down in 2017, acknowledging that U.S.-supplied weapons had ended up in the hands of al-Qaeda, which had emerged from CIA-trained Afghan “mujahideen.” 

The destabilization of Libya, Syria and Iraq fueled a refugee influx into Europe — 1.1 million into Germany alone in 2015. That wave, in turn, stoked radical Islamism across Europe, with terror attacks in Munich, Nice, Brussels and Paris.

Most recently, following Assad’s downfall last December, Trump embraced Syria’s new president — a former jihadist warlord with al-Qaeda roots whose regime has intensified sectarian violence against non-Sunni minorities. When terrorists become American assets, America’s moral authority is collateral damage.

The history of U.S. regime-change operations reveals three recurring outcomes. First, regime replacement usually yields civil war, prolonged insurgency or outright state collapse. Second, interventions more often install authoritarian rule than foster democracy. Third, interference breeds resentment, undermines U.S. credibility as a defender of democracy and galvanizes extremist movements.

Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves, which helps explain Trump’s zeal for regime change there. U.S. oil sanctions are designed to choke off Maduro’s main source of revenue and force his ouster. But they have created a severe humanitarian crisis, fueling Latin America’s largest refugee exodus in history and straining Venezuela’s neighbors, especially Colombia and Peru.

Trump has brushed aside both the human suffering and the sobering lessons of past adventures. Oil, not democracy, is the real prize he seeks in Venezuela.

By personalizing foreign policy to the point where major decisions hinge on impulse rather than consultation with national security professionals, Trump has heightened the risk of miscalculation. His Venezuela gambit may yet produce the same blowback that has defined so many regime-change campaigns — leaving the U.S. weaker, not stronger, in Latin America and beyond.

Brahma Chellaney is the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

It takes a special kind of genius to end wars that never started. Trump has achieved what no military general in history ever managed: ending wars that never began. No shots fired, no armies on the march — yet Trump claims three historic triumphs

Brahma Chellaney, Project Syndicate

GENEVA – “Everyone says that I should get a Nobel Peace Prize,” US President Donald Trump told the United Nations General Assembly this week, because “I ended seven un-endable wars in seven months.” The boast was classic Trump: extravagantly formulated, unironically delivered, and patently false.

A recent poll indicates that only 22% of US adults believe that Trump deserves the Nobel Prize – a far cry from “everyone” – with 76% of respondents stating that he does not deserve it. Perhaps this reflects the fact that Trump has not ended seven wars. Arguably, he has not even ended one.

Some of Trump’s claims were pure fiction. For example, he took credit for ending a war between Egypt and Ethiopia. But, although bilateral tensions over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam have simmered for years, they have never boiled over into war. Likewise, Trump claimed to have ended a nonexistent war between Kosovo and Serbia. Despite considerable hostility – and a history of violent clashes – the two countries have not been at war since the 1990s. No war is easier to end than one that has never started.

Perhaps Trump’s most risible invention was the war – “a bad one” – between Armenia and Cambodia, countries located over 4,000 miles (6,500 kilometers) apart that have never had any conflict whatsoever. Armenia did clash with neighboring Azerbaijan this year, and Trump convinced both countries’ leaders to sign a joint declaration aimed at ending their decades-long conflict. But progress on implementing that agreement has stalled, and the accord is in danger of unraveling. That Trump would consider this conflict “ended” reveals the depth of his ignorance about peacemaking.

The same goes for the war between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. Trump does have a set piece to point to: a “wonderful” US-mediated deal. But while the war may have ended on paper, deadly clashes continue.

As for Cambodia, it engaged in skirmishes with its neighbor Thailand in July over their contested border. But Trump’s attempts at economic coercion did little to defuse the crisis. What brought the fighting to an end was the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ diplomacy, with this year’s ASEAN chair, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, hosting the Cambodian and Thai leaders for face-to-face talks in Kuala Lumpur. While the underlying border dispute, centered largely on ownership and control of ancient Hindu temples, remains unresolved, the “immediate and unconditional” ceasefire that Anwar brokered halted the violence.

This is not the only example of Trump taking credit for others’ foreign-policy acumen. After Pakistan-backed terrorists massacred Indian tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir in April, India took decisive and carefully calibrated retaliatory action, launching military strikes on Pakistani terror camps. It was this show of force that made Pakistan back down, but Trump would have the world believe that he single-handedly mediated an end to the conflict using his favorite tool: trade threats. So absurd and relentless were his boasts that Indian officials publicly refuted him.

Trump’s most audacious claim, however, was that he ended the war between Israel and Iran. In reality, Trump gave Israel the green light to strike Iranian positions; deployed American military assets to help Israel shoot down Iran’s missiles and drones; and ordered the bombing of Iranian nuclear sites – severely undermining the global nonproliferation regime in the process. If this is Trump’s idea of peacemaking, one dreads to think what his version of warmongering would look like.

Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize campaign has followed a familiar pattern: invent or inflate a problem, claim to have solved it, and then demand a reward. From his photo ops with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to his Middle East “peace deals” (which merely formalized existing relations between the Gulf states and Israel), Trump engages in theater, not diplomacy – performances staged for headlines and applause. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, one suspects, will not be fooled. The same cannot be said for Trump’s base.

Trump’s absurd claims not only undermine US credibility abroad but also carry real risks. For starters, they trivialize genuine peacemaking. Ending wars is among the most difficult tasks in international politics. It demands quiet diplomacy, painstaking negotiations that address the root causes of conflict, and a commitment to following through on any agreement. Trump has shown little interest in such work. All he cares about is fanfare.

Moreover, false declarations of peace can mask unresolved conflicts and undermine the vigilance needed to prevent new flare-ups, which could ignite with even greater ferocity. Such proclamations can also erode accountability for diplomatic failures – and even for reckless military actions like those Trump sanctioned against Iran.

Trump’s claim to have ended seven “un-endable” wars is best understood as a case study in self-delusion. Branding is not leadership. Real peace depends on leaders who know the difference. But in Trump’s world, peace is not the absence of war, but the presence of applause.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of nine books, including Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press, 2011), for which he won the 2012 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award.

© Project Syndicate, 2025.

By Brahma Chellaney, The Hill

The tectonic plates of global power are shifting. The American-led postwar order is eroding without a clear successor. In this uncertain interregnum, there is a growing risk of the world fracturing into rival geopolitical and economic blocs, threatening both prosperity and peace.

Two recent events in China encapsulate this transformation. On Aug. 31 to Sept. 1, leaders gathered in Tianjin for the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a 10-nation grouping that began as a regional security forum but has steadily expanded its scope and ambition. With China in the driver’s seat, the group is made up mostly of autocracies.

Soon after, on Sept. 3, China staged a massive military parade in Beijing to commemorate the end of the Sino-Japanese War and World War II. Yet far from celebrating peace, the event showcased Chinese military might, with a guest list that read like a who’s who of the world’s strongmen. They included Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, Myanmar junta chief Min Aung Hlaing, and the presidents of Iran, Cuba, Belarus and Vietnam. They make up the so-called “Axis of Upheaval” — a loose coalition of states determined to reshape the Western-led global order.

The juxtaposition was telling. The summit highlighted how Beijing and Moscow are institutionalizing their strategic alignment, while the military parade underlined the solidarity of a growing authoritarian camp. For China and Russia, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization serves as both a symbol and an instrument of their deepening cooperation — from joint military exercises to efforts at shaping the economic and security architecture of Eurasia.

For Washington and its allies, these gatherings sent a clear signal: An alternative power bloc is taking shape.

President Trump is accelerating the reordering of the international system, though not in the way he believes. Trump may think he is bending nations to his will, but history could record something else: the corrosion of America’s alliances and partnerships, the erosion of its credibility and the acceleration toward a truly multipolar world. By elevating disruption into his governing creed, Trump is unwittingly providing the very shock therapy the international system needs to break free from U.S. dominance.

This geopolitical realignment is mirrored in the economic sphere. Globalization, once seen as irreversible, has stalled and may even be going into reverse. Protectionist policies are proliferating.

Washington has turned to tariffs, subsidies and secondary sanctions to advance its geopolitical ends. Beijing is promoting yuan-based settlement mechanisms and alternative supply chains, while procuring gold at a voracious pace to insulate itself from Western financial pressure, including potential sanctions.

What is emerging is not a single global marketplace but a patchwork of rival trading and financial blocs.

The consequences are already visible. The U.S. push to “de-risk” supply chains has triggered costly reshoring and diversification strategies. Technology is splitting into parallel ecosystems. Energy markets, too, are fragmenting, with Russian oil and gas exports largely shifting from Europe to Asia. In finance, competing payment systems are gaining traction, threatening to erode the central role of the U.S. dollar.

At the same time, the spread of armed conflicts shows how economic and geopolitical fractures feed on each other. In recent years, the number of wars and crises has risen, each with ripple effects on energy prices, supply chains and refugee flows.

The turbulence reflects a world in transition: the slow decline of the U.S.-led order without the emergence of a stable successor. It is the dawn of a new era — fractured, fiercely contested and dangerously unpredictable.

This moment echoes the 1930s — not in its specifics, but in its warning. Then, a world system changing between orders witnessed the emergence of competing economic blocs, fueling nationalist rivalries that eventually erupted into global war. The challenge today is not merely to manage competition, but to prevent economic, technological and ideological fragmentation from spiraling into chaos. That requires leadership, restraint and imagination — qualities in short supply.

In this environment, much will depend on how “swing states” position themselves. A recent report by the Center for a New American Security identified six such states as pivotal to the emerging global order: Brazil, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey. Each is multi-aligned, seeking to balance ties with the U.S., China and Russia rather than choosing sides. Collectively, they wield the ability to influence whether the world fragments into hostile blocs or maintains a degree of pluralism and connectivity.

India is perhaps the most critical of these nations. As the only long-established democracy in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, it is trying to prevent the grouping from acquiring an overtly anti-Western orientation, even as it participates in Western-led forums such as the Quad and, as a special invitee, the Group of 7.

Brazil, like India, is charting an independent course on trade and climate, while Saudi Arabia and Turkey are expanding ties eastward without severing links to the West. These countries demonstrate that the binary framing of “democracies versus autocracies” does not reflect the real complexity of international politics.

The danger, however, is that intensifying U.S.-China rivalry could reduce the room for maneuver for such states. If Washington sharpens its protectionist edge while Beijing doubles down on its authoritarian partnerships, the middle ground will narrow. Economic and security fragmentation could harden into a bipolar structure — two camps with little trust, minimal cooperation and heightened risk of confrontation.

That outcome is not inevitable. But preventing it will require conscious effort. Multilateral frameworks must be strengthened, not abandoned. Global cooperation — on climate change, pandemic preparedness, food security and technology standards — must be preserved despite geopolitical tensions. Above all, great powers must recognize that fragmentation carries grave risks not just for growth but for stability.

The world has been here before. The lesson of the 20th century is that when trade and politics fracture into competing blocs, confrontation follows. Unless today’s drift is reversed, the coming decade may bring not just the end of globalization, but the return of bloc-driven conflict.

Brahma Chellaney is the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”