Critics call it regime change. The White House calls it securing America’s backyard. When U.S. forces captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro this past weekend, the operation defied easy categorization. It was neither the attempted nation-building that destabilized Iraq and Afghanistan, nor a retreat from the world stage. It was something else: the most dramatic demonstration yet of a foreign policy that strengthens alliances while breaking with adversaries.
Though it may not appear so at first glance, President Donald Trump‘s foreign policy is “isolation-ish”: he engages the world not to remake it, but to isolate the few regimes that threaten American interests.
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This is distinct from the traditional categories of isolationism and interventionism that have never fit Trump. Instead, his administration’s National Security Strategy calls it “flexible realism”: strengthen ties with friends, maintain the power to counter adversaries.
Venezuela is the sharpest illustration of what “isolation-ish” looks like in practice. The Maduro capture culminated months of escalating pressure, including secondary tariffs on any country importing Venezuelan oil, the seizure of sanctioned tankers, and a naval quarantine that strangled Caracas’s revenue. In this circumstance, trade and international leverage were not used to separate America from the world, but rather to have the world separate from Venezuela. Only when these measures had crippled the regime did the administration execute a targeted extraction without a single American casualty.
Critics of the raid have inevitably invoked the post-9/11 interventions, but the comparison misses the point entirely. The global war on terror sought to remake foreign societies in America’s image, with indefinite troop commitments, murky definitions of success, and trillions in taxpayer dollars. The Venezuela operation is the opposite: a discrete action with limited objectives backed by near global economic pressure against one of a very small number of outwardly hostile regimes. It follows the Iran model. When Trump ordered Operation Midnight Hammer to destroy Tehran’s nuclear facilities last June, the mission lasted hours and cost no American lives. No occupation followed. The Middle East is safer, Israel is more secure, and American troops are home.
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The administration has stated no intention of occupying Venezuela either. The goal is to choke off a prominent crude oil exporter to China and Cuba, expel Iran and Hezbollah from the Americas, end drug trafficking, and stop the northward flow of migrants and gangs. Unlike the quixotic crusades of past presidents, this administration’s actions in Iran and Venezuela were defensive responses to isolate and hobble the few regimes in the world that were threatening America’s domestic tranquility.
This isn’t about nation building, and America doesn’t need Venezuelan crude. Domestic production of cleaner U.S. oil and gas has hit record highs. Venezuela’s oil and gas sector, by contrast, leaks more methane than almost any other country’s. American investment could change that. But the United States cannot tolerate Venezuela’s reserves, the largest in the world, financing hostile regimes. Removing Maduro sends a clear message to the hemisphere: Washington rewards partners and punishes adversaries. A Venezuela rebuilt by American investment rather than Chinese debt trades an adversary for a partner. The president’s “Don-roe Doctrine” revives President Monroe’s framework for a new era: foreign adversaries cannot control strategic assets in the Western Hemisphere.
The administration has pursued this global policy of isolating adversaries since inauguration day. Just as the administration is denying hostile countries access to Venezuela’s natural resources, it is countering China’s Belt and Road through development finance: $4.7 billion to Mozambique for liquefied natural gas, $1.25 billion for Pakistan to mine critical minerals, $750 million to rehabilitate a railway linking Congo’s mines to Atlantic ports. New trade deals have opened markets for American goods so that Louisiana can sell its natural gas to Japan, South Carolina its aircraft to Indonesia, Iowa its ethanol to the UK, and Texas its chemicals to Argentina. Each deal is a thread in a larger fabric, one that binds allies closer, squeezes adversaries out, and puts American workers, manufacturers, and farmers first.
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What many have deemed a worldwide “trade war” is, in reality, carefully calibrated economic statecraft to isolate adversarial governments, especially China. Case in point: After Trump raised tariffs against China to as high as 145% in April, President Xi agreed to resume purchasing American agricultural products and suspend export restrictions on rare earths that are the building blocks of everything from solar panels to semiconductors to submarines. The deal won concessions while keeping tariffs on Beijing at punishing levels. Decoupling with a scalpel, not a hammer.
Meanwhile, the administration is building an architecture to extricate America and its allies from dependence on Chinese critical minerals. The newly launched Pax Silica coalition, Interior Secretary Burgum’s mineral “club of nations,” the G7’s Critical Minerals Production Alliance, and the Quad’s Critical Minerals Initiative together form an alliance that can afford to say no to Beijing.
Whether it’s trade or tariffs or energy, China or Venezuela or Iran, the underlying policy is the same– it’s isolation-ish: lock arms with your friends, isolate your enemies.
Conner Brace served in the U.S. Department of Energy during the first Trump administration. He is now senior vice president at Boundary Stone Partners, a strategic advisory firm focused on energy, infrastructure, and technology.
