Starting in late August of 2025, the US government has started extrajudicially assassinating accused drug traffickers in the Caribbean and along the coast of Venezuela. Simultaneously, the Department of War under Peter Hegseth has significantly ratcheted up its rhetoric against the Maduro regime in Venezuela, and on the 13th of November, he announced the launch of Operation Southern Spear, an official military operation to “combat drug trafficking” across the western hemisphere. However, the number of people killed in the Caribbean who were actually drug traffickers and the amount of drugs produced by Venezuela is questionable, especially considering that the amount of drugs shipped out of Venezuela is actually minuscule compared to other neighboring countries with whom the U.S. has maintained decent relations, such as Colombia and Ecuador. 

So what are the real reasons for possibly going to war with Venezuela? Gut instinct may be to say that it’s for their oil. And it is true– Venezuela has a huge amount of oil, the most out of any country in the western hemisphere, and if the U.S were to successfully orchestrate a regime change, that oil would become ours. Another potential reason could be ideological—the US is (at least somewhat) democratic and staunchly capitalist and anti-communist, whereas the Venezuelan government is both authoritarian and (at least nominally) socialist. 

But in truth, the real explanation for our recent exploits in the Caribbean, as well as other recent mercurial foreign policy positions, is both significantly stranger and stupider than resources or ideology: the president wants a Nobel Peace Prize. Very, very badly. President Trump talks about it almost constantly, at every interval regarding foreign policy. He has abandoned his strictly Zionist foreign policy positions in the name of reaching an extremely unstable and human-rights-questionable peace in Gaza and he has betrayed his long-standing affinity for Putin in the name of reaching an end to the war in Ukraine (with seemingly zero regard for how the war will end or who will benefit, just that it ends). The U.S. is now involved in peace talks that seemingly have nothing to do with the U.S., simply so that Trump can brag about his role as mediator. He has thrice now publicly bragged about settling a conflict between “Aberbaijan (sic) and Albania”—the conflict he speaks of was with Armenia and Azerbaijan, and also has not ended. On his recent tour through East Asia, Trump was extremely eager to talk to Kim Jong-Un and organize a finalized peace treaty for the Korean War, which technically never ended and is merely under a temporary cease-fire. 

If it is a Nobel Peace Prize that Trump is after, how does that track with starting a war? Simple answer– he’s following the blueprint. On October 15th, 2025, the Nobel Peace Prize was announced and was awarded to María Corina Machado, a Venezuelan opposition leader and pro-democracy activist. In addition to being a pro-democracy activist, she’s also an arch-conservative, and has repeatedly praised the president in the past. She thanked him in her acceptance speech, encouraging him and the U.S. military to intervene to displace Nicolás Maduro from power. Perhaps Mr. Trump thinks that by following the requests of the previous laureate, he can curry favor with the Nobel committee and win next year.

This all raises a worrying question, though: are we fully held hostage to the kinks of Trump? If Trump was able to so fully change his foreign policy on a whim, are there no people in the Republican party even remotely interested in producing a coherent international message? What happens if he finds a new goal to chase, one more malevolent? What happens if we actually go to Venezuela? For now, it seems, one man’s desire for approval gets to make decisions for the remaining eight billion of us.