I was a strong critic of the Iraq War, and I continue to hold that view.
Iraq was a distant theater with no direct geographic or strategic linkage to American homeland stability. The justification rested on deception and selective truths mixed with personal and political ambitions. It evolved into an open-ended nation-building project that consumed American blood, money, focus, and credibility without producing proportional strategic gains.
That experience damaged public trust and created a reflexive resistance to American action even when action is warranted.
The Iraq Hangover vs. Geographic Reality
The correct lesson from Iraq, however, is not that America should avoid exercising power altogether. The lesson is that American power must be applied selectively, with geographic logic, limited objectives, and a clear understanding of consequences. That distinction is essential to understanding Venezuela.
Venezuela is a hemispheric problem, not a global experiment.
Venezuela is not Iraq 2.0 because Venezuela is not distant. It sits inside the Western Hemisphere, where instability does not remain local. What breaks down here inevitably migrates outward through narcotics trafficking, organized crime, refugee flows, financial corruption, and political contagion. These effects do not stop at borders. They move north and eventually arrive in the United States.
This is why hemispheric stability has always mattered to American security. Geography, not ideology, drives this reality. Ignoring disorder in our immediate region does not buy peace. It merely postpones costs until they become larger and harder to manage.
The Criminalisation of Caracas
The Maduro regime represents more than political disagreement. Nicolás Maduro has been formally indicted by the United States on serious narcotics-related charges, with a substantial reward offered for information leading to his capture. That places him in a fundamentally different category than a conventional head of state. Whether one agrees with the indictment or not, it establishes that the United States treats him not merely as a political adversary, but as the leader of a criminal enterprise.
Legitimacy also matters. Maduro’s claim to democratic authority has been disputed for years. Multiple democratic governments questioned the validity of Venezuela’s electoral process and declined to treat him as the rightful president during critical periods. When recognition itself is fractured, the argument that removing a universally legitimate sovereign leader violates international norms loses much of its force.
This is not regime change driven by ideology. It is the containment and correction of a criminalized state structure exporting instability.
Oil, the dollar, and why Americans should not be embarrassed
Critics often argue that US involvement is driven purely by oil and by Venezuela’s interest in trading outside the US dollar. Rather than dismissing this claim emotionally, it deserves a direct and logical response.
The Dollar Standard: Prosperity Without Apology
Yes, the United States has an interest in maintaining the US dollar as the dominant global currency. That is neither hidden nor immoral. Currency dominance underpins economic stability, lowers borrowing costs, strengthens domestic prosperity, and gives the United States influence that often prevents conflict rather than causes it. Every serious nation seeks similar advantages. Pretending otherwise is intellectual dishonesty.
There is no reason Americans should feel ashamed of wanting the dollar to remain strong. A world where the dollar loses its role does not become fairer or more neutral. It becomes shaped by alternative systems led by authoritarian powers that do not share American values or institutional norms.
The oil argument requires historical context. Venezuela’s oil industry was not created by socialism, revolution, or state genius. It was built primarily through American capital, American companies, American engineers, American technology, and integration into American markets over decades. The wells, pipelines, refineries, heavy crude processing technology, and management systems all came from that ecosystem.
When Venezuela nationalized the industry in 1976, it did not invent an oil sector. It inherited one. That system functioned as long as professionalism and technical competence were preserved. Its collapse followed ideological purges, corruption, and the replacement of merit with political loyalty. Socialism did not create Venezuela’s oil wealth. It steadily dismantled it.
Allowing hostile powers to step into this vacuum, take control of assets built through American effort, and then weaponize them against US interests would be strategically irrational. A nation that refuses to protect the results of its own long-term investments is not principled. It is negligent.
Adversarial expansion in the hemisphere and the Arctic is unacceptable
Arctic Frontiers and the Greenland Logic
This issue extends well beyond Venezuela. The growing involvement of US adversaries in South America, Central America, the Caribbean, and increasingly the Arctic represents a structural challenge to American security. These regions are not abstract zones. They sit directly adjacent to the United States.
Foreign military access, intelligence infrastructure, financial leverage, and political influence in these spaces constrain American freedom of action over time.
The same logic applies to Greenland.
Arctic shipping routes, rare earth resources, missile defense positioning, and early warning systems are becoming increasingly important. Competition in these regions is not speculative. It is already underway.
From a strategic standpoint, adversarial entrenchment in America’s immediate geographic environment, whether tropical or Arctic, is unacceptable regardless of which party controls the White House.
Trump, Greenland, and NATO realism
Trump’s suggestion that the United States consider acquiring Greenland triggered a predictable backlash, including claims that such thinking would undermine NATO or signal the end of the alliance. That reaction reflects a misunderstanding of what NATO is and what it is not.
NATO exists primarily to protect Europe. It was never designed to protect the United States. For decades, the United States has carried a disproportionate share of NATO’s financial, military, and strategic burden. American taxpayers fund the alliance’s backbone while many European members underinvest in their own defense.
If NATO members are serious about the alliance’s future, realism is required. That realism includes acknowledging US leadership, not resisting it.
Greenland sits at the crossroads of Arctic defense, missile detection, and transatlantic security. Allowing the United States to consolidate control over such a strategically critical territory would strengthen NATO’s defensive posture, not weaken it.
Empowering the United States to lead NATO effectively means aligning alliance structures with strategic realities, not clinging to symbolic objections while relying on American protection.
Trump and the return to older presidential logic
This is where President Donald Trump’s presidency becomes historically significant, not because of tone or personality, but because of posture.
For decades, American leadership drifted. Some administrations avoided responsibility, others pursued global applause, and others moralized without enforcing. The result was a slow erosion of deterrence and confidence, both at home and abroad.
Trump disrupted that pattern. He reintroduced a transactional clarity that earlier American presidents understood instinctively. His approach resembles the logic of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington more than the managerial style of recent decades.
Jefferson expanded America strategically through the Louisiana Purchase, despite fierce criticism. Lincoln preserved the Union through decisive action when fragmentation threatened national survival. Washington understood that restraint and strength are complementary, not contradictory.
By contrast, recent presidents often confused caution with virtue or popularity with leadership. Clinton prioritized global acceptance. Obama sought international approval and restraint even as adversaries expanded. George W. Bush pursued moral certainty without structural limits. Different styles, but all symptomatic of an era where America lost confidence in exercising power intelligently.
Trump’s Make America Great Again is not nostalgia. It is an attempt to restore strategic seriousness, where decisions are evaluated by long-term national interest rather than short-term applause.
Greenland and America’s forgotten strategic history.
Trump’s Greenland idea was mocked because many Americans no longer know their own history.
Territorial acquisition by purchase is not alien to American tradition. It is foundational.
The Louisiana Purchase doubled the nation’s size. Alaska, initially ridiculed, later became a critical strategic asset. The United States purchased the Danish West Indies, now the US Virgin Islands, from Denmark for security reasons during World War I. Even Greenland itself was the subject of a formal US purchase offer in 1946.
These actions were not colonial fantasies. They were pragmatic decisions shaped by geography and future risk. What has changed is not the logic, but the willingness to speak openly about it.
As Arctic competition intensifies, Greenland’s strategic value increases. Treating acquisition discussions as absurd ignores both history and current reality.
The missing piece: historical ignorance in a changing America
There is an additional factor that cannot be ignored. The immigrant population of the United States is larger than ever before. Many newcomers arrive with little exposure to American history beyond slogans. At the same time, historical education among native born Americans has weakened significantly.
As a result, large segments of the population do not understand how America became great in the first place. They do not know about the Louisiana Purchase, Alaska, the Virgin Islands, or the strategic decisions that shaped American power. Without this context, strategic actions appear aggressive or shameful rather than rational.
This ignorance creates embarrassment where there should be confidence. It produces leaders who seek global applause instead of national advantage. It explains why some Americans recoil when a president openly leverages American strengths in a businesslike manner.
If immigrants and younger generations understood that America’s greatness was built through strategic thinking, economic leverage, and geographic foresight, they would not feel ashamed of it. They would understand that the very opportunities that attracted them here were created by that seriousness.
This history needs to be projected openly and unapologetically, not as propaganda, but as education.
Conclusion
The Maduro issue, the dollar, hemispheric stability, Arctic strategy, NATO realism, presidential leadership, and historical literacy are not separate debates. They are parts of the same question: whether the United States is willing to remember who it is and how it became what it is.
If America retreats, the resulting world will not be more just or more stable. It will be less just, less stable, and more dictatorial. China and Russia are not passive observers. They are waiting in the wings to fill any vacuum America leaves behind, shaping global norms in ways far less free and far more coercive.
America was not built by leaders who sought approval. It was built by leaders who understood geography, power, economics, and timing. Presidents who acted with clarity shaped the nation’s trajectory for generations.
Trump’s presidency represents a return to that older logic. Not perfection, not theatrics, but seriousness.
That is not rhetoric. It is how history, geography, and power work.
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are solely those of the author and not necessarily reflect the views of financialexpress.com.
Vinson Xavier Palathingal is an engineer, entrepreneur, exporter, and policy advocate based in Florida and Washington, D.C. He is Executive Director of the Indo-American Center and has been active in U.S.–India relations, education reform, and immigrant community leadership for more than three decades. In 2020, he was appointed by President Donald J. Trump to the President’s Export Council.