For the first fifteen years of my life, until about 1990, the world had two legitimate superpowers: the United States of America and the Soviet Union. We know this not because someone told us, but because both countries could strengthen and protect their client states around the world.
With the collapse of the Soviet empire, the United States became, perhaps for the first time in human history, the planet’s only major superpower. But over the past two decades, experts have emphasized that this is changing, and that we are moving toward trilateral power-sharing with Russia and China.
Former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and President Donald Trump (Federico Parra/AFP via Getty Images; Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
On Saturday, with the successful operation to depose and arrest Venezuela’s illegitimate and Kremlin-backed leader, Nicolas Maduro, President Donald Trump sent the world a crystal-clear message: “Not so fast.”
About a month ago, I posted a column on these pages titled “Trump’s Aggression toward Venezuela Is a Warning to Putin,” and within an hour Trump posted it to Truth Social. A presidential stock is always good for clicks, but in this case it also proved the theory.
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On Saturday, with the stunning and perfectly executed operation to seize Maduro, Trump left no doubt. The United States does still the world’s only superpower, and he just proved it.
The basic metric on display here is that neither Russian dictator Vladimir Putin nor Chinese dictator Xi Jinping were able to do anything to protect their closest ally Maduro and maintain control of their proxy in our hemisphere.
Trump’s embrace of the Monroe Doctrine, which he now comically calls the “Donroe Doctrine,” a centuries-old American idea that we have the right and responsibility to check our neck in the geopolitical forest, is proving to be a huge success, leaving our enemies weak in response.
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Let’s compare this to Russia’s recent attempts to gain control over what it considers its geographic sphere of influence, namely Ukraine. With American support, Putin’s efforts to depose (or assassinate) President Volodymyr Zelensky have failed for more than three years, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths and serious economic consequences for Moscow.
Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, September 2, 2025. (China Daily via Reuters)
Meanwhile, it took the US 25 minutes to wipe Maduro off the board forever.
Similarly, China has ambitions to seize Taiwan, which the Communist Party is not shying away from, and some Western critics argue that the move in Venezuela will give the green light to such an operation.
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This analysis again misses the key point that if China were to invade Taiwan, America would be in a position to support the small country, as it would Ukraine, and make the operation, even if successful, very painful for the CCP.
That’s the math of the superpower. We can do anything we want in our region, and no one outside can stop us. Meanwhile, we can reach every corner of the world and take action, even in the backyards of other pretenders to superpower status.
More than anyone else, it was former President Barack Obama and his “lead from behind” style of foreign policy that seemed to open the door to an end to hegemonic American power, to sharing the world with Russia and China. Fortunately, Trump has rejected and reversed this dangerous and futile approach.
People react to news of the capture of Nicolas Maduro, following US military actions in Venezuela, in Doral, Florida, near Miami, on January 3, 2026. (Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images)
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Now Obama’s former advisers are whining about international law, which by the way is completely made up. We know this because no American has ever voted for an international law, and taxation without representation is basically the whole point of America.
Democrats in Congress complain that the United States had no right to take this action. But in real geopolitics, power is its own authority. As crude as it may sound, we took out Maduro because we could, and Russia and China would both do the same if they were also superpowers.
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The ultimate question at stake for the American people in all of this is, “Who do we want to run the world?” Should it be an international consortium like the United Nations? Should it be a trilateral group that includes us, Russia and China?
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Trump has wisely rejected these cowardly and flippant concepts for a return to old-fashioned, tough American power that sets the guardrails and direction of the world.
Trump likes to say that “America is back,” and while this may be true in many different ways, none are more important than this. Once again, and for the good of all humanity, the United States of America is the only superpower on earth.
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