By Akaninyene Esiere
Five days from now, the President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, will be a year old in power in his second term. In under one year, President Trump has impacted the world more than he did in his first term of four years. The man seems to be in an adrenaline-induced hurry to fix things globally based on his own world view. Since after the Second World War, the world has not witnessed any world leader who has done so much in under one year, good or bad, that has affected the world as Trump has.
The last three months have been particularly engaging for him. Unless the United States’ Congress and American courts rein him in, he will significantly torpedo the world to the extent that there will be a remarkable difference between the world before Trump’s second term and the one after his rule.
For good or bad, Donald Trump epitomizes the oft doubted belief that it takes one person to do mighty things. Under his supreme command, bullying and stretching the limits of his power, America has fired lethal weapons at no less than half a dozen countries already: Venezuela, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and even Nigeria. And he is not done yet.
Interestingly, this is coming from a man who claimed he came to be the world peace maker. He had boasted with gusto about ending the war in Ukraine within days. And even trumpeted how he was going to use same to get a prize he is so paranoid about: The Nobel Peace Prize. Having lost the Peace Prize to Maria Machado, (he is meeting with the lady today) and having now realized how chameleonic and hard-a-nut-to-crack his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin is, Trump has taken off his peacemaker gloves.
Because he has his eyes on making history, good or bad, he is now fighting on all fronts. Domestically, two major issues define his presidency: tariff and immigration. Irrespective of the feelings of many Americans and the effects these policies may be, nothing is stopping Trump from going ahead with them. His MAGA (Make America Great Again) campaign slogan rests on these two policies, so the talk of slowing him down is no talk at all. Any president should aspire to make his or her country great, so the outside world shouldn’t be overly concerned about these two policies. They are American issues and, in part, he was voted into office on their basis.
Were his hawkish policies limited to only American issues, the world would not have bothered so much. Now, he brooks no diplomacy or international agreements. Immediately he renamed the Department of Defense as the Department of War, it was clear that Trump was up to many things. As he started killing alleged drug lords in the Caribbean Sea, he was building up a case against the now deposed Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro. Maduro underrated Trump’s resolve for meanness. He thought he was going to send troops on ground to fight him. But as the world was flipping over 2025 with the celebration of a new year, he found himself aboard an American chopper, handcuffed and blindfolded. In less than a week, Maduro had fallen off the radar of international discourse. Except a democratic government comes into power and decides a clemency, he will rot in American jail for a long time.
While Trump may have had his eyes on the over 300 billion barrels of oil reserves in the Venezuelan soil as his main reason for sacking Maduro, he has unwittingly set that country free from the grip of a bloodthirsty dictator.
Unbeknownst to many, the attack on Venezuela has two other seemingly unrelated consequences: Trump has lost the moral high ground to get Putin out of Ukraine. Russia will annex much of that country. I hope the Ukrainian President and by extension his people are aware that they have been thrown under the bus. The second and distant implication is the place of Taiwan in history. With what Trump did in Venezuela, China does not need more than two decades to annex that rich island. And Trump’s insistence on annexing Greenland, which is an autonomous territory of Denmark, has further strengthened China’s claim to Taiwan as part and parcel of mainland China.
Talking about Greenland, if one knows Donald Trump, there may be American boots on ground to seize that mineral-rich expanse of sparsely populated land. The only restraint will be an ironclad NO from Europe. That is if Europe is prepared to severe ties with America for the next three years of Trump’s reign. Trump cares less about those relationships. Already, he doesn’t even take current European leaders seriously; he disparages them openly and sees them as weak and visionless. During his first term, he forced them to fork out more money to keep the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alive.
Annexing Greenland will more than unnerve the Europeans. Even though Trump says he wants Greenland so that Russia or China doesn’t come for it and begin to threaten America from there, forcefully taking over that quasi-country would actually work in favour of Russia and China because it would mark the end or severe weakening of NATO. In simple terms, NATO means America has sworn to protect Europe against Russia and China. So, America forcefully taking over Greenland, which is part of Europe, would mean that even the guarantor of peace in Europe could go to war against Europe itself.
Already, Trump’s rhetorics over Greenland are being viewed feverishly across United States’ northern border. Since he started taunting Canada as the 51st state of America, the relationship between the two countries has been strained. Just for emphasis, Canada, the world’s second largest country by landmass, is bigger than the whole of the United States of America! Until Trump, they had lived together lovingly as sister countries.
Cuba is all but gone under the jackboot of Trump. He will further squeeze the economy out of near existence and trigger unrests as basis for the overthrow of the marxist system. The same is true of Colombia, the world’s headquarters of illicit drugs. He has already warned its president, Gustavo Petro, to watch his ass! What can delay his removal is the deal he is able to make when he eventually meets Trump, the master deal maker, next month. Petro would have been the first to go before Maduro but because Columbia has little to offer Trump relative to Venezuela.
Apart from Greenland, which is a European issue, the world is more interested in what is happening in Iran principally because of the influence of that failing country on international terrorism and the Middle East. The popular leaderless protests which began on December 28, 2025 have claimed nearly 3,000 lives. Israel and Saudi Arabia will be too happy to see the end of the Ayatollahs in Persia. If the regime falls, the effect will be profound. What could happen within the country is unimaginable as Syria teaches us to look no further! But it would also bring an end to Hezbollah, Hamas and other radical Islamic terrorist groups in the Middle East, and, perhaps some semblance of peace.
As Trump prepares to start the second year of his last presidency, nations should not throw away the baby with the bath water. The core lesson of MAGA to the world is that citizens of other countries must enforce good governance in their countries; America is no safe haven.
Esiere is a former journalist!
©️2026
