Well, that sure ended discussion of the Epstein files: welcome to the Putin Doctrine…

Well, that sure ended discussion of the Epstein files: welcome to the Putin Doctrine.
Trump’s invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife is the latest example of his following the explicit doctrine of his mentor. In this new “multipolar world order” — what we might call the Putin Doctrine — the great powers no longer even pretend to follow a single rules-based international system but instead openly carve out regional spheres of influence, each claiming the right to dominate its own neighborhood.
In this model the United States treats Venezuela as part of its unquestioned backyard, Russia asserts a claimed historic right to absorb Ukraine and the rest of Eastern (and eventually Western) Europe, and China prepares to reclaim Taiwan, all under the logic that geography and power outrank international law, democratic self-determination, or global norms. 
Putin has repeatedly called for this “multipolar world” and his assault on Ukraine embodies a return to a 19th-century great-power carve-up where might makes right and each empire polices its own hemisphere. What we’re seeing now is not random chaos but a coordinated erosion of the post-WWII order, replaced by a world where the strong take what they want, the weak endure what they must, and democracy everywhere is left in tatters.
From the CIA-engineered coups in Iran and Iraq in the 1950s, through Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in the 1960s and 70s, the invasions of Grenada and Panama and the covert wars in Central America in the 1980s, the bombings and occupations in the Balkans and the Persian Gulf in the 1990s, to the catastrophes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and across the Horn of Africa since 2001, Americans have watched presidents of both parties lie, rush, and swagger their way into foreign bloodshed only to leave chaos behind while democracy at home gets progressively more and more hollowed out.
Grabbing a foreign head of state after bombing a sovereign capital without Congress’s approval is the behavior of a wannabe emperor drunk on his own power. That Trump’s bragging about Venezuela having the world’s largest stash of oil that he claims was “stolen” from American oil companies who are huge Trump donors adds another dimension that’s impossible to ignore, just like Trump not seeking the approval of Congress or even notifying the so-called Gang of Eight for an act of war. And now we’re going to “run” Venezuela for our oil companies? What didn’t we learn from all our other efforts at regime change?
This isn’t about democracy or drugs or enforcing the law, it’s about America embracing the Putin Doctrine while grabbing trillions of dollars worth of oil for Trump’s fossil fuel industry donors. As he told Fox “News” this morning: “We have the greatest oil companies in the world – the biggest, the greatest – and we’re going to be very much involved.”
Regime change operations rarely turned out as planned, and there’s also a good chance this particular train is being driven by SecState Marco Rubio, who lied for years that his parents were Cuban refugees (they came to the US 2 years before Castro took power); his real goal is to end Venezuelan aid to that country so it’ll collapse and he can be the hero of the wealthy Cuban exile community heading into the Republican presidential primaries.
This is getting very dangerous, and Trump appears to be reveling in how successfully he’s ignored and violated the Constitution and international norms of behavior as he tries to turn America into Russia, complete with secret police, economic collapse, trafficking children, and now regional war.