America First, Venezuela, and the Trap of Old Habits

It’s been nearly a year since Donald Trump returned to office and promised, flatly, that every day of his second term would be “America first.”

That phrase can mean a hundred different things. But there’s one version of it that’s coherent, hard-nosed, and actually popular: restraint. Not isolation. Not moral crusades. Just a foreign policy that admits the United States operates in a world of tradeoffs—finite money, finite attention, finite patience at home.

Trump, oddly enough, was uniquely positioned to deliver that. He doesn’t need to perform piety for the foreign policy establishment. He doesn’t need to prove he loves “liberal primacy.” His brand is skepticism toward endless wars, contempt for nation-building, and a transactional view of alliances.

And in some corners of policy, you can see the shape of something new.

But then Venezuela happened—and it’s the clearest sign yet that “America first” can still collapse into the same old reflex: use force, improvise the aftermath, and call it strategy.

The promise and the blueprint

The administration’s new National Security Strategy (released in December) is, on paper, a break from the post–Cold War playbook. It defines national security less as global moral management and more as the health and cohesion of the American republic—the economic, social, and institutional strength that makes power possible in the first place.

That’s not just rhetoric. It implies a hierarchy:

• the Western Hemisphere matters more than far-off projects
• domestic resilience matters more than “credibility” theater
• allies should carry more weight
• and the U.S. should stop treating every regional fight as a test of national destiny

You can also see the generational shift behind it. The second-term team has fewer aging primacists and more officials who grew up professionally inside the wreckage of Iraq and Afghanistan—people whose instincts are shaped by the limits of power, not its myths.

The strategy even takes a swipe at its predecessors, arguing that America’s elites chased an impossible global project and, in doing so, weakened the national character that made American power sustainable.

So far, so good.

The problem is that strategy documents don’t govern the world—outcomes do.

Where restraint is actually showing up

The cleanest evidence of a more restrained, interest-based approach is in Asia.

Trump’s emphasis on direct leader-to-leader contact with Xi Jinping—phone calls, in-person meetings, planned repeat summits—looks like a return to a kind of great-power diplomacy the U.S. has often avoided in recent years. There’s a real logic here: when rivalry is structural and long-term, you don’t reduce risk with sermons; you reduce risk with channels, deals, and controlled bargaining.

Even the way the administration frames certain cooperation has shifted. Instead of presenting issues like fentanyl as moral drama, it turns them into transactional exchange—tariff relief for concrete steps on precursors. It’s not pretty, but it’s legible, and it ties foreign policy to economic incentives rather than symbolic gestures.

On Taiwan, too, the rhetoric has moved back toward ambiguity. Trump’s “you’ll find out if it happens” line may sound flippant, but ambiguity has a purpose: it reduces the chance Washington sleepwalks into a war over words.

This is the restrained worldview at its best: avoid automatic escalations, keep deterrence credible but not theatrical, and remember that diplomacy isn’t weakness—it’s risk management.

The Middle East: one step forward, two steps back

In the Middle East, the shift is less stable.

There were signals of course correction: praising regional development, attacking “nation-builders,” hinting at diplomacy with Iran. But events—and old habits—snapped the system back.

Escalation with Iran, U.S. strikes on nuclear sites, retaliation against U.S. forces, then a fragile cease-fire announced online: it’s hard to call that a disciplined strategy. It looks more like a familiar cycle where Washington becomes a participant in conflicts it doesn’t control, then declares a pause and hopes deterrence holds.

There were also examples where restraint emerged through pain. The Yemen campaign against the Houthis burned through resources and exposed how expensive “limited” force can become. The end result was basically a return to the status quo—only after spending a fortune and revealing how thin stockpiles can get.

In other words, the Middle East remains what it always is for U.S. presidents: a region where ideology, allied pressure, and crisis rhythms constantly try to hijack long-term discipline.

And then: Venezuela

If Asia shows the promise of “America first,” and the Middle East shows how easily it gets knocked off course, Venezuela shows how it can be betrayed outright.

The operation to capture Nicolás Maduro—and the loose talk afterward about “running the country” or staying “much longer” than a year—doesn’t sound like restraint. It sounds like the opening chapter of an occupation fantasy.

Yes, you can argue that the Western Hemisphere deserves priority. You can argue that great-power rivals shouldn’t gain influence near U.S. shores. You can argue that instability, migration, and criminal networks are real threats.

But there’s a difference between targeted force and open-ended management.

And that difference is where “America first” either becomes real—or becomes another slogan swallowed by mission creep.

Here’s the political reality: Americans don’t want a war in Venezuela. Even after a successful operation, the public mood stays wary. The fear isn’t just casualties. It’s the familiar pattern:

1. a quick strike
2. a victory speech
3. an unclear interim authority
4. demands to stabilize
5. advisers arguing the U.S. “can’t leave now”
6. and then years of slow bleed

The administration’s own rhetoric is what makes it dangerous. When the president says the U.S. is going to “run the country,” you don’t need enemies to manufacture a quagmire—you manufacture it yourself.

And practically speaking, even a “short” occupation runs into hard obstacles: no embassy, no entrenched presence, no obvious political settlement, and a region watching to see whether Washington is returning to the era of regime-change adventures.

That’s the trap: what begins as hemispheric assertiveness can end as hemispheric entanglement.

The paradox of “Americas first”

This is the most ironic part.

The National Security Strategy says the Western Hemisphere should matter more. That’s consistent with an “America first” worldview.

But if the U.S. turns hemispheric priority into hemispheric policing—military threats against multiple neighbors, talk of annexations elsewhere, vague warnings and swagger—it doesn’t strengthen U.S. security. It destabilizes the neighborhood and forces other states to hedge.

If “Americas first” means:

• diplomacy
• capacity-building
• intelligence cooperation
• targeted operations with clear endpoints
• regional partnerships that reduce migration and criminal flows at the source

…then it’s coherent.

If it means:

• regime change plus open-ended “management”
• rhetorical threats against half the region
• improvising governance in a foreign capital
• and calling it toughness

…then it becomes the very thing “America first” claimed to reject: endless commitments that drain focus from home.

Why restraint keeps getting constrained

If “America first” is so popular in theory, why does it show up in fits and starts?

Four forces keep pulling the administration back into old patterns:

1) Trump governs by instinct

His instincts sometimes align with restraint—he hates “stupid endless wars.” But he’s also susceptible to flattery, provocation, and the dopamine hit of dramatic action. Foreign policy is one arena where a president can look decisive quickly.

2) The machinery underneath him is chaotic

Competing factions fight for influence. The interagency process bends. Different power centers interpret the president’s posts and speeches in different ways. Even with a new generation in place, the bureaucracy’s default setting is still inertia.

3) Congress is not built for retrenchment

Even Republican leaders often resist drawdowns and try to lock force posture into law. When legislators micromanage troop levels and constrain presidential flexibility, they don’t create strategy—they create gridlock.

4) The media ecosystem still rewards primacy

Legacy outlets treat negotiation as appeasement and bombing as seriousness. Even friendly media can swing from restraint to triumphalism the moment missiles fly. The incentives are perverse: diplomacy is slow, messy, and boring; force is immediate and cinematic.

Put all that together, and you get a recurring temptation: when the domestic agenda is hard—prices, wages, social stress—foreign strikes are easier than fixing the home front.

But that’s exactly the temptation “America first” is supposed to resist.

What “America first” would require now

If the administration wants its slogan to become an actual doctrine rather than a vibe, it needs discipline in three places.

First: define endpoints.
If Venezuela is “done,” then it has to be done. Declare the mission complete, avoid occupying rhetoric, and pursue a political accommodation that prevents the U.S. from inheriting Venezuela’s internal chaos.

Second: align actions with the stated strategy.
If the National Security Strategy says the priority is the republic’s cohesion and resilience, then foreign ventures that risk escalation and entanglement need a much higher bar.

Third: sell restraint as strength.
The public already leans that way. But it needs to be framed as hard realism, not moral retreat: allies carrying more weight is not abandonment; it’s sustainability. Diplomacy isn’t weakness; it’s controlled competition.

The real test

In the end, the question isn’t whether Trump can write a strategy that sounds like restraint.

He already did.

The question is whether he can resist the gravitational pull of intervention—especially when a “quick win” is dangling, when advisers whisper that America must “show strength,” and when the media is ready to applaud the first explosion on the evening news.

Because “America first” is not a mood. It’s a discipline.

And Venezuela is the kind of moment where discipline either holds—or collapses.