Donald Trump has sent shockwaves through one of America’s most vital alliances with a bold five-day maneuver, causing global concern.

On Wednesday, the President commanded the capture of two oil tankers in international waters: the Russian-flagged Bella 1 near Scotland’s northern coast and the Sophia in the Caribbean. This move followed his controversial threat to invade Greenland just a day earlier.

These actions, coupled with threats directed at Denmark’s Arctic territory, come on the heels of the dramatic capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. The operation took place during a daring raid on a Caracas military fortress early last Saturday.

This series of aggressive international moves seems at odds with a president who once promised to adopt non-interventionist policies and end “forever wars.”

However, this may not be as chaotic as it initially seems.

Trump, in a landmark 33-page National Security Strategy published last month, redefined US foreign policy principles to assert that the Western Hemisphere is now America’s exclusive domain free of the malign influences of China and Russia, while post-WWII allies are branded as unreliable spendthrifts overrun by immigrants.

Hours after seizing the Russian tanker, the President launched a blistering attack on NATO with a reminder that allies ‘weren’t paying their bills’ – just 2 percent of their GDP on defense, well short of the 5 percent target set last summer at the Hague. 

‘Until I came along,’ Trump wrote on Truth Social. ‘The USA was, foolishly, paying for them.’

President Donald Trump gestures as he addresses House Republicans at their annual issues conference retreat, at the Kennedy Center, renamed the Trump-Kennedy Center by the Trump-appointed board of directors, in Washington, DC, on Tuesday

French President Emmanuel Macron greets British Prime Minister Keir Starmer upon his arrival at the Elysee Palace on Wednesday

French President Emmanuel Macron greets Denmark Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen upon her arrival at the Elysee Palace on Wednesday

US forces storming a Russian oil tanker off the north coast of Scotland on Wednesday

‘Russia and China have zero fear of NATO without the United States, and I doubt NATO would be there for us if we really needed them,’ he added.

‘We will always be there for NATO, even if they won’t be there for us. The only nation that China and Russia fear and respect is the DJT-rebuilt USA.’ 

The broadside underscored the administration’s ‘burden-shifting’ philosophy, laid out in the National Security Strategy published on December 2.

Gone are the days of America as Atlas, propping up the world order.

Instead, allies must assume ‘primary responsibility for their regions’ or face consequences – including losing favorable treatment on trade or technology sharing. 

Trump has in the last week thrown decades of precedent out of the window in his treatment of NATO and Congress. 

The President consulted neither party before capturing Maduro, and now chills relations further by threatening to invade Greenland – a neighbor which the US has vowed to protect since 1951.

Trump, emboldened by Maduro’s capture, touted the ‘Donroe Doctrine’, his version of President James Monroe’s 1823 policy which warned Europeans against colonization in the Americas. 

‘They now call it the Donroe Doctrine … American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again,’ he bragged to reporters. 

The shift was formalized by the ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine, a cornerstone of the National Security Strategy.

The strategy makes plain that the tension with Europe runs deeper than defense spending.

This image posted on US President Donald Trump’s Truth Social account on January 3, 2026, shows Maduro onboard the USS Iwo Jima after the US military captured him 

It warns that ‘the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less’ because of immigration and declining birthrates.

The document states it is ‘far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies.’  

Even more provocatively, it questions whether NATO members that become ‘majority non-European’ within decades will ‘view their alliance with the United States in the same way as those who signed the NATO charter.’ 

The strategy also makes clear that America’s foreign and economic policies are intertwined.

Before Maduro’s capture, rhetoric focused on ‘narco-terrorists’ supplying drugs. 

But now, in a naked display of the White House’s intentions, oil is the word of the day.

‘We’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground,’ Trump told reporters.  

The administration’s approach is flauntingly mercantilist, harking back to a colonial era that crumbled after the Second World War 

This means that its adversaries cannot be allowed to dominate global supply chains, particularly as energy and mineral wealth become critical to the AI revolution.

Seizing oil tankers in international waters signals that Trump now treats the Atlantic and Caribbean as American seas, where his troops can board any vessel he believes poses a threat.

For Russia and China, this is ‘keep out’ sign.

For Europe, Trump is showing that he is ‘daddy’, as NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte prophetically joked last summer.

American forces captured a separate ‘dark fleet’ tanker called the M/T Sophia

The vessel was described as a ‘stateless, sanctioned dark fleet motor tanker’

European allies are scrambling to respond. 

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said this week that if the US seizes Greenland, the NATO alliance would collapse. 

‘The international community as we know it, democratic rules of the game, NATO, the world’s strongest defensive alliance – all of that would collapse if one NATO country chose to attack another,’ she said.

But some Trump allies are privately amused at the spectacle, viewing the President’s threats as typical hardball negotiating tactics.

‘It’s a negotiating tactic, 100 percent,’ one close Trump ally told ex-Politico reporter Rachel Bade. ‘Everybody’s like, ‘Oh my God!’ What, are they going to drop the 82nd Airborne in there, for f***’s sake? No.’

The source added: ‘People fall for this kind of thing all the time. No, this is sausage-making at its finest … They’re just turning up the pressure.’

Whether bluff or genuine threat, the world is taking Trump seriously.

‘Don’t play games while this president’s in office because it’s not gonna turn out well,’ Marco Rubio warned on Saturday.