After his sending in troops to capture Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and pledging to “run” his country, it seems Donald Trump may not be done.
The US President’s preparedness to use coercion and military force to achieve foreign policy aims, was on full display this past weekend as America struck Venezuela.
Mr Trump has also appeared to threaten other countries with similar treatment. This is what he has said.
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Operation Colombia ‘sounds good to me’
Venezuela’s neighbour has been put on notice, it seems.
The US leader hit out at Colombia’s leftist president, Gustavo Petro, who is already under sanctions imposed by the Trump administration over accusations of involvement in the global drug trade.
Colombia is considered the epicentre of the world’s cocaine supply.
Mr Trump said the country is “run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States”.
“He’s not going to be doing it for very long,” Mr Trump said of Mr Petro. “He has cocaine mills and cocaine factories. He’s not going to be doing it.”
Asked whether he might order the US to conduct an operation against Colombia, Mr Trump replied: “It sounds good to me.”
Cuba ‘down for the count’
Alarm bells may also be ringing in Cuba, an ally of Venezuela (and Russia) that has been under US sanctions since its revolution in 1959.
Mr Trump said the Cuban economy is in tatters and will slide further now following the removal of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, who had provided the country with subsidised oil.
“It’s going down,” Mr Trump said of Cuba. “It’s going down for the count.”
An US intervention now would come at a particularly difficult time for Cuba which was hit by Hurricane Melissa in October. And the signals from the Trump administration are not positive.
“It was Cubans that guarded Maduro,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on NBC’s Meet the Press.
“He was not guarded by Venezuelan bodyguards. He had Cuban bodyguards.”
Cuba’s government has said that 32 of its officers were killed in the US military operation in Venezuela.
Mr Rubio said Cuba was “run by incompetent, senile men, and in some cases not seen now, but incompetent nonetheless”.
The son of Cuban immigrants, Mr Rubio has long advocated for regime change in Cuba, as well as Venezuela.
“If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned at least a little bit,” he said.
Mexico ‘has to get their act together’
There’s also Mexico, on the USA’s southern border.
Comments by Mr Trump following the Venezuela raid have been interpreted as a suggestion of possible military action there, too.
“You have to do something with Mexico,” he said. “Mexico has to get their act together” and do better at combatting drug trafficking, he argued.
Mr Trump said he had repeatedly offered US troops to Mexico, but claimed that President Claudia Sheinbaum is “concerned, she’s a little afraid”.
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Greenland remains in the spotlight
Questions over the future of Greenland remain, given repeated comments from the Trump administration speculating about it becoming an American territory – possibly by force.
“We do need Greenland, absolutely,” Mr Trump told The Atlantic magazine in an interview published on Sunday. “We need it for defence.”
And unlike Venezuela and Colombia, the icy, mineral-rich territory is under the jurisdiction of a NATO member: Denmark.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Mr Trump has “no right to annex” the island.
She also reminded him that Denmark already provides the US with broad access to Greenland through existing security agreements.
“I would therefore strongly urge the US to stop threatening a historically close ally and another country and people who have made it very clear that they are not for sale,” she said on Sunday.
Danes and Greenlanders were rankled on social media by former Trump administration official (now podcaster) Katie Miller, who on Saturday posted a map of Greenland in the colours of the US’ stars and stripes, accompanied by the caption: “SOON”.
What about Iran?
Iran is currently experiencing its biggest domestic protests in three years.
The Islamic Republic faces a moment of vulnerability with its economy in tatters, and international pressure building, as it struggles to recover from the brief war with Israel last year.
Deaths and arrests have been reported in Iran amid violent clashes between demonstrators and security forces.
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Mr Trump has threatened to come to the protesters’ aid if they face violence, saying on Friday that “we are locked and loaded and ready to go”, without specifying what actions he was considering.
Last year, US bombers were involved in strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said Iran “will not yield to the enemy”.
