Dickson C. Igwe. Photo: VINO/File

On December 25, 2025, Christmas Day, the US bombed alleged terrorists in Sokoto, a city in North-Eastern Nigeria. This was in relation to a demand from the Christian Right in the USA that an alleged genocide against Nigerian Christians stop. The evangelical right is the most powerful force in the Make America Great Again Movement, headed by Donald Trump.

The intervention shocked Nigeria’s incompetent and corrupt leaders into a series of belated actions in an attempt to appease the US strongman.

Then on January 3, 2026, the USA, led by commandos of the Delta Brigade, entered Caracas, Venezuela and captured the Venezuelan Leader Nicolas Maduro and his wife and conveyed them to jail in New York. This shocking event revealed the extent of US logistical, technological and military power in a single action. Entering a vast land and extracting its leader is the stuff of legend.

The preceding actions are a signal from the US leader that the world has a new order. Threats to annexe Greenland, the Panama Canal, and requesting that Canada become a US state are not necessarily empty threats, as Venezuela has revealed. The old post-1945 order of a world ruled by the US Dollar and institutions created by the USA appears well and truly over.

In the place of an order created at Bretton Woods after the Second World War is a return to the early 1900s, when world powers carved up the world according to their capabilities and interests. Might is right is the well-used cliché, where powerful countries decide what, where, when, how and who, outside their borders.

The danger is that history, although not repeating itself. The power play of the early 1900s pre 1914 and 1939, led to World Wars One and Two. Authoritarian leaders in Germany, Japan and Russia unleashed forces that led to a world conflict that ended 70 million lives.

The same is happening today. Donald Trump is unhinged. He is as dangerous as Adolf Hitler, except that Trump has his finger on the nuclear button and controls a frightening military arsenal.

China is the second world power. A dictator controls China. A Chinese Communist Party that will not tolerate any form of dissent, although it has allowed for a market economy, decides daily existence in China. That Chinese form of state capitalism has made China the world’s largest and most powerful trading nation.

In the West, the Atlantic Ocean, Trump has invaded Venezuela. He claims he will rule the Latin American country until further notice in the interests of oil and a strong Dollar. China may decide to do the same with Taiwan. This is a reminder of the same forces that drove the world to war in the early 1900s.