Op-Ed

Machiavelli’s 500-year-old truths challenge modern politics, asking why we accept politicians who fail the basic tests of real leadership.

Tariffs over Greenland spark backlash as critics warn Trump’s hardline move risks alienating allies and unraveling decades of US diplomacy.

If the Trump administration is serious about protecting U.S. interests in the Arctic, it should stop relying on rhetoric about Greenland and instead invest in a nuclear icebreaker fleet that provides real access, credible presence, and strategic leadership in a rapidly opening region.

The Trump administration’s saber-rattling and tariff threats toward Greenland are a short-sighted, politically driven approach that lacks public and congressional support, risks undermining NATO and U.S. credibility, and could hand China and Russia an opening while alienating the very allies and partners America needs.

Trump’s Greenland purchase talk signaled to allies that Washington was willing to treat sovereignty like a business deal, and that kind of transactional posture weakens NATO unity while giving China and Russia room to press their Arctic ambitions.

The law was meant to be America’s shield against tyranny, but under Trump it has been bent into a weapon, and if we want that shield back, the only constitutional path is to beat him at the ballot box, take Congress, and use impeachment to force the republic back under the rule of laws rather than the whims of one deeply flawed man.

Mexico did not flinch because it cared about Maduro, but because his capture proved the United States had stopped negotiating with old assumptions and started enforcing new ones.

The Senate’s resolution to restrict the Trump administration’s authority to strike Venezuela is a necessary constitutional check that reins in executive overreach and pushes U.S. policy toward disciplined strategy, diplomacy, and coalition action instead of impulsive unilateral force.

Legal justification is the floor, not the ceiling, and this looks like a shooting that may clear the law while still failing the craft, because a step to the right could have ended the threat without ending a life.

America cannot keep treating leader-removal as a substitute for strategy, because without an end state that pairs disciplined special operations capability with sustained diplomatic and development pressure, we do not dismantle the threat, we simply rearrange it.

America does not need another open-ended deployment sold as “leadership” while Congress stays on the sidelines and the mission drifts, because every time we trade clear strategy and accountability for vague promises abroad, we weaken the Republic at home.

The fall of a strongman does not end a regime so much as expose the machinery beneath it, where armed institutions, fear, and habit decide whether power reforms itself or hardens into something more dangerous.