The Author is former Chief of Staff of a frontline Corps in the North East and a former helicopter pilot. He earlier headed the China & neighbourhood desk at the Defence Intelligence Agency. He retired in July 2020 and held the appointment of Addl DG Information Systems at Army HQ.

The year 2025 rounded off very well as our indefatigable ISRO LVM3 rocket lifted a 6,100 kgs Blue Bird-2 US communication satellite, its heaviest yet, and gently placed it in the LEO (Low Earth Orbit) on December 24. The launch firmly established India's expanding role in the global commercial launch market.

The irony of the situation wasn't lost. US President Trump has imposed a 50 per cent punitive tariff on India for its continued defiance of sanctions imposed on Russia since the start of the war in Ukraine nearly four years ago and buying Russian oil, though China is the biggest buyer of Russian oil. Trump has also cosied up with the Pakistani establishment calling Asim Munir his "favourite Field Marshal", a pointer to the depth to which Indo-US relations has sunk since Op Sindoor in May 2025. The space launch tells us that all is not lost and Indo-US relations has many threads and layers which are outside the grip of the mercurial American President.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, were captured and removed from Venezuela as a series of airstrikes hit Caracas early January 3, 2026. This is not the first time that the US has kidnapped, Mafioso style, a sovereign President and brought him over for trials under American domestic laws.

But barely three days into the new year, chaos began in another hemisphere. The build-up in the Caribbean in the dying days of 2025 with arrival of the USS Gerald R. Ford, the deployment of F-35s to Puerto Rico, expanded naval patrols, the build-up of some 15,000 US personnel, and the announcement of a naval blockade of Venezuelan tankers carrying sanctioned oil were ominous. However, the sudden escalation beat even the most pessimistic visualisation of how the global order, in place since the WW II, might begin to unravel. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, were captured and removed from Venezuela as a series of airstrikes hit Caracas early January 3, 2026 and accused of playing a key role in a broad conspiracy over 25 years to traffic cocaine into the US, with the help of regional drug and terrorist groups.

Exactly on this day 36 years ago, on January 3, 1990, the US had arrested Panama ruler Manuel Noriega after invading the country. So, to be fair, this is not the first time that the US has kidnapped, Mafioso style, a sovereign President and brought him over for trials under American domestic laws.

The lynchpin of the Petrodollar system, Saudi Arabia has allowed the 50-Years 'oil for security' arrangement, entered in August 1974 to lapse and now open to use petro-Yuan in crude settlements.

By 1970, Noriega was on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) helping the US curb the spread of communism in Central America. After the death of Torrijos in a 1981 air crash, Noriega became the de facto leader of Panama. Even though the US had full knowledge of Noriega's involvement with Colombian drug lords such as Pablo Escobar, this was overlooked as long as he was useful to the CIA. In the mid-1980s, he was one of the key players in the Iran-Contra affair which involved the smuggling of weapons and drugs to aid US undercover efforts to support the anti-government forces opposing the Marxist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. So smuggling of weapons and drugs by themselves do not really constitute an offense as long as they aid US interests, help undercover efforts elsewhere to overthrow governments. Something like "Good Taliban, Bad Taliban".

This was also the case with Saddam Hussein of Iraq. US intelligence helped Saddam's Ba`ath Party seize power for the first time in 1963. Evidence suggests that Saddam was on the CIA payroll as early as 1959, when he participated in a failed assassination attempt against Iraqi strongman Abd al-Karim Qassem. In the 1980s, the US and Britain backed Saddam in the war against Iran, giving Iraq arms, money, satellite intelligence, and even chemical & bio-weapon precursors. But Iraq's asking for payment of its oil sales since end of 2000 in Euro instead of the conventional US dollar spooked the US no end. Any threats to the petrodollar system had to be ruthlessly put down. So the hoax of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) was invented.

Having weaponised the reserve currency and illegally seized $300 billion Russian assets held in western banks after the Ukraine way broke out, the trust on US Dollar has evaporated

The same US General, Collin Powell, who led the operations against Panama in 1990 as Chairman Joint Chief of Staff, was by now the Secretary of State with an aura of venerability assiduously build by the western media. On February 5, 2003, Colin Powell addressed the UN Security Council, falsely claiming that Saddam Hussein had a stockpile of WMDs. Iraq was bombarded, Saddam killed and the region was pushed into chaos helping the ISIS to establish a Caliphate ten years later. No WMDs were ever found by UN inspectors despite years of intrusive and humiliating searches.

However, 1990 (Panama) and 2026 (Venezuela) have very different geopolitical realities. In 1990, the Soviet Union was withering after the fall of the Berlin Wall a year earlier, China was nowhere on the geopolitical power play, guided by Deng Xiao Ping's policy of "Hide your strength, bide your time". The US had just emerged as the sole superpower, the global hegemon, unstoppable, unchallenged.

The 2026 scenario is starkly different. The lynchpin of the Petrodollar system, Saudi Arabia has allowed the 50-Years 'oil for security' arrangement entered in August 1974 to lapse and now open to use petro-Yuan in crude settlements. So has the UAE. In the intricate dance of global geopolitics and economics, few shifts are as profound and potentially transformative as the changing landscape of energy finance.

The 'weaponisation' of the US dollar through sanctions, particularly against Russia, has provided a strong impetus for many countries, especially the BRICS nations, to seek alternatives

By IMF estimates, China ($41 trillion) has already overtaken the US as the world's largest economy surpassing the US ($30 trillion) in PPP terms. With India ($17 trillion) and Russia ($7 trillion), three of the four largest economies are literally ranged against the US dominated global financial system though measures like the BRICS Settlement System (BRICS PAY) into which 149 countries have signed in, looking to bypass the SWIFT system and promote local currencies in trade.

China has shed its earlier "Hide Your Strength and Bide Your Time" policy to emerge as the key partner across continents in Africa, Latin America and even Europe as the US looks increasingly isolated. Having weaponised the reserve currency and illegally seized $300 billion Russian assets held in western banks after the Ukraine way broke out, the trust on US Dollar has evaporated. The US economy faces harsh challenges groaning under a $39 trillion debt and the collapse of the petrodollar arrangement can cause severe derailment of the American economy and destabilise its society.

The American actions in Venezuela opens a path for China to militarily annex Taiwan. Europe has become voiceless, now unable to fathom how does it condemn Russia as the aggressor in Ukraine any more.

With its back to the wall, the Deep State is desperate to seek control of Venezuela, with world's largest known oil reserves, something that the brash US President didn't even attempt to hide in his presser, claiming that the US had full rights over Venezuelan oil since its oil companies had invested in them a 100 years earlier till they were pushed out with gradual nationalisation in the 1970s and full control by Hugo Chavez since 1999. It's almost a replay of the 1954 overthrow of the first democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mosaddegh for nationalising its oil industries then controlled by British firms.

Maduro may be out and behind the bars, but Venezuela's Chavistas military and paramilitary, backed by Russian advisors, Cuban specialists and Iranian intelligence operatives will resist attempts by the US to install a puppet regime under the garb of restoring democracy. Vice President Delcy Rodriguez who assumed interim Presidency the next day defiantly vowed that Venezuela will never become "a colony of another empire" and said "There is only one President in Venezuela and his name is Maduro".

The US military intervention has not only upended cherished values of sovereignty of nations, but also definitively reduced the UN to becoming a helpless bystander. At least in case of Iraq, the US had made pretences of consulting the UNSC. Europe has become voiceless, now unable to fathom how does it condemn Russia as the aggressor in Ukraine any more. The American actions in Venezuela opens a path for China to militarily annex Taiwan. The 'Rule Based World Order" is facing its gravest challenge yet.

The "weaponisation" of the US dollar through sanctions, particularly against Russia, has provided a strong impetus for many countries, especially the BRICS nations, to seek alternatives like BRICS Pay as well as the adoption of multi-central bank digital currency (multi-CBDC) platforms like Project mBridge, bypassing the Dollar dominated SWIFT system. Historically, shifts in global reserve currencies, such as the Spanish Silver Dollar, the Dutch Guilder, and the British Pound Sterling, have always coincided with significant re-orderings of global economic and political power. The churn is round the corner. And it could get violent, based on how quickly the trust in US Dollar evaporates and how badly will American Deep State react.

How did India react to the developments in the Caribbean? Well, India has issued a mild statement condemning the situation without naming the US and called for peace and stability in the region., a sharp departure from other BRICS nations such as Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa who have roundly condemned the US for its naked aggression. Focused on its roaring economic growth topping eight per cent last quarter, India is hedging its bets, in tight embrace with Russia for energy and military hardware, a thaw in relations with China and also well engaged with Europe through deft trade negotiation and mutual dependency. In a potentially volatile 2026, with its significant diaspora in the US in distress, India is justifiably treading with caution.