This newsletter was first published in The Conversation UK’s World Affairs Briefing email. Sign up to receive weekly analysis of the latest developments in international relations, direct to your inbox.Watching Donald Trump and his defence and national security team announcing the US raid on Caracas on Saturday, it was hard not to conclude that while the US president was clearly using a script, there were points at which he seemed to be extemporising. At times he appeared as if he may be inventing US foreign policy as he went along, much to the visible discomfort of his secretary of state, Marco Rubio. It must be challenging presenting a coherent message about American intentions in the region when the justification for the raid shifts randomly from a law enforcement operation to apprehend a “narco-terrorist”, to regime change to replace an illegitimate leader, to a bid to take control of the world’s largest oil reserves.All of these have been canvassed in the days since. And, five days after the raid, it’s still not 100% clear what the US plans to do. But even so, it felt like a fairly important inflection point in global geopolitics: the point at which the US president and his senior advisers said out loud – and with particular emphasis – that the Trump administration will do whatever it likes, regardless of what anyone might think. As the US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, told the assembled reporters and TV audiences around the world: “America can project our will anywhere, anytime.” He added: “This is America first. This is peace through strength. Welcome to 2026.”Rubio, meanwhile, made sure everyone would be clear that this administration is serious: “I hope what people now understand is that we have a president [who] when he tells you that he’s going to do something, when he tells you he’s going to address a problem, he means it. He actions it.”So what are we to make of Trump’s repeated assertions that the US plans to take control of Greenland, by fair means or foul? Denmark, of which Greenland is a part, is certainly taking the prospect seriously. The country’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, warned this week that an aggressive attack on a Nato member by another Nato member would spell an end to the alliance. And on the face of it you’d have to think she’s right: the alliance was set up in 1949 to ensure peace in Europe. Its key clause, article 5, demands that an attack on one member state is considered an attack on the alliance as a whole. But David Dunn, Mark Webber and Stefan Wolff, international security experts at the University of Birmingham, believe there is no need to panic – at least not yet. Nato has weathered deep disputes between member states before now. It got through Suez in the 1950s and the cod war between the UK and Iceland and the confrontation between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus in the 1970s. But an aggressive move on Greenland, while not necessarily destroying Nato, would be likely to paralyse the alliance at a time when collective security is of paramount importance. Our three experts counsel caution at this point: US security concerns in the region could be addressed without an outright takeover of Greenland. And, they write, with the US midterms approaching, the US president could well find himself distracted by more important domestic political concerns – particularly if his Republican party loses control of either or both houses of Congress. In other words, patience, vigilance and caution – for the present – are the advisable course of action for America’s European allies. Read more: US action against Greenland would undermine Nato, but now is not the time to panic It’s a measure of how fast-moving the geopolitical situation has become that we spent Saturday worrying about the implications of the kidnapping of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, but by Sunday the future of Greenland was on everyone’s lips. This may well be down to a tweet posted on Saturday evening by Republican influencer Katie Miller, the wife of Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff. She posted a picture of Greenland overlaid with the Stars and Stripes and headed with the single word: “soon”. This prompted the Atlantic, in an interview with the US president the following morning, to enquire about the tweet and ask what the Trump administation’s intentions are toward Greenland. And suddenly the news agenda shifted.Katie Miller is privy to the innermost workings of the administration. Her husband is one of Trump’s closest aides and, many believe, a key ideologue, having been steeped in America First ideology for his entire career. This week in an interview with CNN, Stephen Miller spelled out, in the starkest terms, his boss’s modus operandi: the notion that might is right. Or, as Miller put it: “We’re a superpower. And under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower.” Natasha Lindstaedt has traced Stephen Miller’s political evolution, from right-wing schoolboy the right hand of the 47th US president. Read more: Stephen Miller: portrait of Donald Trump's ideologue-in-chief What the ‘Donroe doctrine’ means for VenezuelaWe had advance warning of this aggressive foreign policy stance late last year when the US published its national security strategy, in which it reasserted the two centuries-old Monroe doctrine, with its assertion that the US regards the western hemisphere as its exclusive backyard in which it should have carte blanche to impose its will on other nations.Trump himself referred to this in his press conference to announce Operation Absolute Resolve: “They now call it the ‘Donroe’ document.” Stefan Wolff believes this assertive new stance in America’s backyard is an indication of a shift in the global order over the 12 months of Trump’s second term, in which the US, Russia and China essentially divide the world into three spheres of influence. If the US can act with impunity in what he regards to be America’s backyard, he warns, what does this mean for Vladmir Putin’s war in Ukraine or Xi Jinping’s ambition to “reunite” Taiwan with mainland China, if necessary by force. Read more: Donald Trump's raid on Venezuela foreshadows a new 'great power' carve-up of the world Pablo Uchoa meanwhile – a former BBC journalist now researching Latin American politics at University College London’s Institute of the Americas – believes that Maduro is the guinea pig for Trump’s new aggressive stance. In custody: Nicolás Maduro, handcuffed and wearing prison clothes, with Drug Enforcement Agency officers. X Uchoa, a biographer of Maduro’s populist predecessor, Hugo Chavez, warns of the US president’s hints about US intentions towards Columbia and Cuba, identifying Venezuela as the “laboratory where Trump has decided to flex America’s geopolitical muscles”. Read more: The ‘Donroe doctrine': Maduro is the guinea pig for Donald Trump’s new world order But how do Venezuelans feel about their president being snatched from his Caracas bunker? Matt Wilde and Harry Rogers, geographers at the University of Leicester, have been interviewing Venezuelans living in Spain, the US and Venezuela and were in Madrid talking to expats when the news of Maduro’s kidnapping broke on Saturday. They noted a range of emotions: much joy at the downfall of a controversial leader who many viewed as a brutal and illegitimate dictator, but also fear about what might happen next in their country. Read more: Venezuelans are reacting to Maduro's capture with anger, fear, hope and joy All about oilIf, as the US president has repeatedly stressed, the US raid on Venezuela was as much about taking control of the country’s oil supplies as anything else, it’s worth taking a look at what this might mean for oil prices.With the prospect of the opening up of access to Venezuela’s “proven reserves” of more than 300 billion barrels of oil, you’d expect the price to fall – and indeed that has been the initial reaction, especially since Trump vowed to seize up to 50 million barrels of Venezuelan oil.But Adi Imsirovic, a lecturer in energy systems at the University of Oxford, cautions that the situation is far less clear cut. It is likely to take years for Venezuelan oil production to recover from the long-term decline it has experienced over the past two decades. And the uncertainty caused by geopolitical turmoil tends to send oil prices up, not down. Read more: What the US strike on Venezuela could mean for global oil prices It was no doubt with oil on their minds that the Trump administration ordered the boarding of two tankers linked to Venezuela on the grounds they were in breach of sanctions – one of which was sailing under a Russian flag. As they insist: they can do what they like, when they like. It’s down to experts in maritime law, such as Andrew Serdy of the University of Southampton to figure out the legality of the exercise. Read more: US boards a ship sailing under a Russian flag: what we know and don't know about the legal position Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we’ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.