A Superpower Tests Its Neighbors—and the World Watches
At the northern edge of the continent, January air carries sound farther than it should. In Ottawa, a flag snaps sharply against its pole outside a government building that has not yet filled for the day, each crack echoing down a street still half-dark at seven in the morning. In Mexico City, the same hour smells of diesel and sweet bread, vendors already calling out orders as radios repeat the same overnight news: on January 2, 2026, the United States removed another foreign leader by force.¹
And on phones, almost as an afterthought, something stranger—also on January 2, 2026: Katie Miller, the wife of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, posted an image of Greenland overlaid with the American flag and the caption “SOON.”² Denmark lodged a formal protest within hours. European diplomats quietly took screenshots. The image vanished quickly, but the signal did not.
The reactions could not look more different. In Ottawa, officials are still speaking carefully, reaching for words like “process” and “stability.” In Mexico City, the language has already turned colder, more legal. In Copenhagen, irritation hardened into alarm almost immediately. But the question forming in all three places is the same, even if it is not yet being said aloud.
If this can happen there—
why not here?
To be clear about what “this” is: on January 2, 2026, the United States carried out a covert, military-backed operation to extract Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, transferring him to U.S. custody and then publicly describing the action not only as law enforcement, but as the beginning of American control over Venezuela’s political and economic future.³ Within hours, Colombia requested an emergency United Nations Security Council session, backed by Russia and China;⁴ European governments issued unusually sharp condemnations;⁵ and the UN Secretary-General warned that the action represented a “dangerous precedent.”⁴