On the traps of being dragged into war

The year 2026 is clearly going to be very chaotic and bloody.

The Venezuela Front. On January 3, 2026, the US carried out a military operation in Caracas, capturing Venezuelan President Maduro and his wife and bringing them to the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima. This picture bears the hallmarks of a classic regime change attempt. Although the US uses the rhetoric of "democracy" and "combating drugs," this brutal attack has turned into a show of force in the Caribbean as an updated version of the Monroe Doctrine. It is clear that the attacks were carried out in a hybrid warfare format, without a declaration of war, without congressional approval, and aimed at internal unrest and regime change in Venezuela. This operation is about bringing a state into line that has been in contact with China and Russia, trying to resist the dollar-sanction order, and slipping out of control in energy and port geopolitics. What happens from now on will depend on the attitude of the Venezuelan people. What is happening in Caracas should be read not only as the emasculation of a country's sovereignty but also as a declaration of where the borders will be drawn in the global power struggle. It should also be noted that the American intervention took place hours after the Chinese special envoy met with the President. This operation is a serious tactical success. However, it is not yet at the strategic stage to fulfill the claim Trump announced at his press conference at Mar-a-Lago: "We will now govern Venezuela." Because it is very difficult for the US to govern a country of 30 million people with a surface area of nearly 1 million square kilometers without occupying it. On the other hand, interfering with an elected leader in a mafia-style manner is a dangerous threshold in terms of international law, signaling a deep fracture in the global order and increasing distrust toward the US. The US is now in the position of a global Israel. The fact that the US is increasingly shifting toward a line that ignores rules and is based solely on power brings with it a world where law is retreating, and chaos and new bloc formations are accelerating. This process is leading the Global South to move closer to China and Russia and is fully exposing the unsustainable character of the US order. In this context, it is possible to say that the main purpose of the operation is to seize oil and valuable minerals. The US dollar-centered global hegemony is seriously eroding. The repayment process for the trillions of dollars spent at zero interest during the Covid period has begun, and the US budget will be under a burden of approximately 1 trillion dollars per year for interest alone in the coming years. At the same time, the devaluation of the dollar, the shift of oil trade away from the dollar along the Saudi Arabia–Iran–China–Russia line, and the weakening of the US's power to impose its will in energy markets are accelerating this process. In this picture, Venezuela's massive oil reserves stand out as a relief tool for markets and an instrument for the US to establish balance by excluding its rivals. However, this goal—that is, seizing the oil industry entirely and starting exports—is not easy. It is also noteworthy that France and the UK criticized the US operation. It can be read as a reflection of the discomfort felt over the US starting to fill the content of its NSS 2025 document. Venezuela will actually be a testing ground for humanity. We will see if the US's bully regime and the paradigm of "I do and take what I want" will work here. One of the most important areas of struggle for humanity in 2026 is undoubtedly starting in Venezuela. Either spoiled tyranny or humanity will win.

The Iran Scenario. US President Donald Trump issued a threat message to the Iranian regime on January 2, 2026, within the scope of internal unrest that began in Iran due to water scarcity and high inflation before the end of 2025. In his message, he stated that "if they open fire on peaceful protesters and kill them using violence, the United States will rush to their aid," and said, "We are locked and loaded." The phrase "locked and loaded" is used in air and naval force terminology to mean locking onto a target with a fire control radar and having weapons loaded and ready to fire. In other words, this is not a warning, but a declaration of the engagement threshold. The situation on the front of constant wars represented by the US is complicated. Israel, which uses the US war machine for its own interests and practically holds the US under mortgage, seems to have learned its lesson after the 12-day Iran War. Iran cannot be destroyed by an external attack. That is why the strategy is changing. Using internal unrest as an excuse, US power is being moved into the Iranian field, and Washington is being dragged step by step to this front. It is no coincidence that this statement came immediately after Trump spent the new year together with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is associated with war crimes, at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. The decision on the Washington–Tel Aviv line seems to have been made long ago, and the public is only being prepared. Trump is practically presenting a new year's gift to Netanyahu and the Zionist globalist front in the US.

The Russia Front. While Ukraine-Russia peace talks were continuing under US leadership, the Ukrainian attack on Putin's official residence in Novgorod with 91 drones on the night of December 28, 2025, suddenly caused the escalation ladder to reach its highest step. Although Zelensky declared that he was not aware of this attack, the answer to who would benefit from the attack already points to the likely culprit. While these developments were ongoing and the parts of the Ukrainian drone used in the attack were presented to the American attaché in Moscow during an official meeting on January 2, 2026, the fact that the US warned all its citizens living in Russia to leave the country at the same time means that very serious developments will take place on the Ukraine-Russia front. It is possible to say that an intelligence agency carried out this attack on behalf of groups that do not want the war to end. Finance Capital (the Neocon and Zionist-backed globalist structure) does not want the war in Europe to end, despite Trump. Trump cannot control this powerful group within the US, including CIA and MI6 extensions. Because globalists are still very strong and active within every structure that makes up US state institutions. Even if the Ukraine War ends, this structure does not want the peoples of Europe to see peace. It is clear that the globalist gang aimed for Putin to be eliminated as a result of an assassination to avoid accepting defeat against Russia, and they failed. This situation offers an opportunity to make a move against Putin. Now, Putin sees that the power of Trump, whom he trusted after the Alaska summit, is limited. If the war continues to intensify, Putin may make a move to solidify his military gains on the ground on the east bank of the Dnieper River, in Donbas and Zaporizhzhia. If the war drags on much longer, he may include Odesa among his targets. On the other hand, the Russia–Ukraine war entering a ceasefire or frozen conflict phase under Trump's pressure is not an end for finance capital. On the contrary, it is a threshold where new crisis areas will be sought. Because Europe's high defense budgets, extraordinary profits in energy markets, and militarized political atmosphere can only be kept alive with a constant perception of threat. Gray areas, provocations, "accidents," information operations, and sometimes false flag scenarios come to the fore. The goal is not to start a war, but to produce the perception of the inevitability of war. History is full of examples of this template. The explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898 put the US public into a war psychology and paved the way for the Spanish–American War. The incident that occurred in Mukden on the South Manchuria Railway line in 1931 created a "pretext" for Japan to occupy Manchuria through a false flag operation. The Nazis' 1939 Gleiwitz false flag provocation served to make Poland appear as the aggressor. The Second Gulf of Tonkin incident on August 2, 1964, which was portrayed by the US as having happened even though it did not, legitimized the expansion of the Vietnam War. The common point of these examples is this: War decisions are prepared in the field of perception. Publics are brought to the point of "there is no other choice left." In this framework, the deterioration of Russia-US relations will benefit the European finance capital gang. Even though the peoples do not want war, the regimes in Germany, the UK, and France, in particular, will use this situation to their advantage and strengthen their politically declining status at home through the spread of war. This situation will also bring new scenarios to the agenda. Among the first places that come to mind are the Moldova and Kaliningrad scenarios. However, writing a new scenario in Moldova that would weaken Russia might not be in the interest of the globalist gang. Because this region is already adjacent to an area where the war continues, and Russia's intervention is much easier compared to the Baltic region. Kaliningrad is not like that.

The Kaliningrad Scenario. US Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) General Christopher Donahue said the following in a statement on July 18, 2025, regarding the Kaliningrad Oblast, which has a population of 1 million and an area of 15 thousand square kilometers, is surrounded by the Baltic Sea, Poland, and Lithuania, and has no direct connection to the Russian homeland on the Baltic coast: "The importance of land masses in war is no longer decreasing, it is becoming even more important... You can now remove the enemy's Anti-Access (A2) and Area Denial (AD) capabilities with land intervention. You can now seize the sea from land. All these events in Ukraine show this." In short, General Donahue emphasizes that this region is surrounded by NATO in the context of NATO's military planning and deterrence strategy, stating that this encirclement also creates an advantage at sea in terms of NATO's land power. Especially in the continuation of his speech, he mentions that he aims to strengthen land-based defense and attack capabilities, saying that the Russians' access denial and area denial capabilities at sea and in the air in Kaliningrad can be rapidly neutralized. This comment was reflected by many Western media outlets as NATO being able to seize Kaliningrad in a way never seen before. These statements were perceived as a "threat" by Russia, which describes Kaliningrad as its red line, and were criticized in harsh language. Moscow emphasized that it would take all measures, including nuclear weapons, to defend this region.

Finance Capital and War. Finance capital never gets enough of war; because the ideal environment for them is uncertainty. War is not a destruction for them, but a functioning production model. Peace means predictability, real production, an increase in the share of labor, and political control. However, a world of war where risk is priced, arms sales increase, debt grows, and public resources are transferred to the private sector on the grounds of "security" is the ideal environment for finance capital. For this reason, war is not a deviation for the financial system, but an accelerating mechanism. It is not the war itself, but its continuation that is important. Prolonged conflicts make defense spending permanent, reprice energy and commodity markets, normalize borrowing, and keep societies in a constant "state of emergency" psychology. Thus, finance capital gains an area where democratic control is weakened and opposition is suppressed on the grounds of "security." The picture we are witnessing today is exactly the matured state of this structure.

Why Does Europe Want War While the US Is Withdrawing? Today, we are facing a situation that seems contradictory at first glance. The US, with its National Security Strategy document published on December 4, 2025, has accepted the economic, technological, and geopolitical rise of China and has turned to a strategy of balance and containment instead of direct conflict. The Western Pacific is Trump's priority area. In contrast, the neocons in Europe and the US are preparing for a long-term confrontation with Russia, and even war if one looks at their rhetoric, by using NATO, which is in the hands of finance capital globalists, as a lever. This contradiction cannot be explained by strategic reason, but by the geographical reflexes of finance capital. According to Trump's MAGA group, the US financial system is saturated on a global scale and has limited capacity to support others' new wars. The European finance capital order, on the contrary, has become unable to live without a crisis. Because Europe's deindustrializing economy, low growth rates, and aging population cannot justify and accelerate high defense spending and militarization in a period without war. Feeling that the US security umbrella is weakening, Europe must arm itself more. However, a threat—that is, an enemy—is essential for the political justification of armament. At this point, Russia is not just a geopolitical rival, but the raison d'être of European finance capital. Ukraine paid the heaviest price for this process. Beyond being a state on the field, Ukraine was used as a geopolitical tool. Its manpower, infrastructure, agricultural capacity, and energy lines became the raw materials of the long war. As the war dragged on, Ukraine's sovereign territory shrank because the war economy increased dependence on external financing, made the debt regime permanent, and mortgaged the "reconstruction" process before it even began. This is not colonialism in the classical sense. Instead, a triangle of debt, security, and reconstruction is established. Ukraine's future depends more on what financial architecture will be established after the war than on whether the war ends or not. This explains why Ukraine is seen as valuable not because it "wins," but because the war is prolonged.

NATO Provocation. NATO was presented as a security guarantee for Europe for many years. Today, it is increasingly evolving into a structure that produces instability. Today, Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, which is the essence of NATO, stands legally, but it has become effectively politicized and conditional. Let us recall: "The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such a armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area." It is clearly seen here that Article 5 is not an automatic declaration of war, but expresses the obligation of each member to assist "as it deems necessary" (military or otherwise). In this case, it is not possible to use forces given to NATO's peacetime operational command and control without the approval of the countries. In other words, forces allocated to NATO in peacetime cannot be used in war or conflict without national approval. The transfer of authority, called "Transfer of Authority (TOA)," requires political decision and national approval. That is, many thresholds must be crossed. No NATO commander can put a country's forces into hot conflict without that country's political will. On the other hand, the fundamental mistake made by Globalist European hawks over Article 5 is to assume that the US will automatically be involved in every threshold. However, Washington's fundamental question is whether the crisis threatens the American homeland. If the answer is no, Europe may be left alone with its own risks. Europe is no longer an existential center for the US, but a risk area that needs to be managed, and every escalatory step taken without accepting this reality brings the continent closer to the possibility of a reckoning without the US. Europe today is encouraged not by real power, but by the illusion of power.

Conclusion. The first days of 2026 were a sign that the coming days will be very difficult. Trump spending the new year with Netanyahu in the very week the Epstein files were opened was a kind of manifesto of the Zionist pressure on Trump.

The developments that have occurred one after another in recent days, outside the main route and paradigm drawn in the NSS 25 document, actually reflect the struggle of different interest and pressure groups within the US. On the other hand, the consequences of the US going into an additional debt of 6–7 trillion dollars in a near-zero interest environment during the pandemic period are being experienced today. Moving the public debt to the 33 trillion dollar level creates the need to refinance 9–10 trillion dollars in 2026 and a total of 15 trillion dollars between 2026–2028. The problem is that this renewal will now be done in a 4–4.5% interest environment, not 0.5%. This has pushed net interest payments from 345 billion dollars in 2020 to 970 billion dollars in 2025. This amount is moving to the 1–1.2 trillion dollar band in 2026. Ultimately, borrowing to pay interest accelerates the debt spiral, the demand for bonds weakens with the withdrawal of major buyers like China and Japan, the Fed's pressure to print money erodes the credibility of the dollar, and the system becomes capable of breaking within weeks in the face of a geopolitical or financial shock. In short, while hegemony survives on borrowing capacity, this capacity is being seriously questioned.

Under these conditions, the US pressing the button for regime change in Venezuela and starting an undeclared war with hybrid and asymmetric tactics on January 3, 2026, will start a new process of tension and conflict in South America that will last for years. A period where there is no law or rule and only power speaks is beginning. As a state that has experienced the July 15, 2016, FETÖ coup attempt, Turkey should directly oppose the US's regime change move in Venezuela and support Venezuela's elected government in the meetings and votes to be held at the UN.

While these are happening, the comprehensive "Justice Mission 2025" blockade exercise that China carried out around Taiwan in the final days of 2025 confirms that the area denial doctrine, which can manage sea and air traffic without entering hot conflict, has matured and that China can produce multi-front naval pressure. Donald Trump's "our weapons are ready" language toward Iran in the first days of the new year pushes Beijing not so much to take a step back, but to seek alternative corridors and alliances, reminding that China will pay the heaviest price for Iran putting the Strait of Hormuz card on the table in a possible escalation due to its energy dependence. In parallel with this, the US calls to its citizens through its embassies to "leave Russia" and the hardening perception of threat after the assassination attempt on Putin prolong the peace talks and make the escalation permanent, while accelerating the Moscow–Beijing rapprochement and making Russia–China strategic coordination a necessity rather than a choice. The Iran issue, which has flared up again with Netanyahu's triggering, will create as serious fractures as the Russia-Ukraine War if an attack occurs. China will read the latest developments not from Taiwan, but from Hormuz. The collapse of Iran means the redesign of not only the Middle East but also global supply chains, energy prices, and the Asia-Pacific balance. In short, the issue is not just Iran. The issue is a new major fracture that the US is forcibly dragged into, triggered by Israel, and whose consequences China will manage on a global scale. On the other hand, the struggle between the front that wants the continuation of the Russia-Ukraine War and Trump, who says China first, continues. Seeing that peace is not possible due to the attacks it has been subjected to since December 31, Russia may continue to advance in Donbas to the lands up to the Dnieper River. In this case, Zelensky cannot remain in power in Ukraine any longer. Ultimately, Ukraine will either have a government that will live in peace with Russia or the hostility will continue. In such a case, it can be said that there is a risk that Ukraine will even lose Odesa. Turkey must be very careful in this process. The fall of Iran and its being dragged into civil war would cause very serious geopolitical problems for our country. A pro-US and pro-Israel regime coming to power in Iran means the encirclement of Turkey from the east. This also means a large wave of migration toward Turkey piling up on our eastern border. On the other hand, the attitude that our brother Azerbaijan will take in the event that Iran reaches the stage of civil war and regime change is very important. The use of both Azerbaijan and Turkey in line with the interests of US and Israeli geopolitics creates a cascade effect that will affect not only regional geopolitics but also continental and global geopolitics. Under these conditions, the restriction of any kind of facility that could support Israel and the aggressive front, including Kürecik and airspace, should not be ignored. Turkey should continue its current policy in the Russia-Ukraine War but should be restrictive regarding the opening of its airspace to NATO aircraft. It should not be forgotten that the Montreux Straits Convention does not allow foreign warships and maintains the balance in the Black Sea. The same situation should set an example for the protection of our airspace, even if there is no binding agreement. Turkey, which does not allow foreign warships, should be stingy in allowing foreign aircraft and UAVs to enter the Black Sea in a way that would disrupt Ankara's neutrality.

(I will conduct a Venezuela analysis on my Youtube program to be broadcast on January 7, 2026, at 17:00. The link to the channel is as follows: https://www.youtube.com/@CemGurdenizz)