The year 2026 has opened with a bout of chaos. The Jan. 3 kidnapping of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, laid bare a Hobbesian “war of every man against every man,” in which the very notion of sovereignty was cast aside. U.S. Senator Rand Paul accurately pointed out that “bombing another nation’s capital and removing their leader is an act of war plain and simple. No provision in the Constitution provides such power to the presidency."

Besides acting in violation of U.S. constitutional law, with respect to the Western Hemisphere, the Trump Administration has also asserted something it refers to as the “Donroe Doctrine.” This is a reversal of the intent of the December, 1823 Monroe Doctrine, and was accompanied by implicit and explicit threats to destabilize and even possibly overthrow the governments of other sovereign nation-states in the area, such as Mexico, Colombia, and Cuba. Astute analysts like journalist Kim Iversen have pushed back against the “it’s all about oil” line, and have insisted that China’s physical-economic development role in South America and worldwide in collaboration with the BRICS nations is the real target.

Wednesday’s decision by the U.S. and Great Britain to seize a Russian-flagged oil tanker in international waters was condemned in a statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry today, with a call on Washington to “return to the established norms and principles of international maritime law and to immediately cease its unlawful actions against the Marinera and
other vessels engaged in lawful activities on the high seas.“ Taken together with the Dec. 29 massive drone strike launched by NATO-backed Ukrainian forces against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residence—an attack which U.S. intelligence agencies then proceeded to refer to as a “hoax” created by Putin himself—one must ask: Is the trap being set for a full-on confrontation between the U.S., Russia, and China, which will inevitably lead to a thermonuclear confrontation? If so, are we merely hours away from that?

Whatever may be the answer to that question, one thing is certain. If Americans do not speak out in a loud voice, now, in courageous opposition to all that has happened in the past three weeks, they will now lose their country forever. When 250 years ago, in 1776, the United States was born, it separated from Britain, and the military power Britain used to impose its will on the colonies. It declared “the reasons that impel to the separation” by stating that human beings are not animals—that all Men are created equal and endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable Rights… that to secure these Rights Governments are instituted among men….. that whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.” The American people are the fourth branch of government, and must perform their responsibility. Otherwise, the republic is lost, perhaps in a cloud of thermonuclear ash.

In this 250th anniversary, new American leadership must declare its independence. Our original Declaration must be taken up by our citizens, must be immediately read and re-read all across the nation, and must become our standard of discourse and practice.