As a recovering editor, I am often asked if I miss running a newspaper. Managing 585 brilliant anarchists (better known as FT journalists) was rewarding but exhausting. A cracking news story, however, always gets my pulse racing.
Three weeks into 2026, I’m in danger of cardiac arrest. The mass protests portending revolution in Iran; the US abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro; Donald Trump’s campaign to annex Greenland – it feels a bit like 1989 when communist regimes tumbled like dominos across Eastern Europe. The fall of communism was a single event that had a global impact. Today, multiple crises are unfolding, each of singular geopolitical consequence. But apart from “Hobbesian” or “the New Imperialism”, nobody’s come up with a name which encapsulates the new era. Any offers?
The trembling triumvirate
Venezuela, Iran and Cuba are the magic trifecta in the minds of Trump and his inner circle. These regimes are not on the brink of collapse. But they are brittle and, as Anne Applebaum reminds us in Autocracy Inc, interconnected.
Maduro and his goons relied on Cuban spies to maintain their grip on power; in exchange they dispatched cheap oil to Havana. Iran was building a massive drone factory in Venezuela. China remains the single biggest purchaser of Venezuelan oil, and Huawei is embedded in the country’s telecoms network. Russia infiltrated its military and intelligence services at every level. When I interviewed Vladimir Putin in 2019, I asked him about Russia’s support for the Maduro government. His shark-like eyes narrowed. “We were off to such a terrific start, talking seriously, and now you have moved back to stereotypical views of Russia.”
He dismissed the notion of regime change, citing the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. “Should we do the same in Venezuela?” he asked. “Do we want to revert to gunboat diplomacy?” Well, yes.
Monroe, Trumped
There has been much talk over our return to the 19th century and the Monroe Doctrine, when the young American Republic sounded a warning shot against colonial powers meddling in the Western Hemisphere.
As with the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the new “Trump-class” battleship, the US president has sought to affix his own name to something historic. And so, we have “the Donroe doctrine”. More relevant, but much overlooked, is the second part of the Monroe Doctrine which divided the world into spheres of influence, with America for the Americas in exchange for US neutrality in European conflicts. That’s a gift to Putin. It’s also a chilling corollary for Ukraine and Europeans who value Nato.
Bari-ing the lede
Big news stories are where journalists’ reputations are made and lost. Watching Bari Weiss’s cultural revolution at CBS News, I suspect her biggest problem is less her ideology and more her lack of television experience.
Tony Dokoupil, her pick as the new evening news anchor, is a study in banality. During his first broadcast, his “salute” to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was cringeworthy, and he copped out of discussing the fatal shooting of Minnesota poet and mother of three Renée Good by an Ice agent.
Weiss is the former New York Times op-ed writer who resigned in protest against “wokery” and set up The Free Press, a sassy online conservative news outlet. Four years on, media mogul David Ellison acquired the media start-up for a reported $150m.
Ellison’s mandate was to deliver Trump-friendly coverage intended to appeal to “ordinary Americans”. Weiss has a mind of her own, but she must know that her boss is now trying to buy Warner Bros Discovery, which happens to own CNN – Trump’s bête noire. This is the story behind the news story.
The Donfather
What should Keir Starmer do in the face of a world spinning on its head? Teaming up with European allies on Greenland and Ukraine, and participation in the seizure of the rogue Russian oil tanker off Iceland, was wise and timely.
Then again, for all his Mafia-boss behaviour, Trump the narcissist may be on the right side of history. Dictators’ days are numbered, from Caracas to Tehran, if not Moscow. George Bernard Shaw’s words come to mind: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
Lionel Barber was the editor of the “Financial Times” from 2005 to 2020
[Further reading: Behind Iran’s blackout, protest rages on]
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This article appears in the 14 Jan 2026 issue of the New Statesman, Battle for power
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