On Friday, December 5, 2025 the Trump administration released its much-anticipated National Security Strategy (NSS). One of its most notable elements is the Western Hemisphere emerges in this NSS as the top regional priority, whereas in Trump’s first NSS, it was number five of six. The NSS states that the US will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine and restore America’s preeminence in the Western hemisphere.
In the new NSS President Trump and his team make a deliberate effort to eschew the broad scope of previous NSS documents, both his own and those of earlier administrations. Instead, they zero in on a narrower set of core interests that they argue will ultimately “ensure America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history, and the home of freedom on earth.”
And this new National Security Strategy isn’t just a paper statement of “priorities.”
At 6:00 a.m. yesterday, US forces boarded the oil tanker “Skipper” off Venezuela’s coast: 1.1 million barrels of illicit oil were seized. The precision assault involving 2 MH-60 "Seahawk" helicopters, 10 Marines, and 10 Coast Guardsmen who boarded and secured the vessel. A massive blow to the illicit Iran-Venezuela oil trade.
Two helicopters. Twenty operators. Zero resistance. This was a “twofer” and is only the first test of President Trump’s new National Security Strategy.
According to reports online, the “Skipper” was sanctioned in 2022 for financing Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards through an illicit oil network run by Gulf businessman Viktor Artemov. It loaded Merey crude at Port José on December 4. Destination: Cuba, then Asia.
In 2022 the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated members of an international oil smuggling network run by Artemov that facilitated oil trades and generated revenue for Hizballah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF). The network includes several key individuals and numerous front companies and vessels involved in blending oil to conceal the Iranian origins of the shipments and exporting it around the world in support of Hizballah and the IRGC-QF.
Venezuela has long been recognized as the Hizballah and IRGC-QF safe haven, intelligence and financial center in the Western Hemisphere and similar operations are conducted there for Cuba, Russia and Red China.
As one analyst put it: “When enforcement moves from paper sanctions to boots on deck, the market dynamics change completely.”
“The mathematics of deterrence are brutal,” he observed. Venezuela exports 921,000 barrels daily. Analysts estimate 300,000 to 500,000 barrels per day could vanish as shadow fleet operators recalculate risk. The collateral damage is visible. Cuba’s oil imports have collapsed 35% this year. Provinces receive 2 to 4 hours of electricity daily. The seized tanker was their lifeline.
The shadow fleet era just hit its breaking point. This is not a seizure, so much as it is a demonstration of Trump’s new NSS. Paper sanctions are over. Physical enforcement has begun.
Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen (remember him from the ‘Maryland Dad’ arrest and deportation) was among the lawmakers speaking out against the Trump administration and its actions around Venezuela, taking to the senate floor on Wednesday to call on Congress to block Donald Trump from “using taxpayer dollars to launch a regime change war.”
In an interview with The Hill, retired Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a former assistant secretary of State for political-military affairs, about the move. He said it has similarities to how the administration handled pressure against Iran. “I think we’ve sort of reached this new level where we should no longer call it coercive diplomacy, but it’s now a maximum pressure campaign,” Kimmitt told the Capitol Hill news site.
Despite the whining of Leftist Democrats and other enemies of America, the US seizure of the tanker "Skipper" is justified by the US under its sanctions on Venezuelan and Iranian oil trade, enforced via a warrant linking the vessel to the illicit oil smuggling networks. Far from being state sponsored piracy, as some anti-American commentators have claimed, the operation was conducted according to an excruciating legal process.
President Trump is not “sleepwalking us into war” as Democrats claim. The seizure of the “Skipper” is a well thought out part of a larger plan. The US move is likely to deter others from shipping Venezuelan crude, according to Matthew Thomas, a partner at Blank Rome in Washington who specializes in international trade and maritime law. “Most mainstream tanker trade has been steering clear of Venezuela because of the sanctions and increasing tensions,” he said. “But even for marginal shippers and dark fleets the potential for asset seizure builds an extra layer of deterrence.”
In the seizure of the “Skipper” President Trump has made clear once again that the age of paper threats is over and the age of active deterrence has begun.
George Rasley is editor of Richard Viguerie's ConservativeHQ.com and is a veteran of over 300 political campaigns. A member of American MENSA, he served on the staff of Vice President Dan Quayle, as Director of Policy and Communication for former Congressman Adam Putnam (FL-12) then Vice Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee's Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, and as spokesman for retired Rep. Mac Thornberry formerly a member of the House Intelligence Committee and Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and as Director of Communications for now-retired Rep. Jeb Hensarling, formerly Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. In 1989 he staffed Vice President Quayle's visit to Venezuela for the inauguration of the country's last democratically elected president, Carlos Andrés Pérez.
In the new NSS President Trump and his team make a deliberate effort to eschew the broad scope of previous NSS documents, both his own and those of earlier administrations. Instead, they zero in on a narrower set of core interests that they argue will ultimately “ensure America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history, and the home of freedom on earth.”
And this new National Security Strategy isn’t just a paper statement of “priorities.”
At 6:00 a.m. yesterday, US forces boarded the oil tanker “Skipper” off Venezuela’s coast: 1.1 million barrels of illicit oil were seized. The precision assault involving 2 MH-60 "Seahawk" helicopters, 10 Marines, and 10 Coast Guardsmen who boarded and secured the vessel. A massive blow to the illicit Iran-Venezuela oil trade.
Two helicopters. Twenty operators. Zero resistance. This was a “twofer” and is only the first test of President Trump’s new National Security Strategy.
According to reports online, the “Skipper” was sanctioned in 2022 for financing Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards through an illicit oil network run by Gulf businessman Viktor Artemov. It loaded Merey crude at Port José on December 4. Destination: Cuba, then Asia.
In 2022 the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated members of an international oil smuggling network run by Artemov that facilitated oil trades and generated revenue for Hizballah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF). The network includes several key individuals and numerous front companies and vessels involved in blending oil to conceal the Iranian origins of the shipments and exporting it around the world in support of Hizballah and the IRGC-QF.
Venezuela has long been recognized as the Hizballah and IRGC-QF safe haven, intelligence and financial center in the Western Hemisphere and similar operations are conducted there for Cuba, Russia and Red China.
As one analyst put it: “When enforcement moves from paper sanctions to boots on deck, the market dynamics change completely.”
“The mathematics of deterrence are brutal,” he observed. Venezuela exports 921,000 barrels daily. Analysts estimate 300,000 to 500,000 barrels per day could vanish as shadow fleet operators recalculate risk. The collateral damage is visible. Cuba’s oil imports have collapsed 35% this year. Provinces receive 2 to 4 hours of electricity daily. The seized tanker was their lifeline.
The shadow fleet era just hit its breaking point. This is not a seizure, so much as it is a demonstration of Trump’s new NSS. Paper sanctions are over. Physical enforcement has begun.
Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen (remember him from the ‘Maryland Dad’ arrest and deportation) was among the lawmakers speaking out against the Trump administration and its actions around Venezuela, taking to the senate floor on Wednesday to call on Congress to block Donald Trump from “using taxpayer dollars to launch a regime change war.”
In an interview with The Hill, retired Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a former assistant secretary of State for political-military affairs, about the move. He said it has similarities to how the administration handled pressure against Iran. “I think we’ve sort of reached this new level where we should no longer call it coercive diplomacy, but it’s now a maximum pressure campaign,” Kimmitt told the Capitol Hill news site.
Despite the whining of Leftist Democrats and other enemies of America, the US seizure of the tanker "Skipper" is justified by the US under its sanctions on Venezuelan and Iranian oil trade, enforced via a warrant linking the vessel to the illicit oil smuggling networks. Far from being state sponsored piracy, as some anti-American commentators have claimed, the operation was conducted according to an excruciating legal process.
President Trump is not “sleepwalking us into war” as Democrats claim. The seizure of the “Skipper” is a well thought out part of a larger plan. The US move is likely to deter others from shipping Venezuelan crude, according to Matthew Thomas, a partner at Blank Rome in Washington who specializes in international trade and maritime law. “Most mainstream tanker trade has been steering clear of Venezuela because of the sanctions and increasing tensions,” he said. “But even for marginal shippers and dark fleets the potential for asset seizure builds an extra layer of deterrence.”
In the seizure of the “Skipper” President Trump has made clear once again that the age of paper threats is over and the age of active deterrence has begun.
George Rasley is editor of Richard Viguerie's ConservativeHQ.com and is a veteran of over 300 political campaigns. A member of American MENSA, he served on the staff of Vice President Dan Quayle, as Director of Policy and Communication for former Congressman Adam Putnam (FL-12) then Vice Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee's Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, and as spokesman for retired Rep. Mac Thornberry formerly a member of the House Intelligence Committee and Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and as Director of Communications for now-retired Rep. Jeb Hensarling, formerly Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. In 1989 he staffed Vice President Quayle's visit to Venezuela for the inauguration of the country's last democratically elected president, Carlos Andrés Pérez.
