Greenland, Venezuela, and the Time of Crisis

Anatomy of an Adolescent Polycrisis

Photo by JOHN TOWNER on Unsplash

In the first days of this year, a flurry of bold, unilateral moves, from the U.S. military’s sudden capture of Venezuela’s president, to Trump aides openly musing about seizing Greenland, to Chinese maneuvers around Taiwan, have alarmed diplomats worldwide.

Each incident, by itself, is shocking; together, they form a “polycrisis” – overlapping crises whose interaction makes the whole far worse than the sum of its parts. Through my research over the last 13 years, I’ve come to call this an “adolescent polycrisis”: humanity brandishing adult powers (advanced weapons, global networks) with juvenile systems and mindsets.

In this piece, I unpack how tempo mismatches (rushed executives vs. slow institutions), lawfare and narrative warfare, and the breakdown of time-honored wisdom have combined to fan this crisis – and what it suggests about our path to maturity.

A World on Overdrive

Venezuela’s “Operation Resolve”

On January 3, 2026, U.S. special forces launched Operation Resolve (dubbed in some briefings “Absolute Resolve”), storming Caracas and abducting President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. The White House later insisted the raid was a law-enforcement arrest (citing a Southern District of New York indictment accusing Maduro of “narco-terrorism” and other crimes).

In one sense, the operation exemplified executive velocity: a kinetic, high-speed solution to a complex problem. But it also exposed a profound tempo mismatch: the U.S. chief exec moved in hours, long before any legal or international deliberation could catch up.

The outcome has been legal and diplomatic turmoil. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned that this “military intervention … in contravention of Venezuelan sovereignty and the UN Charter” makes “every country less safe.” China and Russia publicly condemned the U.S. action as “unilateral, illegal, and bullying,” demanding Maduro’s immediate release. Even the EU – save one holdout – has responded by loudly defending the rule of law and Venezuela’s sovereignty.

This episode also illustrates narrative flattening and dualism in real time. U.S. officials painted Maduro as head of the “vicious Cartel de los Soles,” a narco-terrorist network that “must be brought to justice.” Such stark labeling (patriots vs. narco-terrorists) simplifies complex politics into a binary moral tale. It feeds the Neuro-Semantic Prison identified in my research: under stress, societies seek quick stories with clear villains. But international observers note that this scapegoating rhetoric – and the US’s raw show of force – only deepens polarization and undermines institutions that require time and legitimacy.

“Greenland is Real Estate”: Alliance Strains

Almost immediately after the Venezuela raid, the White House’s talk of Greenland reignited diplomatic outrage. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stated bluntly that President Trump views “acquiring Greenland” as a “national security priority,” and that “military is always an option” in the Arctic.

This swaggering speed-addiction – demanding instant control of another country – smashed into the slow pulse of alliances. European leaders issued a joint communique reminding Washington: “Greenland belongs to its people… for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide.” Denmark’s prime minister warned that any U.S. takeover “would mark the end of NATO.” In effect, a juvenile metaphor (“Greenland is real estate to grab”) collided with centuries of diplomatic norms. The result was mass frustration: allies felt their shared history and international law were being treated as mere obstacles to be bypassed by executive whim.

The Greenland flap illustrates the tempo mismatch and voluntarist distortion at work. A hurried, unilateral proposal (backed by talk of force) outruns sober alliance deliberation. It reflects a belief that sheer will and security thinking can override complex sovereignty questions.

As one experienced observer noted, Trump’s gang treated international niceties as “just another optional setting,” whereas for allied governments, they are fundamental. The European response – emphasizing treaty values and “restraint by all actors” – is a classic counterweight to voluntarist, dualist impulses. They insist that mere strength of will cannot replace the slow work of building consent.

Taiwan’s Lesson

Lawfare and Blurring Jurisdictions

Meanwhile, the Venezuela operation is reverberating in Asia. China’s government denounced the raid as a “blatant use of force” violating international law, but Beijing’s real interest is subtler. On Chinese social media and in state commentary, observers have speculated about a “Maduro precedent” for Taiwan. Some netizens quipped that Taiwan’s president could now be “frogged-marched” to Beijing after a “surprise attack” – in effect casting Taiwanese leaders as criminals to be dragged before Chinese courts.

Officially, China insisted the two situations are incomparable (Taiwan is a domestic affair, they say, beyond UN rules). Yet this itself reveals a twist of narrative: Beijing portrays the island as already part of China. Last year, it even tried to pressure Interpol to issue a warrant for a Taiwanese legislator (Puma Shen) on charges framed under Chinese law. That move was a form of lawfare – weaponizing international police mechanisms – to project jurisdiction over Taiwan.

In short, China is laying groundwork for its own version of the playbook. If the U.S. can abduct a foreign leader under a domestic indictment, why not China? This warning is prescient: Beijing may feel emboldened to treat Taiwan’s leaders as “fugitives,” using legal chicanery as cover for aggression. This underscores a systemic pathology: when major powers mock global rules, they invite rivals to do the same.

In the Taiwan case, Chinese commentators stress that international norms “have no relevance” to cross-strait issues – a dualist stance that excuses it from the very laws the U.S. just trampled in Venezuela. Time-binding collapse looms: each side is talking past the other’s long-term commitments, eroding shared frameworks across generations.

The Signs of Adolescent Governance

These events exemplify familiar “adolescent” governing habits: seeking quick fixes, craving dominance, and dismissing complex trade-offs. Observers have listed about seven such behaviors – traits that appear in today’s leaders and media narratives. Among them are:

• Speed-Addiction: a sense that crises must be met with instant, dramatic action. (Think of bombast like “second strike if needed” in Venezuela.)

• Dominance Display: using force and bluster to assert control, rather than measured strategy (as in threatening takeover of Greenland).

• Zero-Sum Thinking: viewing every issue in “us-vs-them” terms (e.g. “US versus narco-terrorists” or “America versus Arctic rivals”) instead of shared gains.

• Scapegoating and Othering: singling out a villain group (immigrants, “the left,” foreign strongmen) to explain complex crises.

• Fantasy Solutions: offering magical cures (military parade, oil windfall, hyperloop promise) that ignore underlying problems.

• Institutional Shortcuts: treating courts and laws as optional props, not living institutions (e.g. bypassing the legislature entirely).

• Information Overload: leaning into simple narratives and outrage rather than deep analysis, due to chronic stress.

These tendencies do precisely what my research suggests. Under the strain of overlapping shocks, politicians revert to “scapegoats, ghost stories, and animal scripts”. The brain’s “planning desk” (our long-term rational center) shutters when overloaded, and “when it collapses, the future collapses with it.”

Leaders fatigue, public attention fragments, and a binary, emotional atmosphere prevails. The result: policy that is reactive, short-sighted, and often legally dubious – more style than substance.

Indeed, one analyst observes that many governments (even ones with courts and elections) are drifting into “competitive authoritarianism,” a mode where rule-of-law is only for show.

A Systems Map in Motion

Viewed systemically, the polycrisis weaves together several feedback loops. Unilateral actions (like Venezuela and Greenland) erode sovereignty norms and strain alliances, compelling partners to mount costly counter-responses.

This, in turn, feeds international anxiety and justifies more secrecy and militarization. Simultaneously, narrative warfare – simplifications and conspiracies – spreads via social media, deepening domestic polarization. Global governance bodies (UN, courts) are bypassed or undermined (time-binding collapse: we no longer trust or even share the same meaning of norms).

Each crisis feeds the next: inflation and climate drive migration, fueling extremism; the resulting chaos paralyzes climate or health legislation. This interlocking structure is the very definition of Tooze’s polycrisis. And it’s “adolescent” because rather than cooperating to manage complexity, actors are competing for short-term advantage and screen time.

Breaking the Cycle toward Adulthood

What’s the way out of this adolescent cycle? My research suggests a key lesson: to survive the polycrisis, we must restore healthy time-binding – the ability to coordinate across generations. Right now, by many measures, time-binding is in freefall.

Leaders treat budgets as one-shot plundering, not multigenerational commitments; public discourse rushes from meme to meme with no historical context. As Korzybski warned, our exponential powers require a matching lift in long-term wisdom.

A “temporal branch” of government – a notional prefrontal cortex of the state – is missing. Without it, we chase adrenaline solutions and ignore slow-moving catastrophes.

Reversing course will demand new practices and institutions (future-protecting laws, citizens’ assemblies, ecological subsidies, etc.) that this crisis moment could spur. The hard truth is that there is no “reset” button: time-binding collapse means we can’t simply revert or rebuild past norms without learning.

Instead, we must consciously engineer social “operating systems” as advanced as our technology. In other words, we need to grow up. As my research suggests, our crisis is an inflection point: either we design a world that nurtures long-term thinking and mutual care, or we burn out in chaos.

The signs around us are clear. A potent cocktail of militarized expediency and tribal thinking is racing ahead of our institutions’ capacity to adapt. If we wish to emerge from this adolescence safely, we must blunt the tempo war (learning to “play the clock”), reject zero-sum myths, and reinvest in the hard, slow work of shared narratives and intergenerational trust.

That path – choosing the “gardener’s” phronesis alongside the “engineer’s” techné – is the promise of a true civilizational adulthood. The alternative is nothing short of a tragedy of missteps.

Further Reading: This essay draws on the research for “Adulthood of Humanity” (mid-2026), which explores how we might bridge the gap between our technological power and our political maturity. If our world is indeed teetering on the edge of maturity or collapse, the question it poses is this: do we double down on short-term victories, or do we start building the institutions (and mindsets) that represent future generations? The answer will determine whether our civilization finally grows up or never reaches its wise adulthood.