A few years ago, The Nation published an article debunking the myth that Donald Trump was an anti-imperial President. The article highlights the false perception held by a wide number of MAGA supporters and purported or former leftists: that Trump desired to reduce America’s military role in the world. Now that he is back in the White House, certain leftists cling to the hope that Trump will begin winding down the US Empire.
Jacobin, for instance, gives us two choices: the President will either terminate the so-called liberal interventionist order (i.e., US hegemony) or he will bolster an informal coalition of authoritarian, nationalist rulers, including Belarus’s President Aleksandr Lukashenko, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. But this is a false choice. Trump is continuing America’s imperial wars and empowering international dictators.
MIDDLE EAST
The Trump State Department has introduced tougher sanctions against those who buy Iranian oil because Iran, allegedly, “continues to fuel conflict in Middle East, pursue its nuclear program, and support its terrorist proxies.” Also emphasizing Iran’s supposed pursuit of nuclear weapons, Obama’s State Department used almost the same words back in 2010 to justify the imposition of sanctions. Team Obama chided Iran’s “longstanding support for violent terrorist groups like Hizballah and Hamas” and its “opposition to Middle East peace.” Likewise, Biden’s State Department said:“beyond its nuclear efforts, Iran continues to engage in a whole series of destabilizing activities across the region and beyond.”
Trump says that Yemen’s Houthis are Iranian proxies. In response to Houthi attacks on Western vessels operating in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, Trump recently chose bombs over diplomacy, blowing up Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, killing and injuring dozens. This is yet another example of what the late, great Dr. Edward Said called “imperial continuity.”
George W. Bush started bombing Yemen in 2002 with armed drones, claiming that “al-Qaeda” was operating in the country. Under Obama (figures for 2009-16), US forces launched at least 159 documented drone strikes against the strategically important nation. In 2017 alone, under Trump, they launched 127. Indeed, perhaps Trump’s first war crime was authorizing a Special Forces raid against targets in Yemen in 2017, which ended up killing at least nine childrenbelow the age 13. An article for the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point notes that the Houthi rebellion, which began in 2004, was largely a response to US actions in their country.
As for Syria, Trump says that he intends to withdraw America’s 2,000 occupation forces. At the time of writing, this has not happened and contradicts his previous statements: that troops remain in the US-Israeli-occupied nation “to keep the oil.” At least Trump’s honesty about the Empire’s motives was, in this instance, refreshing.
THE 51ST STATE AND BEYOND
The Arctic Circle covers over 7.7 million miles. The countries and regions with land in the Circle are: Alaska (USA, NATO member), Canada (NATO), Finland (NATO), Greenland (Denmark, NATO), Iceland (NATO), Norway (NATO), Sweden (NATO), and Russia. Despite the Circle being dominated by NATO members, US war planners fear Russian and Chinese expansion into the region.
Alaska is home to the Clear Space Force Station, whose personnel (including Canadians) monitor the heavens for intercontinental ballistic missiles. Canada is one of the original Five Eyes surveillance bases that spies on the world on behalf of the US Empire. (In addition to the US, the others are Britain, Australia, and New Zealand.) In 2023 under Biden, the US and Canada signed an Enhanced Space Cooperation Memorandum of Understanding to help enable US “freedom of action in space.” Using trade tariffs as a weapon, Trump is threatening the annexation of Canada, referring to it as a potential “51st state.”
Also in 2023, Finland (Russia’s next-door-neighbor), Norway, and Sweden each signed separate Defense Cooperation Agreements with Biden’s White House, granting the Empire access to a total of 36 additional military bases in the region. In that year, three B-2, nuclear-capable Spirit Bombers landed at Iceland’s Keflavìk Air Station under the control of the Pentagon’s European Command. As for Greenland, the island is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. During his first term, Trump spoke of his desire to “buy” Greenland from the Danish government. Now, he won’t rule outseizing the territory by force. Why? The island hosts America’s Pituffik Space Base which “allows contact with polar orbiting satellites 10-12 times per day.” Such bases are vital for the Pentagon’s doctrine of “Full Spectrum Dominance” of land, sea, air, space, and information.
In addition to ensuring dominance of space, the Empire is keen to control the Circle to stop Russian and Chinese businesses from profiting from Arctic resources. Climate change is causing significant melting of ice and permafrost in the Circle. This is opening the region to oil, gas, and mineral exploration, as well as strategic shipping. The Biden-era Pentagon’s Arctic strategy states:
[the] increasingly accessible region is becoming a venue for strategic competition … The Arctic includes multiple strategically significant maritime chokepoints [which are] becoming more navigable and more economically and militarily significant.
CONCLUSION
As for Jacobin’s either/or hypothesis, the reality is that while Trump flexes America’s military muscles, US diplomats have been quietly re-establishing relations with “Europe’s last dictatorship,” Belarus. The same story unfolds in Hungary, with the thawing of bilateral relations in preparation for economic cooperation. The Trump Media and Technology Group is suing a Brazilian judge in an apparent effort to pressure the judicial system to go easy on “the Trump of Tropics,” former President Jair Bolsonaro.
As The Donald talks about America taking over Gaza (home to 1.1 trillion cubic feet of untapped, natural gas), military analysts warn about a potential bombing of Iran on the basis that B-2 Spirits are being deployed to Diego Garcia/Chagos. In the 1960s, the British began ethnically cleansing the Chagossians from their island paradise in the Indian Ocean so that the US could build a military base there, from which it bombs the Middle East and Central Asia and tortures alleged terrorist suspects. The surviving Chagossians continue their peaceful fight for justice.
The horror story of Diego Garcia is a microcosm of colonial crimes currently perpetuated by the US Empire. The notion that Trump is against America’s “forever wars” is not only laughable, it is insulting to the thousands who have lost their lives to Trump’s “imperial continuity.”
