Tommy Thomas
Published: Feb 18, 2025 9:32 AM
Updated: 12:32 PM
COMMENT | Why are politicians, the media and scholars expressing shock at US President Donald Trump’s outlandish outbursts in demanding that Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Gaza be “handed over” to the United States, while Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau worries that Trump wants to annex his country?
After all, Trump had been making these threats for years, as early as when he began his first presidential campaign in 2016, and with greater emphasis during the 2024 campaign.
Neither is Trump the first US president who has harboured ambitions to expand the US empire.
The reality is that imperialism has been the fundamental pillar of US foreign policy and has been her permanent interest since the birth of the United States as a republic in the late 18th century.
They even predate her establishment as a nation. Soon after the arrival of the Europeans in the American continent in the early 1600s, the killing began of the original people of the land, whom the Europeans lampooned “Red Indians”.
Over the next two centuries, they were slaughtered on a grand scale. European conquest of the continent resulted in the genocide of the Native Americans.
At the same time, slaves from Africa were despatched in the millions in great cruelty across the Atlantic. A Civil War that ended in 1865 was necessary before slavery was abolished, only to be replaced by Reconstruction under Jim Crow.
If these events were the defining features of the origins of the US, it is hardly surprising that her external relations were no less bloody and violent.
Published: Feb 18, 2025 9:32 AM
Updated: 12:32 PM
COMMENT | Why are politicians, the media and scholars expressing shock at US President Donald Trump’s outlandish outbursts in demanding that Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Gaza be “handed over” to the United States, while Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau worries that Trump wants to annex his country?
After all, Trump had been making these threats for years, as early as when he began his first presidential campaign in 2016, and with greater emphasis during the 2024 campaign.
Neither is Trump the first US president who has harboured ambitions to expand the US empire.
The reality is that imperialism has been the fundamental pillar of US foreign policy and has been her permanent interest since the birth of the United States as a republic in the late 18th century.
They even predate her establishment as a nation. Soon after the arrival of the Europeans in the American continent in the early 1600s, the killing began of the original people of the land, whom the Europeans lampooned “Red Indians”.
Over the next two centuries, they were slaughtered on a grand scale. European conquest of the continent resulted in the genocide of the Native Americans.
At the same time, slaves from Africa were despatched in the millions in great cruelty across the Atlantic. A Civil War that ended in 1865 was necessary before slavery was abolished, only to be replaced by Reconstruction under Jim Crow.
If these events were the defining features of the origins of the US, it is hardly surprising that her external relations were no less bloody and violent.
US President Donald Trump
Among the many foundational myths is the self-serving idea, in the words of John Winthrop in 1630, that America shall be a divinely ordained “City upon a Hill” - a beacon for the rest of the world to follow.
Next came the myth of “American exceptionalism”. The Monroe Doctrine was proclaimed in 1823 to warn off European powers from the entire American continent. Thus, Central and South America became the playground of the US, not to be shared with any other country.
The expression “Manifest Destiny” gained currency in 1845 to describe “the fulfilment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence”, and was quickly adopted by politicians to justify the annexation of Texas, and war with Mexico.
Later, it was used to reflect a Christian dimension to the US occupation of Cuba, Alaska, Hawaii, and the Philippines.
The physical occupation of Hawaii and the Philippines meant that the US was expanding outside North and South America.
Defeating Nazis, communists
Her engagement on European soil occurred during World War I. The United States played a significant role in the defeat of Nazism and Fascism in Europe, and Japanese imperialism in Asia and the Pacific during World War II.
Perhaps for the first time, under the outstanding leadership of former president Franklin Roosevelt, the US was on the right side of history.
The Cold War began as World War II ended in 1945. The US involvement in the Korean War and her bloody intervention in the Vietnam War were justified to prevent “dominoes” falling into the hands of communism, directed by Moscow and Beijing.
The lengthy US occupation of Afghanistan after 9/11 and her illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 are examples in the 21st century of an unbroken continuum in the display of US military aggression.
The hatred and fear of Communism probably reached its zenith when Joseph McCarthy falsely proclaimed in 1950 that 205 employees in the State Department were known Communists.
The Red Scare that was unleashed by McCarthyism resulted in the deaths, detention, and humiliation of numerous innocent bureaucrats and others.
Among the many foundational myths is the self-serving idea, in the words of John Winthrop in 1630, that America shall be a divinely ordained “City upon a Hill” - a beacon for the rest of the world to follow.
Next came the myth of “American exceptionalism”. The Monroe Doctrine was proclaimed in 1823 to warn off European powers from the entire American continent. Thus, Central and South America became the playground of the US, not to be shared with any other country.
The expression “Manifest Destiny” gained currency in 1845 to describe “the fulfilment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence”, and was quickly adopted by politicians to justify the annexation of Texas, and war with Mexico.
Later, it was used to reflect a Christian dimension to the US occupation of Cuba, Alaska, Hawaii, and the Philippines.
The physical occupation of Hawaii and the Philippines meant that the US was expanding outside North and South America.
Defeating Nazis, communists
Her engagement on European soil occurred during World War I. The United States played a significant role in the defeat of Nazism and Fascism in Europe, and Japanese imperialism in Asia and the Pacific during World War II.
Perhaps for the first time, under the outstanding leadership of former president Franklin Roosevelt, the US was on the right side of history.
The Cold War began as World War II ended in 1945. The US involvement in the Korean War and her bloody intervention in the Vietnam War were justified to prevent “dominoes” falling into the hands of communism, directed by Moscow and Beijing.
The lengthy US occupation of Afghanistan after 9/11 and her illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 are examples in the 21st century of an unbroken continuum in the display of US military aggression.
The hatred and fear of Communism probably reached its zenith when Joseph McCarthy falsely proclaimed in 1950 that 205 employees in the State Department were known Communists.
The Red Scare that was unleashed by McCarthyism resulted in the deaths, detention, and humiliation of numerous innocent bureaucrats and others.
The experts in the China Desk were accused of “losing China” to Mao Zedong - as if China “belonged” to the US in the first place.
Republicans, Democrats just the same
There is hardly any difference between Republican or Democratic presidents with regard to foreign policy and the deployment of armed forces outside the US.
To take recent examples, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were as “trigger happy” as the two Bushs. Hilary Clinton has always been hawkish. Joe Biden was only too willing to supply Israel with billions of dollars in military “aid” to enable the genocide of more than a hundred thousand Palestinians.
Ex-US president Joe Biden and Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu
In the 1960s, John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson, albeit heading Democratic administrations, were incredibly belligerent in flexing US muscles, whether in Berlin, Cuba or Vietnam.
And what about Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger? Kissinger masterminded US financial and economic warfare in Chile from 1970 in order to overthrow the democratically elected socialist leader, Salvador Allende.
Such destabilisation, short of a massive armed invasion, eventually resulted in US support of the army coup of Augusto Pinochet in 1973.
Kissinger’s justification for US intervention in Chile was classic hubris.
“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its people”.
Notorious cases of CIA-led interventions before Chile included the overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran in 1953, Cheddi Jagan in British Guiana in 1954, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 and Patrice Lumumba in Congo in 1961.
Examples need not be further multiplied. There has always been a strand in the thinking of the decision-making elite at its leading universities and think tanks of extending and expanding US hegemony over world affairs.
The collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991 encouraged the idea of the US as the sole global power; a rare bipartisanship among its political class.
With the support of the military-industrial complex and her ownership of bases littered across the globe, the oceans, and in space, US supremacy has been assured as the 21st century began.
Nothing new
Hence, when Trump repeatedly stated that he wished to make America great again and his policies were going to be “America First”, he was not inventing new ideas or themes.
Instead, Trump tapped on pre-existing ideas which had sprung up at different points over its 250 years of history.
His pronouncements and executive orders since his inauguration weeks ago can thus be located in American tradition. They represent US conventional wisdom.
In the 1960s, John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson, albeit heading Democratic administrations, were incredibly belligerent in flexing US muscles, whether in Berlin, Cuba or Vietnam.
And what about Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger? Kissinger masterminded US financial and economic warfare in Chile from 1970 in order to overthrow the democratically elected socialist leader, Salvador Allende.
Such destabilisation, short of a massive armed invasion, eventually resulted in US support of the army coup of Augusto Pinochet in 1973.
Kissinger’s justification for US intervention in Chile was classic hubris.
“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its people”.
Notorious cases of CIA-led interventions before Chile included the overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran in 1953, Cheddi Jagan in British Guiana in 1954, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 and Patrice Lumumba in Congo in 1961.
Examples need not be further multiplied. There has always been a strand in the thinking of the decision-making elite at its leading universities and think tanks of extending and expanding US hegemony over world affairs.
The collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991 encouraged the idea of the US as the sole global power; a rare bipartisanship among its political class.
With the support of the military-industrial complex and her ownership of bases littered across the globe, the oceans, and in space, US supremacy has been assured as the 21st century began.
Nothing new
Hence, when Trump repeatedly stated that he wished to make America great again and his policies were going to be “America First”, he was not inventing new ideas or themes.
Instead, Trump tapped on pre-existing ideas which had sprung up at different points over its 250 years of history.
His pronouncements and executive orders since his inauguration weeks ago can thus be located in American tradition. They represent US conventional wisdom.
Trump’s views were supported in November 2024 by 77 million voters, representing 49.8 percent of the popular vote, which earned him 312 votes in the Electoral College.
A society gets the leader it deserves: the people of the United States deserve Trump.
The critical difference is that Trump, in comparison with recent presidents, is cruder and more blatant in exercising the raw, naked power of his office.
Trump’s eagle is looking for prey with renewed zest. Colonialism and Imperialism beckon. All nations beware!
TOMMY THOMAS is a former attorney-general. His political awakening began by opposing US involvement in the Vietnam War. He read International Relations at the LSE.
Glory to Donald Fuck
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