Donald Trump's imperial presidency is a throwback to a greedier, pernicious age
Donald Trump's imperial presidency is a tawdry, threadbare affair. The emperor has no clothes to cloak his counterfeit rule. Lacking crown and robes, he resorts to vulgar ties and baseball caps. His throne is but a bully pulpit, his palace a pokey, whitewashed house, his courtiers mere common hacks. His royal edicts – executive orders – are judicially contested. And while he rages like Lear, his critics are publicly crucified or thrown to the lions at Fox News.
Yet for all his crudely plebeian ordinariness, a parvenu imperialism is Trump's global offer, his trademark deal and most heinous crime. He peddles it against the tide of history and all human experience, as if invasion, genocide, racial inequality, economic exploitation and cultural conquest had never been tried before. If it wasn't clear already, it is now. He wants to rule the world.
Trump's menacing claims to Canada, Panama and Greenland revive the elitist fantasies of Elon Musk's grandfather and Technocracy Inc, a 1930s rightwing populist movement that sought to unite North and Central America under US suzerainty – the 'Technate'. The mindset feeding such pretensions is rooted deep in the national psyche. It's a mix of Monroe doctrine, 'manifest destiny' and the white man's burden. It's evil, it's pernicious, and it's back.
In 1823, president James Monroe, fending off predatory European powers, defined what Russia's Vladimir Putin, among others, would today term an American 'sphere of influence'. His doctrine was later used to justify US intervention in Latin America. Manifest destiny was the belief, popularised after 1845, that the young republic was divinely charged with spreading its dominion and 'civilising influence' across the continent and into the Pacific region.
Native Americans, exterminated and dispossessed, were principal victims. Manifest destiny helped spread slavery as new states joined the Union. Subsequent colonisations of the Philippines, Cuba and Hawaii were a natural extension. In 1899, Rudyard Kipling's infamously racist poem, The White Man's Burden, urged Americans to emulate the British empire and assume global responsibility for governing 'new-caught sullen peoples'.
That latter phrase aptly describes Trump's view today of 2 million Palestinians ensnared in Gaza, whom he wants to deport to Somaliland or some other promised land. Migrants corralled at the Mexico border face the white man's burdensome prejudices, too. Would Trump attempt ethnic cleansing of the lighter-skinned, mostly Christian, citizens of war-torn Ukraine? Everyone knows the answer to that one. While lacking the older varieties' surface pomp and majesty, Trump's born-again imperialism bears the ugly hallmarks of earlier iterations. As before, it comes down to power and money, military might and economic pressure (such as tariffs), control of land, racial and cultural supremacy and an utterly hypocritical morality. It's causing uproar at home. It infects every aspect of foreign policy.
Trump may not be actively conniving in the killing and expulsion of Ukraine's Indigenous population, but he's doing his best to rob them of their birthright. In a travesty of negotiation, he cedes territory to Putin, bullies Kyiv's leaders into seething submission, then makes a grab for Ukraine's mineral wealth. Now he wants its nuclear power plants, too. This is not about making peace. It's about making money. In Gaza, Trump picks over the bones before the victim has even died. Basic legalities, let alone humanity, are jettisoned. No matter that Israel's genocidaires have killed about 50,000 Palestinians. He wants the seafront property free of charge, its surviving owners evicted, so he can build a luxury resort. 'Welcome to the Rafah Riviera, the Trump Organisation's Nakba-on-the-Med. Enjoy your stay!'
Trump and his advisers envisage three neo-imperial superpower blocs, the US, Russia and China, united in disregard for the UN charter, international law and human rights and acting as they please in self-allotted spheres of influence. In this upended age, Russia is a lucrative business partner while European and Asian allies must fend for themselves. As ever, developing countries are exploited for their resources. To mangle George Canning, the Old World falls prey to the New.
In the wider Middle East, Trump is infinitely more interested in forging a US-Saudi-Israel security, energy and investment alliance than in ending the Palestinian tragedy. A significant obstacle is Iran, another historical victim of colonialists. In his latest Putin schmooze, Trump asked for Russia's help in containing its ally. Mullahs beware: there's a whiff of betrayal in the air. Like big-power bullies throughout history, Trump picks on easy targets. Danish-owned Greenland and Panama exemplify the type of weak, defenceless country that 19th-century European empires scrambled for in Africa. In contrast, note how abnormally quiet is loudmouthed Trump about China, America's most powerful 21st-century rival.
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Tariff wars aside, his caution points towards a future strategic accommodation with Beijing. Like Putin, president Xi Jinping is playing it cool with Trump so far. These tuppenny tsars share much in common: authoritarianism, national aggrandisement, ruthless greed. So why fight? All three can be winners, and to winners go the spoils. Look out, Taiwan, meat in an unsavoury US-China sandwich.
Imperialism has evolved since the time of gunboats, missionaries and unequal treaties. Absent now is a sense of higher calling and noble purpose. Pioneering frontiersmen pursuing America's manifest destiny genuinely believed theirs was a righteous cause. British colonial administrators thought they did God's (and Queen Victoria's) work. Today's conquerors betray few such illusions. Even so, Trump casts himself as compassionate, noble-minded peacemaker. So will he pursue peace in desperate Sudan, Myanmar or Congo? Will he stop those 'horrible wars' too? No, he will not. Such places do not feature on his redrawn maps. There's no money or kudos in it for him. And this particular white man's burden sharing does not extend to losers.
In a new, disorderly imperial age, megalomania waives the rules.
Simon Tisdall is the Observer's Foreign Affairs Commentator
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