The New American Imperialism
Trump’s expansionist mindset should shock even his America First allies.
In Donald Trump’s lawless domestic actions, the American people were forewarned. Through endlessly repeated attacks on the “deep state,” Trump and his allies outlined clearly the way he would seek to dismantle the U.S. government.
In the realm of foreign policy, however, they are getting something they didn’t bargain for. Prior to the election, it was safe to assume that Trump’s instincts were isolationist. He criticized America’s involvement in “forever wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq. But beginning with his Inaugural Address on January 20, he pivoted to being an old-fashioned imperialist. He announced his intention to reclaim the Panama Canal, and has subsequently threatened Denmark with harsh tariffs if it does not cede control of Greenland to the United States.
Greenland has indeed become more strategically important to the United States as global warming opens up new Arctic passageways, and could be an important source of minerals. But Trump’s moves seem like aggression for aggression’s sake: the Danes indicated earlier that they were happy to grant America a greater security role and mining rights to the world’s largest island in a quiet negotiation. But Trump insisted on threatening them with the use of military force. This creates an unprecedented situation. NATO’s Article Five calls for mutual support if one member is attacked; it has no provisions for what happens if one NATO member attacks another one.
Trump’s crowning act as a neo-imperialist, however, was his recent suggestion that America take control of the Gaza Strip after emptying it of its roughly 2 million Palestinian inhabitants. According to Trump at his joint press conference with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too. We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out. Create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area … do a real job, do something different.
This proposal was so outlandish that it was immediately rejected by virtually all regional powers, except for the extreme right-wing members of Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s coalition. They are happy because it would take a huge problem off Israel’s hands: that is, what to do with the wrecked and desolate Gaza Strip that is still teeming with Hamas fighters.
It should not be necessary to detail the ways that Trump’s plan is a non-starter. The Palestinians do not want to leave Gaza, nor do Egypt, Jordan, or any of the neighboring Arab states want to accept them as refugees. The original nakba, or “catastrophe” of Israel’s creation in 1948, created destabilizing conditions in the region that are being felt to the present day. Hamas has proven resilient despite a year and a half of relentless Israeli attacks, and the Palestinian population could only be driven out by what would be a truly genocidal war. Trump’s plan would constitute an atrocious case of ethnic cleansing that would live on in history as a moral evil.
As with many of Trump’s initiatives, it is hard to know how seriously the rest of the world should take him. His Gaza plans are so absurd that they are very unlikely to be realized. But they may be a distraction from something that is much more likely to happen. The Netanyahu government would like to declare Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank and its nearly 3 million Palestinian inhabitants. While global attention has been focused on Gaza since October 7, Israel has been slowly tightening its grip on the territory where a majority of Palestinians live.
Israel raised the possibility of incorporating the West Bank during the first Trump term; Trump may have been sympathetic, but his son-in-law Jared Kushner was busy negotiating the Abraham Accords at the time and the administration never followed through. The main thing that would prevent the United States from approving annexation today is the prospect of a deal with Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel, but the likelihood of this happening is extremely low. The Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman has said clearly that no agreement will be possible without provisions for a Palestinian state, which the Israelis have definitively rejected. This lowers the barriers to both Jerusalem and Washington acting. Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, believes, like many evangelical Christians, that the West Bank rightfully belongs to Israel.
Even if Trump’s threats to Panama, Greenland, and Gaza are hollow, they set an absolutely terrible precedent. One of the great achievements of the post-1945 world was acceptance of a general norm that great powers should not use military force to grab someone else’s territory. This norm was massively violated by Putin’s Russia in 2014 and 2022 when it annexed parts of Ukraine, and China has been contemplating the use of force to retake Taiwan. Trump has basically revived the 19th century idea of spheres of influence: that great powers should be able to control regions geographically close to them. Russia’s claim to Ukraine and China’s claim to Taiwan are stronger than America’s claim to Panama or Greenland, and Trump’s announced desire for territorial expansion gives a green light to both countries to follow suit.
There will be huge contradictions in Trump’s foreign policy going forward. His nominee for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has a history of opposing American initiatives in Syria and Ukraine and will now have to support Trump’s efforts to expand the territory of the United States. Some Republicans like Senator Rand Paul who are consistent isolationists have begun to raise questions about the direction Trump is going. Paul explained “I thought we voted for America First. We have no business contemplating yet another occupation to doom our treasure and spill our soldiers’ blood.”
The Left, both at home and internationally, for many decades attacked American imperialism. That imperialism took benign forms, like the security alliances the United States had negotiated with allies, or the liberal economic order than America promoted. What they are getting today is the real thing: an America that is seeking to extend its territory and is willing to threaten the use of force to get it.
Welcome back to the nineteenth century.
Francis Fukuyama is Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He writes the “Frankly Fukuyama” column, carried forward from American Purpose, at Persuasion.
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For years anti-colonialist critics have insisted that American aspirations to moral leadership were rank hypocrisy, and that there was no difference between Russia and the US on this front. Turns out Trump is also woke, another critic of idealistic moral aspirations of the US. Only Trump is proud to be imperialist. Does this mean we can finally stop hearing absurd leftist attacks on neoliberalism?