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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New Statesman
15 minutes ago
- New Statesman
How Donald Trump plunged America into a blind war
Photo by Daniel Torok/The White House via Getty Images One minute after midnight on 21 June, a small group of US B-2 Spirit bombers took off from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri heading west across the Pacific. They were picked up shortly afterwards by flight tracking accounts on social media, prompting breaking news alerts that multiple American bombers capable of carrying the type of heavy ordinance that would be needed to destroy Iran's nuclear sites were airborne as journalists frantically traced their trajectory. In fact, this was a decoy. The real strike group was flying east across the Atlantic, with seven B-2 bombers joined by US fighter jets as they reached the Middle East, which escorted them into Iranian airspace. In the early hours of 22 June local time, they dropped a total of 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs), 30,000-pound guided bombs known as 'bunker busters', on Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordo and Natanz. A US Navy submarine fired more than two dozen Tomahawk missiles at a third site in Isfahan as part of what the Pentagon called 'Operation Midnight Hammer'. By now, most people will have seen Donald Trump's address to the nation in the hours that followed, flanked by his distinctly uncomfortable-looking vice-president JD Vance along with secretary-of-state-turned-national-security-adviser Marco Rubio and defence secretary Pete Hegseth. Trump, predictably, pronounced the whole operation a 'spectacular military success', declaring that Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities had been 'completely and totally obliterated', which he could not possibly have known at the time and has yet to be confirmed. 'Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace,' Trump intoned. 'If they do not, future attacks would be far greater and a lot easier.' Appearing to veer from his script towards the end, he added, 'I want to just say, we love you, God.' In the best-case scenario for those who support these strikes, Trump has acted decisively, ordering the use of military force where successive previous presidents had equivocated, and setting back the Iranian nuclear programme for years, perhaps even for good. He has finally neutered a regime that has long been defined by its rallying cry, 'Death to America', and delivered Israel from the existential threat that would have been posed by a nuclear-armed Iran, which one former Iranian president is said to have described as a 'one-bomb country'. According to this rendering, Trump has taken advantage of a moment of profound weakness for Tehran, whose most notorious proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, have been eviscerated by the Israeli military campaign over the last 18 months, and whose most senior military commanders and nuclear scientists have been assassinated. He has forced a reckoning for the Iranian regime – that will be quietly welcomed by many in the region and beyond – abandon your nuclear ambitions, or cease to exist. In the process, he has also proved the TACO theory (Trump Always Chickens Out) wrong. Perhaps some even see him delivering on his election campaign mantra that he would deliver 'peace through strength'. This is all, theoretically, possible. We should be clear, less than 24 hours at the time of writing from the US strikes, that nobody – not Trump, not the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and not Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei – knows for certain where this will lead, or how this war will end. (Trump has already called it a 'war' on social media.) But the history of recent US military campaigns in the region does not bode well. The exception often noted is the first Gulf War in 1991, where the coalition military effort known as Operation Desert Storm lasted than two months and succeeded in forcing Saddam Hussein to withdraw his troops from Kuwait, although the Iraqi dictator was permitted to remain in power. The problem with the optimistic case this time is, to quote the former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the subsequent invasion of Iraq, the 'known unknowns', and the 'unknown unknowns'. In the short term, the known unknowns include what capabilities Iran retains to retaliate, both in terms of its proxies abroad (including the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq), the remaining stockpiles of missiles and drones in Iran, which Israel has repeatedly targeted in recent days, and its ability to disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, where almost a third of the world's seaborne oil transits. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Ayatollah Khamenei, who is 86 and said to be in faltering health, is reportedly sheltering in a bunker, according to the New York Times, avoiding electronic devices for fear of revealing his location and communicating only through a trusted aide, where he has listed several clerics who could replace him if he is killed, along with substitutes for the military chain of command. We do not yet know how Khamenei will respond to these attacks and whether he will assess – as many commentators have insisted – that he must now retaliate in some meaningful form if he hopes to restore Iran's deterrence and remain in power. We do not know whether Tehran can be induced to resume negotiations on a nuclear deal with Washington, as many European leaders have now urged. We do know, however, that Iran had previously negotiated a nuclear deal – known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – with the United States, the UK, France, China, Russia, and the EU in 2015, which Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018. It is not clear that any Iranian government would entrust its future to a new deal that could be similarly torn up by the next US administration. (Trump has also launched trade wars against Canada, Mexico and China since returning to power despite signing much-hyped trade deals with them during his previous term.) Meanwhile, the example of the Kim dynasty in North Korea, which has pursued nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them despite the significant costs, and is not currently being bombed by the US, might well suggest to the Iranian regime that the surer course for survival would have been to race for a bomb while it still could, and, if it has the opportunity, to try again. We also know that despite the repeated messaging via US backchannels in the hours after the strike that this was a 'one-and-done' operation – a limited campaign to target the nuclear facilities and nothing more, certainly not the prelude to regime change – Trump and Netanyahu have delivered starkly contradictory signals. Netanyahu openly urged the Iranian people to 'stand up' against the regime after launching the Israeli military campaign on 13 June. Trump has demanded 'UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER' from Iran on social media and threatened to kill Khamenei. 'It's not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change,' but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change???' Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on the evening of 22 June. 'MIGA!!!' Given these statements, it is not hard to see why the Iranian government might conclude that the US and Israel have, in fact, launched a war that aims to overthrow them, and, therefore, that this is not merely a negotiating ploy that could yet end in a new nuclear deal, but an existential fight that justifies any means. Then there are the unknown unknowns. We do not know, for instance, whether there could be other Iranian nuclear facilities that had not yet been identified, and what steps the regime might have taken to ensure the survival of key personnel, equipment and material. We do not know how secure the regime's grip on power is and whether Khamenei could yet be sidelined, or simply replaced, by hardliners from within the Iranian Revolutionary Guard or former high-ranking officials. 'Tehran is now full of such plots,' one anonymous source, who claimed to be part of a plan to replace the ageing supreme leader, told The Atlantic after the strikes. 'Everybody knows Khamenei's days are numbered.' If the regime does fall, it is far from clear what type of government would take its place, and what that would mean for the region, and well beyond. Recent examples – such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria – suggest liberal democracy is an unlikely outcome. 'The US is now entangled in a new conflict, with prospects of a ground operation looming on the horizon,' taunted Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and current deputy chair of the country's security council, who is now probably best known for his bellicose social media threats. He then claimed that a 'number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads.' (It is worth bearing in mind that his main role these days seems to be garnering attention and provocative headlines.) With the Russian military tied down in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is unlikely to offer much in the way of meaningful help in the short term, but he will certainly capitalise on what appears to be a flagrant breach of international law and what he will present as yet more evidence of American hypocrisy. (Putin, too, claims to have attacked Ukraine in part to stop the country developing nuclear weapons and threatening Russia's national security.) Moscow also stands to benefit from a rise in the price of oil if Iran threatens the Strait of Hormuz or targets other oil-producing facilities in the region. Beijing has strongly condemned the US attack, which the foreign ministry said, 'seriously violate the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and international law'. China is Iran's largest trading partner, which supplied around 15 percent of the oil the country imported last year, and will not welcome the prospect of a massive spike in oil prices if the conflict escalates at a time when the Chinese economy is already slowing. But the prospect of the US getting drawn into another interminable war in the Middle East and deferring, yet again, the mythical 'pivot to Asia', with its focus on deterring a Chinese assault on Taiwan, offers other potential benefits to Beijing. The reverberations of Trump's gamble will be felt far beyond the borders of Iran. Flanked by Vance, Rubio, and Hegseth as he delivered his speech in the hours after the attack, the impression was less a show of unity than a president who is keenly aware of the domestic political risk this involves – and the vehement opposition already emanating from parts of his Maga base – and determined to show that his top lieutenants were all on board. Perhaps that was why Vance in particular, who has built his political brand on his opposition to US military intervention overseas, looked so perturbed. Trump has plunged the US into a war with Iran, with no apparent strategy, and objectives that appear to be evolving, in real time, on social media. Maybe the best-case scenario will yet transpire, and the Middle East will emerge from this conflict more stable and prosperous, but recent history cautions against too much optimism. [See also: The British left will not follow Trump into war] Related
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24 minutes ago
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Daily Mail
27 minutes ago
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How Donald Trump fooled the world and outwitted Iran with bold misdirection before nuclear strikes
President Donald Trump 's attack on Iran 's nuclear sites caught the world - and its target - by surprise. However the strikes were carried out as a part of a bold plan to wrongfoot Iran, according to new reports. Trump was leaning towards pulling the trigger for several days when he told the press on Thursday that he was giving Iran a two-week deadline before he made a decision, CNN reported. He believed issuing the ultimatum would 'throw off the Iranians and conceal his plans', sources reportedly said. The statement was used to lull Iran into a false sense of security even though Trump had all but made up his mind to strike. Bombs rained down on Iran 's Natanz and Fordow nuclear facilities just two days later in a targeted US strike, sending shockwaves throughout the world. According to administration insiders, the 'two-week' ploy was just one part of a concerted effort to conceal the true conversations taking place in Trump's 'war room.' Separately, the Pentagon deployed several B-2 bombers to serve as decoys, flying west from their base in Missouri in the hopes that they would be picked up by flight trackers. Iranian intelligence would, if all went to plan, calculate the timing of any potential attack based on the flight path over the Pacific Ocean, coming from the west. In reality, seven other B-2 bombers actually departed Missouri, heading east. They refueled several times undetected and attacked three nuclear facilities from the opposite direction that Iran was expecting the attack from. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth boasted of the success of the mission, telling reporters on Sunday: 'Our B-2s went in and out and back without the world knowing at all.' Officials added it was the most B-2 bomber strikes carried out in history. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine said: 'A large B-2 strike package comprised of bombers launched from the continental United States as part of a plan to maintain tactical surprise. 'Part of the package proceeded to the west and into the Pacific as a decoy, a deception effort known only to an extremely small number of climbers and key leaders here in Washington.' Caine claimed no Iranian planes were deployed to intercept the bombers, and the U.S. planes used in the strike were not hit with any fire. Caine said the mission was named 'Operation Midnight Hammer' and was meant to degrade the country's nuclear programs. 'Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obliterated,' Hegseth added, noting the operation was an 'incredible and overwhelming success.' It did not target Iranian troops or Iranian people, the defense secretary stressed. But assurances that the operation was an overwhelming success have been questioned by local Iranian media after reports from Iranian lawmakers that the damage was 'quite superficial.' Iran is believed to have filled in tunnels at its underground Fordow enrichment facility before the strike in an effort to protect the sites from the strikes. Trump faced backlash for his faux two-week deadline at the time, facing mockery for seemingly backing out of making a decision after days of hinting at US involvement. He had already delivered a terrifying warning to Iranians to leave Tehran amid Israel's bombings, marking the first warning sign that he was planning to intervene. 'Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!' the U.S. president wrote in a Truth Social post, as he was attending the G7 Summit in Kananaskis, Canada on Monday. But Trump has been known to give such two week deadlines in the past, including most recently to Russia over the invasion of Ukraine, which ultimately passed by with no action. He was referred to as 'TACO' online, an abbreviation for 'Trump always chickens out', while others praised him for taking the diplomacy route. But Trump didn't respond to either the criticism or praise for his decision. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the New York Times Trump 'successfully accomplished one of the most complex and historic military operations of all time.' She said 'many presidents have talked about this, but only President Trump had the guts to do it.' The surprise attack on Saturday utilized seven B-2 stealth bombers that dropped 14 30,000-pound 'bunker buster' bombs on Iran's primary nuclear facility. Over 125 U.S. aircraft participated in the mission, including bombers, fighters, and refueling tankers, Caine said. Trump has described the attacks as a 'spectacular military success' and later taunted Iran further by suggesting there should be a change of regime. 'It's not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change,' but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change?' he wrote. US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee urged US citizens in the country to evacuate if an opportunity arose to escape safely. 'The Department of State has begun assisted departure flights from Israel,' Huckabee said. 'With airspace mostly closed, the challenges are great. If given an option, TAKE IT.' According to new reports, Iran had warned Trump it would unleash sleeper cell terrorists to wreak havoc on US soil if he intervened. Trump received a communiqué from the regime just days before he ordered US military strikes on its nuclear facilities, sources told NBC News. The State Department on Sunday doubled the number of emergency evacuation flights it is providing for American citizens wishing to leave Israel, ordered the departure of nonessential staff from the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon and is stepping up travel warnings around the Middle East because of concerns Iran will retaliate. In an alert sent to all Americans worldwide and posted to its website on Sunday, the State Department warned all U.S. citizens abroad to exercise caution. 'The conflict between Israel and Iran has resulted in disruptions to travel and periodic closure of airspace across the Middle East,' it said. 'There is the potential for demonstrations against US citizens and interests abroad. The Department of State advises US citizens worldwide to exercise increased caution.' The war between the two countries began when Israel launched what it called Operation Rising Lion on Friday, June 13. Israel targeted nuclear sites and military sites within Iran, while also killing many of Iran's top military commanders. At least 722 people, including 285 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 2,500 wounded, according to a Washington-based Iranian human rights group. Iran has retaliated by firing more than 450 missiles and 1,000 drones at Israel, according to Israeli army estimates. The strikes killed at least 24 people. Iran has long maintained its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, but it is the only non-nuclear-weapon state to enrich uranium up to 60 percent - a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90 percent. Israel is widely
