{"id":686180,"date":"2026-01-10T06:39:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T06:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/686180\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T06:39:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T06:39:17","slug":"trumps-territorial-ambition-new-imperialism-or-a-case-of-the-emperors-new-clothes-trump-administration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/686180\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s territorial ambition: new imperialism or a case of the emperor\u2019s new clothes? | Trump administration"},"content":{"rendered":"

The attack on Venezuela and the seizure of its president was a shocking enough start to 2026, but it was only the next day, when the smoke had dispersed and Donald Trump<\/a> was flying from Florida to Washington DC in triumph, that it became clear the world had entered a new era.<\/p>\n

The US president was leaning on a bulkhead on Air Force One, in a charcoal suit and gold tie, regaling reporters with inside details of the abduction of Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. He claimed his government was \u201cin charge\u201d of Venezuela<\/a> and that US companies were poised to extract the country\u2019s oil wealth.<\/p>\n

Clearly giddy with the success of the operation, achieved without a single US fatality but several Venezuelan and Cuban ones, Trump then served notice on a string of other nations that could face the same fate. \u201cCuba is ready to fall,\u201d he said. Colombia was run by a \u201csick man\u201d who was selling cocaine to the US but who would not \u201cbe doing it for very long\u201d.<\/p>\n

Trump speaking to reporters on Air Force One the day after the seizure of Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Trump said he would postpone for 20 days to two months any discussions about his desired takeover of Greenland, the semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, a Nato ally, but made clear he was determined to seize it for the sake of US \u201cnational security\u201d.<\/p>\n

New imperialism<\/p>\n

Lest there was any doubt about the scale of Trump\u2019s territorial ambitions, his administration posted its message to the world in capital letters, some of them red, on social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is OUR hemisphere,\u201d the state department declared<\/a> on X above a black and white picture of Trump looking grimly determined.<\/p>\n

The White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, went on CNN to provide the rationale for Trump\u2019s new approach to foreign policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Miller is one of the few aides to have served in high positions in both the first and second Trump tenures. He has emerged as chief ideologue, channelling the impulses of the president and packaging them as policy. In a social media post on Monday, Miller addressed the bigger picture and argued it was time for the west to stop apologising for its imperialist past.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot long after World War II the West dissolved its empires and colonies and began sending colossal sums of taxpayer-funded aid to these former territories (despite have [sic] already made them far wealthier and more successful),\u201d Miller wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe neoliberal experiment, at its core, has been a long self-punishment of the places and peoples that built the modern world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The US has invaded a long list of countries and changed regimes many times over the past few decades, but this is the first time it has done so since the second world war as a self-proclaimed exercise in imperialism. The extraordinary change in rhetoric coming from Washington means all three of the world\u2019s military superpowers are overtly pursuing revanchist aims, the recovery of lost imperial greatness.<\/p>\n

San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico, which is one of five territories under US sovereignty. Photograph: trekandshoot\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Vladimir Putin has taken on the mantle of Peter and Catherine the Great in restoring historical Russian lands, at the cost so far of a million Russian troops killed or injured in Ukraine, according to the British Ministry of Defence, the culmination of a string of conquests in Chechnya and Georgia.<\/p>\n

Xi Jinping has dedicated himself to China\u2019s \u201cgreat rejuvenation\u201d, which includes recovering the territorial expanse of the Qing empire at its high-water mark before the \u201ccentury of humiliation\u201d at the hands of foreign powers from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries. Beijing\u2019s projection of force with military bases around the South China Sea<\/a> draws from that rationale, but Xi has repeatedly made clear the mission will not be completed until Taiwan is back under Beijing\u2019s rule.<\/p>\n

Like the other two ageing autocrats, Trump\u2019s vision for his country harks back to a bygone imperial past. His favourite president is William McKinley<\/a>, who led the US through a surge of territorial expansion at the end of the 19th century, including the military takeover of Cuba and the annexation of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines and American Samoa.<\/p>\n

Trump has also looked to the early 19th century for inspiration for his new bout of territorial acquisitiveness, in the form of the Monroe doctrine.<\/p>\n

James Monroe, the fifth US president. Photograph: Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very important, but we forgot about it. We don\u2019t forget about it any more,\u201d the president said on Saturday.<\/p>\n

The reference not only reflected a view of the past uncomplicated by any detailed reading on Trump\u2019s part, but also the changing relationship between the US and the notion of empire.<\/p>\n

The country was founded as a rejection of British imperialism and when President James Monroe developed his doctrine in 1823, setting out the leading US role in the Americas<\/a>, it was to act as a barrier to any further European colonialism.<\/p>\n

The version of the doctrine that Trump appears to embrace, however, is its repurposing by Teddy Roosevelt in 1904 at the height of a US exercise in traditional imperialism. Under the \u201cRoosevelt corollary\u201d, the US took on the role of \u201cpolice power\u201d which would intervene in any country in the region where it perceived there to be \u201cflagrant cases of wrongdoing or impotence\u201d.<\/p>\n

In its national security strategy document<\/a> published in November, a blueprint for the expansionism of early 2026, the White House laid out a \u201cTrump corollary\u201d to the Monroe doctrine \u201cto restore American pre-eminence in the western hemisphere\u201d.<\/p>\n

Trump calls it the \u201cDonroe doctrine\u201d, copying a New York Post front page from a year earlier. The difference from previous versions, he boasted characteristically, was that it would be bigger and better.<\/p>\n

The original Monroe doctrine was \u201ca big deal\u201d, he said, but added: \u201cWe\u2019ve superseded it by a lot, by a real lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

For all the febrile talk of doctrine and the sharp swerve in rhetoric coming from the White House, it is far from clear how it intends to proceed in Venezuela.<\/p>\n

New president, old policy?<\/p>\n

There appears to be disagreement within the administration \u2013 to the extent there is detailed discussion at all \u2013 on how to turn the president\u2019s self-image of hemispheric emperor into a plan of action. Until that happens, what Trump has done in Venezuela is arguably not out of line with what the US has done around the world, but particularly in the Americas, when it was supposed to be abiding by the post-1945 \u201crules-based order\u201d.<\/p>\n

Some argue that, as seen from the global south, US imperialism has remained a constant, and that all Trump has done is to drop the mask of hypocrisy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea that this is new is ridiculous,\u201d said Kehinde Andrews, a professor of black studies at Birmingham City University in the UK and the author of The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World. \u201cThe US has been doing this all along, but the only difference here is it\u2019s just brazen. There\u2019s nothing new about this at all. This is what the west does; Trump\u2019s just honest about it. I actually find it refreshing to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrews added that if Trump carried out his threat to seize Greenland, directing his imperialist appetites towards another western state and thereby crippling Nato, it would mark a significant break with the past. But for that same reason, he doubted it would happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it was a black or brown place, it would have happened already,\u201d Andrews said.<\/p>\n

Houses on the coast of a sea inlet in Nuuk, Greenland. Photograph: Evgeniy Maloletka\/AP<\/p>\n

Daniel Immerwahr, a historian and humanities professor at Northwestern University in Illinois, and the author of How to Hide an Empire, agreed that \u201cthe US empire never really ended\u201d.<\/p>\n

He pointed out that the US still owns five permanently inhabited territories \u2013 Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa \u2013 and maintains 750 military bases around the world.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Immerwahr argued that, for all the US hypocrisy and double standards under the \u201crule-based international order\u201d, it remained markedly different to the imperial era.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe notion that as the US got more powerful it would grow larger \u2013 that was largely broken by the end of world war two,\u201d Immerwahr said. While the liberal international order did not stop invasions and wars, \u201cit is also true that the post-1945 era has seen far more decolonisation than imperial expansion, in terms of territory. And that has helped bring down war deaths enormously\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

The left has historically condemned the post-1945 global order because it baked in western advantage, but the more extreme elements of the right have despised it because it involved surrendering colonial assets, and helping old adversaries recover from the war.<\/p>\n

Trump spent much of his career as a property developer railing against Japanese competition, an antipathy he has since broadened to China. Much of his rhetoric over Venezuela and other would-be imperial targets revolves around reclaiming assets, such as oil industry infrastructure, that had been \u201cstolen\u201d from the US. So in Trump\u2019s view, making America truly great again inevitably demands a return to expansion. Putin and Xi are bent on making Russia and China great again, for similar motives.<\/p>\n

Potential clash of empires<\/p>\n

The US seizure this week of an oil tanker, the Marinera<\/a>, despite the fact it was Russian flagged and escorted by a Russian submarine, brought into urgent focus the question of whether, and for how long, the ambitions of the three superpowers can be reconciled without major conflict.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere can be really rather a protracted period of time in which empires can coexist,\u201d Nathalie Tocci, the director of Italy\u2019s Institute of International Affairs, said. \u201cIt\u2019s not as if Trump is saying: I want to be the only empire; Trump is basically signalling and acting as if he\u2019s absolutely fine with Russia and China being empires.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the short to medium term, I would say that the greater risk is not the empires clashing with one another, but the subjugation of the colonies,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping attending a military parade in Beijing last year. Photograph: Rao Aimin\/AP<\/p>\n

Putin and Xi would certainly be content with a world sliced into spheres of influence. During the first Trump administration<\/a>, Russia informally floated the idea that the US could have a free hand in Venezuela in exchange for Russia holding sway over Ukraine in its sphere of influence.<\/p>\n

Fiona Hill, who at the time was serving in the Trump White House as the national security council director for Russian and European affairs, said: \u201cThe Russians were trying it on. It was all vague and a matter of hint-hint, wink-wink, saying: \u2018Let\u2019s talk about the Monroe doctrine,\u2019 and then giving a meaningful look.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hill said the first Trump administration rejected the suggestion of any such deal, but she acknowledged that the president\u2019s views on empire had clearly evolved.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember actually telling people before that he was a real estate mogul. He didn\u2019t want to own your country, just put up his buildings on it,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I suppose it\u2019s a quick jump for him from real estate to state acquisition, and that\u2019s what we weren\u2019t anticipating before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hill is not confident that the three great revanchist empires can stay out of each other\u2019s way. In his newly whetted appetite for US expansionism, Trump has reserved the right to act far beyond his hemisphere, bombing Iran or even running Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s saying: \u2018Hands off and keep away from the western hemisphere\u2019, but he\u2019s not necessarily going to leave China unchecked in the Asia-Pacific,\u201d Hill said. \u201cThe US is still supposed to be an Asian-Pacific power, and part of the western hemisphere is in the Pacific.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis world is much more complex now,\u201d she added. \u201cIt\u2019s all very fragile, especially because we don\u2019t know what mistakes he\u2019s going to make.\u201d<\/p>\n

Domestic considerations<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s imperial impulses may be constrained, to some extent, by US politics<\/a>. Post-Venezuela polling suggested that large majorities, among Democrats and Republicans alike, were opposed to any long-term involvement in the country.<\/p>\n

However, Trump\u2019s Maga base was thrilled by the success of the operation, and his long-sagging popularity gained a minor bump. For a president seeking to distract from an intractable affordability crisis at home and the looming threat of more child-trafficking revelations in the Epstein files, that may be enough to seek out other quick military spectacles abroad.<\/p>\n

With the guardrails of the old order demolished, Trump\u2019s US would be an ever more chaotic factor in the world, not coherent enough to be called an empire but imperial in the imposition of suffering by the strong on the weak.<\/p>\n

Writing in Mother Jones<\/a> this week, the magazine\u2019s Washington editor, David Corn, suggested that is the essence of the real Trump doctrine: \u201cViolence is ours to use, at home and abroad, to get what we want.\u201d<\/p>\n

A military officer comforts Ramona Palma, the mother of the Venezuelan soldier Cesar Garcia, who was killed in the US raid, after his wake in Caracas. Photograph: Matias Delacroix\/APWhat was the Monroe <\/strong>doctrine?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Trump administration has revived the 203-year-old Monroe doctrine, and made it the cornerstone of its newly aggressive policy in the Americas.<\/p>\n

The US national security strategy<\/a> (NSS) published in November, stated that: \u201cAfter years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe doctrine to restore American pre-eminence in the western hemisphere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump himself has bandied the term about, characteristically adapting it to the \u201cDonroe doctrine\u201d, a play on his first name to emphasise his ownership of the idea.<\/p>\n

The original doctrine, put forward by President James Monroe in 1823, meant something quite different. He proposed that the recently established United States act as a guarantor against European imperialism in the region, declaring the nations of the American continents were \u201cnot to be considered as subjects for future colonisation by any European powers\u201d.<\/p>\n

In 1904, however, the doctrine was updated by President Theodore \u201cTeddy\u201d Roosevelt to suit the enthusiasm for US colonialism at the time, in the aftermath of the Spanish-American war. The \u201cRoosevelt corollary\u201d bestowed \u201cinternational police power\u201d on Washington to intervene anywhere in the Americas where it perceived there to be \u201cchronic wrongdoing\u201d by a sovereign government.<\/p>\n

The NSS declares a new \u201cTrump corollary\u201d to the doctrine, marking a return to colonial appetites, and the president\u2019s focus on natural resources. It states no outside power has the right to \u201cown or control strategically vital assets\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The attack on Venezuela and the seizure of its president was a shocking enough start to 2026, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":686181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-686180","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115869434702671280","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/686181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}