The Resurgence of American Imperialism and the Dearth of Democratic Ideals
Addressing a Second Trump Presidency: Part 3
Last week and coinciding with Martin Luther King Jr. Day, marks Donald Trump’s second inauguration. It also marks the beginning of finding out exactly which campaign promises he elects to carry over into concrete policy. But there's one conversation happening that should be dramatically concerning to anyone who is listening: the remarkably flippant attitude with which the then President-elect is talking about forcing, buying, or otherwise negotiating the expansion of the United States.
Americans do not really want another trade war with China, mass tariffs for allies, or for America to consider purchasing or fighting for sovereign land in Canada, Greenland, or Panama. Americans do not particularly care about geopolitics and the current role the US plays in global geopolitics. Americans do not exactly need federal jobs to be cut en masse, or for billionaires to dominate the leadership of the executive branch. Americans largely voted for Trump because of the state of the economy, and while the brunt of that fault is not on the back of former President Biden, the blame has been set, and the decision has already been made to transition back to once-again-President Trump.
This discrepancy, between what is being said and what Americans are claiming to vote for, is widening. And much of it seems to be going unnoticed. It needs to be talked about. We need to not normalize many of the social issues at play here, and yet we continue to see different standards being applied across the board. People are right to call this out, but it remains to be seen whether or not something will actually change.
As a Background
Then-President-elect Trump indicated earlier in January that he would use “economic force” (as opposed to military force) to push Canada into being the 51st United State. Canadian leaders have overwhelmingly denounced the comments as Canada is a sovereign nation, but nonetheless, it appears that the United States and Canada will be renegotiating their partnership.
President Trump’s second remark lies in Greenland. Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark, and apparently a strategic interest of the current administration. President Trump had an “icy exchange” with the Danish PM prior to the inauguration. A poll released just yesterday found that 85% of Greenlanders do not want to leave Denmark to join the United States. Denmark is notably a NATO member.
His third and final interest lies in the Panama Canal. With both Greenland and the Panama Canal, he refused to rule out economic or military force to bring those territories into the fold. While some commentators are right to point out the Canal’s economic importance, it is quite an escalation to be talking about using any sort of force on an ally to give up their territory.
As a final note, President Trump’s announcement of the US-based renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America nearly encapsulates this entire issue. The Gulf of Mexico does not need renamed (and is not named for the actual country of Mexico as he implies), and having the United States call it something different and self-serving elevates the US to an unnatural position. President Trump’s renewed focus on the southern border and inflammatory statements about any migrants from that side of the border emphasizes how he thinks people from the United States should see not only Mexicans, but also all Central Americans.
What does this mean?
It would not seem unreasonable to surmise that President Trump is looking to consolidate North American power entirely within the United States (except in keeping Mexico around as sort of a penal colony for illegal immigrants). While business mergers are common and country mergers are not unheard of, forcing a party into a union has rarely been taken well. This sort of “hostile takeover” does not particularly have a place in modern politics. It leads to some of the ideas talked about during the first presidency, that “Donald Trump leads the business of the United States” rather than “President Trump leads the nation of the United States.” That matters. Maybe that is some of why people elected him again, but this sort of “merger-and-acquisition” activity from day one should worry commentators and onlookers more (after all, even two years is a long time for a potential course change and this admnistration seems determined to make the most of its time this go-around).
Why does this matter?
On the domestic side, there is the distinct growing feeling that the attention of lawmakers and regulators is completely disconnected from the average American experience. Given that last Monday’s well-overbooked, closed-door inauguration was stacked with the economic elite, it is hard to justify any position that says that this administration will actually be in-touch.
My biggest domestic concerns for this upcoming administration are the:
Gutting of necessary social programs by otherwise unqualified people.
Erosion of the working class in many geographical regions, driven by unchecked technological advancement at the expense of labor.
The normalization of this sort of imperialistic rhetoric amongst the elite (particularly Elon Musk, who is fully deserving of his own post).
This imperialistic rhetoric comes at the expense of actually focusing on domestic issues; it focuses on expanding America’s material reach without focusing on the issues of why President Trump was largely elected again in the first place.
I want to expand on the second point specifically—AI is not likely to be curtailed in the upcoming administration. Businesses are currently evaluating AI as “agents” to fill both frontline and behind-the-scenes positions. This “agentic AI” is in turn being viewed as having little-to-no associated labor cost. In that regard, the slow march of capitalistic perpetual growth has come for one of the final vestiges of the current American backbone, white-collar workers. With blue-collar workers already struggling (on average) and trying to claw back some semblance of a decent living in the United States, it seems as though business has now come for saving labor costs on their more expensive laborers.
My pronounced concern in the short-term is that the well-established pipelines for white-collar workers (e.g. lawyers needing tremendous amounts of fine-toothed review and giving that work to interns, or computer programmers not being able to find positions without multiple years of work experience that they do not get in undergrad) are quickly disappearing. The rug is currently being pulled, and even mass unionization might not do anything but slow it down. The economy must grow. Even if it hurts the purchasing power of ninety-nine percent of the people in that economy? The economy must grow. Even if the younger generations are largely priced out of property ownership? The economy must grow. Even if big tech controls an ever-larger share of the pie, and even stock valuations are entirely speculative and not based in reality? The economy must grow. This growth indicates that economics is not intrinsically a zero-sum game, but it can certainly feel that way for the average person who is actively losing the game that they did not even know that they were playing.
Because of this, we are likely to see more acts of vigilantism like we are currently seeing in the trial of Luigi Mangione. While “class war” is an inflammatory term that’s been thrown around in this matter, an actual war requires pitched battles on both sides; it is hard to feel that the average American is punching up compared to the weight of many different monolithic systems punching down. Americans don’t typically talk about how the privatized healthcare system kills people directly by denying to pay for necessary treatments, delaying agreeing to pay for necessary treatments, and defending their stance over nothing but the bottom dollar1. This “service” gets away with being a silent and intentional mass murderer on the direct orders of individual people like private healthcare insurance CEOs and boards and yet the media focus was almost entirely on one individual who committed a single, inmtentional crime as a response. All of this is because that is not how the conversations have been engineered in this country, but I expect that the conversational window is shifting in the popular view (as evidenced by the across-party-lines popular public support for Luigi). This topic is broad and well-deserving of its own post, but it is sufficient for this to say that domestic divisiveness is becoming more transparent and is not relegated to only left-wing and right-wing politics.
On the international side, while there is always some question during any presidential transition over whether or not America will stand by agreements made during the previous administration, this question is asked much more often given Trump’s penchant for talking about removing everything that his Democratic predecessors have done. America’s current place in the world order is decisively and indefinitely at-risk at best and dying a slow death at worst.
My main international concern is how the United States has completely undermined its own message with international organizations; notably last week’s executive order to pull out of the World Health Organization is a significant and understated problem that will result in many preventable deaths. Combining that with the US’s continuous tendency to already be self-serving regarding the World Trade Organization and the United Nations (and those organizations were previously struggling to maintain relevancy), and the US is simply giving up its role as the world leader to become insular and protectionist (i.e. “America First”). Even historically, the United States has not espoused its own globally-projected values when business interests take over. This can be seen when capitalistic tendencies override democratic ones—a great example of this is during the democratization movement in South Korea in the 80s, when the United States ignored South Korean citizens’ demand for democracy, favoring instead the apparently more stable military dictatorship despite thousands dying for that cause2 and American military being present close by.
I therefore argue that the United States is not currently losing its position on the international stage, it has already lost its position. The renewed sense of imperialism is not only problematic for the US’s enemies (perceived and otherwise), but also its economic, military, and research partners; this in turn directly affects the US. For tech policy and law, the EU is the only regulator standing up against massive US tech corporations. For the future of energy, it will be countries who are focusing on producing renewables (most likely China) that take the lead. The US will keep a substantial lead for some time in one notable area, its military. And that is exactly why America’s renewed sense of imperialism is so dangerous: a United States that is falling behind the global stage by prestige or by economics may feel threatened enough to lash out militarily in the future, and the flippant kind of discourse that US leaders3 are engaging in could be a precursor to that.
So how do we change this?
Well at the moment, not a lot. This past week is an expensive victory parade for the few, and we will see where things go from here. However, as Robert Reich has pointed out, the American people are resilient. No matter how bad the next 4 years and onwards gets, the American machine will keep chugging because of American people. And that should bring us some hope despite the seeming death of truth, despite concerns over the rule of law, and despite renewed imperialism.
The entire point of democracy is to elect leaders who represent the average person. Elections will still be important. Next year’s midterm elections will be particularly critical. We need to pressure the Democratic party to actually pander to the working class in the meantime. We cannot allow America the chance to prove people like billionaire Peter Thiel right, “…that freedom and democracy are [in]compatible.” America’s freedom was founded in its democracy, and though the Founding Fathers were not perfect, that original vision lasted hundreds of years despite many missteps and many misgivings.
We can still shape America into a place that is for all Americans, and not only the few. It will take time to rebuild, but it is necessary. If we want to revitalize the working class in this country, it is not an overnight change; rather, it is decades of continuous, incremental work and generations of effort. It isn’t fun, it isn’t pretty, and it certainly isn’t quick. But it will be necessary. As it is written on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial: Out of the Mountain of Despair, a Stone of Hope.
Further context is available and recommended in Prof. Jay Feinman’s Delay Deny Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You can do About it.
This series of events is not often discussed in American literature. For further context, I highly recommend Lee Jae-eui’s (이재의) Gwangju Diary: Beyond Death, Beyond the Darkness of the Age. It is a quick-ish read, but brutal and therefore reader discretion is advised. This book is available in full for free here.
Even prior to his appointment as the head of the new Department of Governmental Efficiency, I would argue that people like Elon Musk were acting as if they were speaking for the then-President-elect, and should therefore be considered as a US leader.
NBC has reported that President Trump has requested the Pentagon to draft plans for the Panama Canal, up to and including its forceful seizure by the U.S. Southern Command—drafts to be reviewed by Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.