Trump Embraces the World and Breaks it

Team Trump spent the day doubling down on US imperialism in surprisingly stark language about the United States’ right to take over and control whatever it wants! I’ve never heard such a blatant embrace of imperialism in the US before. (Doubt me? Check their words, quoted below.) While the US has certainly acted in imperial ways, it has never been so transparent about its intention to do multiple land grabs just because it can, and it wants to, as the framework of its foreign policy.

Maybe this is finally what Trump meant by promising transparency. His repeated transparency about the takeover of entire nations, and several of them, certainly has stirred deep concerns in Europe over the past few days:

European leaders closed ranks behind Denmark as President Donald Trump amplified threats to seize Greenland, warning that existing borders were non-negotiable and arguing Arctic security must be achieved through NATO.

In a joint statement on Tuesday, leaders from France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the UK and Denmark called the Arctic a critical pillar of European, international and transatlantic security, and insisted that the US must work with them to defend the region….

The president, on the other hand, has argued that the US needs Greenland for US security:

The president has in recent days insisted he needs the Arctic island for national security reasons, while Stephen Miller, a top aide to the president, asserted in a CNN interview that the US has a right to take the territory in a world “governed by strength.”

NATO is right to take the position that the US does not need Greenland for its own defense so long as Denmark is a member of NATO because the US can and should work through its allies as a team player. Greenland has to be available for US defense anyway, if the US needs defense from that direction, because Denmark is sworn to use its resources to protect the US if the US is ever attacked. Since Denmark has already let the US establish a large military base there on the Arctic Ocean as part of its support to the US and to European Arctic defense, Greenland is already performing that role. So, Trump’s position it is essential Greenland become part of the US for defense reasons is made up.

Of course, offshore Arctic oil and all those rare earths under Greenland’s not-so-green surface don’t get to belong to the US unless it seizes Greenland as its own land. So, the real interest in Greenland is not hard to suss out.

The end of NATO

Some Trump supporters would argue that the US shouldn’t rely on NATO because it should be abolished anyway, and they may get their wish:

Denmark has urged the U.S. to stop threatening the territory of a historic ally and warned that any U.S. military operation to seize Greenland would spell the end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Major European NATO members rallied to Denmark’s side, calling on the U.S. to choose cooperation, not coercion, in a joint statement on Tuesday.

The past few days have renewed fears in Europe that the Western alliance is fracturing. Trump’s growing taste for big-stick diplomacy in the Americas is adding to fears among traditional allies that the U.S. is actively dismantling the post-World War II international order, based on principles such as protecting the sovereignty of states and limiting the use of military force.

Unlike Teddy Roosevelt, Trump speaks loudly and carries a big stick, and he’s now shown he WILL do as he threatens. It is not all bluster.

Ironically, the primary objection to NATO, where there has been objection among conservatives, has been based on how the alliance has been abused, primarily by the US, to establish imperial control over other nations, especially nations with lots of oil. Many who are part of the MAGA movement became increasingly angry (and rightly so) at the regime changes fought at great US cost on behalf of the military industrial complex with the full support of the “deep state,” no matter which political party was in charge. They were equally enraged about Bush’s war in Iraq and Hillary’s war in Syria. MTG, as one of many, was particularly adamant during the dawning MAGA days in her stand against American military adventures aimed at taking over countries. So was Trump’s Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

How times have changed: In terms of starting hostile wars that neocons and the MIC love, Trump makes George and Hillary look like preschoolers. The number of nations he is staring down with serious verbal threats of military domination (now carried out in one nation, showing he means his threats) outnumbers both of those two leaders combined. Bush had Iraq and Afghanistan. Clinton had Libya and Syria. Both, of course, supported the other’s wars. Trump, however, has his eyes on six nations and one part of a nation. and threatens all of them with military force—Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, Panama, Canada, and Greenland. He’s already knocked down numero uno.

Now we get to see how true MAGA will be to the principles of their own past NATO objections. Will they, with equal outrage, denounce Trump’s new oil war? MTG, at least, is standing by her clearly stated original principles, regardless of the price she pays.

Most Trump supporters have been saying, as a matter of conservative finance, for several years now that the US needs to stop spending money it doesn’t have on foreign wars it doesn’t need—wars with nations that have never attacked it, wars for the sake of other nations, such as Israel, and wars for the sake of oil. Now that we’ve seen another war for oil and geopolitical dominance just started by a US president who has expanded the military budget beyond what any other president has signed into law (except maybe in inflation-adjusted terms during WWII), we will find out if they will all stand by their principles and stop their chosen leader from rampaging ahead

In case you think I’m exaggerating the administration’s intentions …

… look at what Stephan Miller, one of the most influential people and spokesmen in Trump’s White House, just said in an interview. He laid out the moral principle the White House is using to justify taking over and running Venezuela, and, yes, he makes it pointedly clear that the Trump administration is completely controlling Venezuela. The sole moral principle he gave for this hostile takeover of another nation’s government is the oldest and most thuggish principle of all: “Might is right.”

In a CNN interview, the Trump aide also echoed the president’s intent to run Venezuela as he laid out a case for the United States to control weaker states by flexing its military might.

Stephen Miller, a top aide to President Trump, asserted on Monday that Greenland rightfully belonged to the United States and that the Trump administration could seize the semiautonomous Danish territory if it wanted.

“Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” Mr. Miller told Jake Tapper, the CNN host, after being asked repeatedly whether he would rule out using military force.

The remarks were part of a vocal push by Mr. Miller, long a powerful behind-the-scenes player in Trump administration policy, to justify American imperialism and a vision for a new world order in which the United States could freely overthrow national governments and take foreign territory and resources so long as it was in the national interest.

“We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

He couldn’t be clearer: strength, force, and power give you the right to take what you want.

Mr. Miller made his comments after his wife posted an image on social media over the weekend suggesting that the United States would soon take control of Greenland, and as Mr. Trump has renewed his own push for the island….

“The United States of America is running Venezuela,” Mr. Miller said, dismissing international treaties enshrining a nation’s right to independence and sovereignty as “international niceties….”

Miller made himself unequivocally clear that the US is running the country by underscoring his own comments:

Mr. Miller’s language echoed a dark history of the United States’ governing weaker, smaller states in Latin America by flexing its military might. Mr. Miller asserted that a U.S. military blockade of the South American country of 28 million people would give the United States control of Venezuela.

“We set the terms and conditions,” Mr. Miller said. “We have a complete embargo on all of their oil and their ability to do commerce. So for them to do commerce, they need our permission. For them to be able to run an economy, they need our permission. So the United States is in charge. The United States is running the country.”

Might is right is the sole principle that guides every bully and thug who has ever lived: you have the right to take things that are not yours (steal other kids’ lunch money) and beat up anyone you want to beat up on the basis that you are the toughest kid. I’m sure billions of people have been hoping the world was slowly moving away from that ancient ideology toward something more respectful and less power-hungry. Might is right is usually the final principle of anarchy. Once the anarchists have succeeded in taking down a government they hate, their commitment to no rule by authority almost always turns into rule by whoever is the strongest.

It is the basis of all tyranny: We have the right to take everything we want to take because we have the ability. If we allow the US to be governed by this principle and by people like Miller who believe in it, then we will wind up with unbridled tyranny. We set the stage for all other major powers to operate the same way. Maybe that is why Trump keeps demanding that Ukraine give up its lands to Russia. He can hardly claim Might is right and then deny that to Putin. So, Russia, China, and the US will carve up a good part of the world into major empires. He who is mighty makes the rules because that is the lowest anarchy always descends to.

It is also fascism. Hitler took whatever he wanted on the basis that Germany had the strength to take it. At first, he started with land close to Germany that had once been under German control. Then he spread throughout a great portion of the world. He readily used violence to take over other nations because he needed them for his grand vision of German global empire—the Third Reich—just as Trump now does. And the German people went along with it. People have wondered for years why the German people went along with all that violence and world-cracking war.

Trump has only spoken positively of Hitler, calling him a great leader because he became one of the world’s ultimate strongmen via a huge military buildup … just as Trump is doing under Big Beautiful Bill. To the extent the rest of the world, and especially the people of the United States, let him do it, his power will grow just as Hitler’s did. That’s how it happened with Germany.

Hitler didn’t arrive as a monster. At first, he took full control over the Rhineland near the Netherlands, which was already considered German land but was occupied by Belgium and France. So, that was an easy sell to the Germans. Then he invaded the Sudetenland, a German-speaking region in the northern part of Czechoslovakia, and seized control. Again, a somewhat easy sell to the German people on the basis that many living there spoke German (similar to Putin’s claim in the Donbas region of Ukraine). Hitler was simply consolidating the German people under German rule. Naturally, Austria, which had been a part of Germany, came next. Also, an easy argument with the German people.

Those ventures let him test how far and hard he could push Europe and showed he could build on his successes. Since no one inside Germany stopped him because he was truly making Germany great again after decades of severe decline, he branched out and attacked Poland on the basis that the German people also had a right to a greater territory to support them and ensure their growth (national food security) and had built up the power to take it. People kept thinking: This will be it; that will be the end of it, but with each new conquest, Hitler, the megalomaniac, became emboldened to push his agenda further and become more outspoken about the agenda.

How far Trump gets with his grand scheme, since he has a Congress to deal with and hopefully still has supporters who were opposed to the military-industrial complex, is hard to say. However, the current Republican House is run by a man in Trump’s servitude who is justifying what has just happened by outrageously claiming it is not even military hostility:

Trump insists that the United States is very much “in charge” of Venezuela — and Speaker Mike Johnson, who has vigorously defended the military operation, has maintained that the United States is not engaged in military hostilities or an occupation.

Are these people truly that morally disabled that they cannot see their own duplicity? If Columbia made a penetrating invasion of Washington, DC, and bombed the White House and captured and hauled Trump and Melania off to Columbia overnight under a spray of bullets and bombs, would Johnson claim that was “not military hostility?”

You know he would not.

So, this is such blatant lying that it is frightening to see our leaders are able to utter such mush-headed nonsense when we all know they would never make such claims if the situation were reversed, like my example. They grasp at such arguments just because it is in their interest to do so. It is frightening because that is how so many people caved into letting Hitler climb as high as he did and create all the damage in the world he eventually created. Allowing one immoral, brain-dead justification leads to another and another, and that is how you walk down the path of allowing evil to dominate the world until it becomes a deeply dark and war-torn drek of a place. You find reasons to do nothing against the rising darkness or even stand by it.

Miller and Johnson both stand high and mighty in their proud sense of their own morality. At least, they appear to … unless their confidence in their moral position is just a charade. That would be the question here: Are they so self-deluded that Miller can openly argue without a sign of discomfort that the overthrow in Venezuela was justifiable on the basis of might is right (and likewise up ahead for Greenland) and that Johnson can say with a straight face there was no military hostility involved, or are they just that blatantly dishonest about everything? Either is possible in the realm of human affairs.

It was the acquisition of Greenland in the context of what just happened in Venezuela that Miller was defending as justifiable, based solely on having the power and desire to do it.

It is sad when the communists in the country have to be our moral spine:

Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, denounced Mr. Miller’s remarks soon afterward, saying on CNN that “Mr. Miller gave a very good definition of imperialism.”

“Trump has made it clear he wants to take Venezuela’s oil,” he added. “Last I heard, this is what imperialism is all about. And I suspect that people all over the world are saying, ‘Wow, we’re going back to where we were 100 years ago, or 50 years ago, where the big, powerful countries were exploiting poorer countries for their natural resources.’”

Well, we have the right to because we have the power. Just like Ancient Rome and Greece and Egypt and Babylon … and every other empire that tried to seize the world. “I had the right to let my dog eat your dog because he’s bigger.”