Trump goes full colonialist
So much for the "non-interventionist mindset."
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Though he campaigned on keeping the United States out of foreign conflicts, Donald Trump has started his second term with a blizzard of bizarre, violent, and potentially disastrous expansionist threats. But this week he outdid himself.
During his joint White House press conference Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump proposed that the US should “take over the Gaza Strip.” He said that the “1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza” would be relocated — a proposal that would constitute ethnic cleansing and a violation of international law.
“I do see a long-term ownership position,” Trump said in response to a question about if he envisioned a “permanent occupation.” (Watch below.)
Since he came down that escalator in June 2015, some analysts have mistakenly characterized Trump as “non-interventionist” and suggested he offers a less warlike alternative to the bipartisan interventionism of his predecessors. This was never the case — he campaigned on a pro-war crime platform in 2016, for instance. But Trump’s second term saber-rattling, culminating in a call to involve American troops in an open-ended war crime in the Middle East, is a final, grotesque rebuke to those who framed him in any regard as a force for peace.
Nationalism, or fascism, is an expansionist, militarist ethos. Trump has always equated force with strength; he’s always embraced militaristic solutions. He’s always shown contempt for democratic processes and for the idea that people should have a say in their own government. He’s now, apparently, comfortable revealing the full, terrifying extent of his imperial yearning for territory and conquest.
Trump’s scheme to annex Gaza
The details of Trump’s plan for the US to “own” Gaza are half-baked at best. But during Tuesday’s news conference, he sounded like he viewed the US as a giant real estate developer with guns. He said that the US could take the territory over and create a “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Trump spoke about Palestinians as if they are inconvenient tenants whose eviction would facilitate enticing redevelopment opportunities.
“Other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts” would set up territory for the Palestinians, Trump said confidently. That would end “the death and destruction and, frankly, bad luck” that has, in his callous words, plagued the region.
The White House quickly mobilized behind Trump’s message. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff went on Hannity’s Fox News show and said, “Peace in the region means a better life for the Palestinians ... that doesn't occur because you get to pitch a tent in the Gaza Strip.” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt went as far yesterday as to say Trump is “committed” to “temporarily relocating” people still living in Gaza, though she dodged questions about whether he’d put troops on the ground to make it happen.
Netanyahu praised Trump for his approach without fully endorsing it. The right in Israel, which Netanyahu represents, is eager to expel Palestinians from Gaza, even if they don’t necessarily want Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in charge of turning it into what Kushner has referred to as “waterfront property.”
Israel and Hamas just concluded a fragile ceasefire deal after Israel leveled the territory, killing more than 46,660 people in a 14-month assault which many human rights organizations and experts have characterized as a genocide. Netanyahu may see Trump’s proposal as an opportunity to derail those talks and return to war.
Whatever Netanyahu’s motives, he’s virtually alone in his praise for the plan. A spokesperson for Hamas characterized Trump’s proposal as “ridiculous and absurd” and “capable of igniting the region.” Virtually every international leader also condemned Trump’s illegal and ridiculous suggestion. Saudi Arabia rejected it immediately, Turkey said it was “unacceptable,” and France said it would be destabilizing. Russia, China, Germany, Spain, Ireland, and Britain reiterated their support for an eventual independent Palestinian state, including Gaza.
In the US, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham called the proposal “problematic” and Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said “us taking over seems like a bit of a stretch.” Democratic legislators less restrained. Sen. Tim Kaine called the proposal “nuts.” Sens. Tina Smith and Chris Murphy both suggested the idea was so ridiculous that Trump must be using it to distract from Elon Musk’s illegal seizure of federal government departments.
Sen. Chris Coons clutched his head and said, “That’s insane. I can’t think of a place on Earth that would welcome American troops less and where any positive outcome is less likely.”
Coons emphasized that Palestinians would not welcome US troops; he was pointing out that Palestinians, like all people, should have a say in how they are governed and in what happens to their land and their lives. The US has not always held to this principle. But abandoning it wholesale as an ideal opens the door to a policy of unrestrained force and greed — returning to a 19th century model of naked imperial expansion in which looting territory is seen as empowering, glorious, and fun for its own sake.
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The Trump empire
Trump embracing the role of global bully isn’t really a surprise. And yet, a number of commenters from across the political spectrum have convinced themselves over the years that he’s something other than what he really is.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd published a now now infamous column during the 2016 election headlined, “Donald the Dove, Hillary the Hawk.” She argued Trump was the peace candidate, mistakenly asserting he had opposed the Iraq War in 2003. (He actually supported it.) Simon Jenkins at The Guardian claimed around the same time that Trump would end the drone war. (He vastly accelerated it.) The Nation claimed that Trump opposed nation building and was “singing, ‘Give peace a chance.’”
Many pointed out at the time that Trump was not in a fact a proponent of peace. And sure enough, during his tenure in office Trump in Afghanistan dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb ever used by the US, vetoed a withdrawal from war in Yemen, and ordered drone strikes killing an Iranian commander in Baghdad. But the idea that he is an isolationist reluctant to intervene in foreign conflicts has clung to him in the media like some sort of weird contrarian leech.
In his first weeks back in office, Trump is trying once and for all to detach that leech and convince commenters that he is not in fact a peacenik. He hasn’t been talking like a live-and-let-live isolationist. Instead, he speaks as if he thinks the entire globe rightfully belongs to the US, and he sees any territory not held by him personally as an insult.
Trump has repeatedly said he wants Canada to become the “51st state” and has threatened to use “economic force,” such as tariffs, to force the country to acquiesce to annexation. He’s also said he wants to take over Greenland through “military or economic coercion,” even though the autonomous territory of Denmark has passed a law banning foreign contributions to political parties to prevent Trump’s billionaire buddies from interfering in elections there. And Trump has pushed garbled and aggressive conspiracy theories as a justification for his vow to “take back” the Panama Canal, which he falsely claims is under Chinese control.
Xenophobia is not the same as isolationism
Trump dislikes alliances because he sees all relationships as zero sum dominance contests. Why trade with Canada when you could just take them over? Why help Ukraine resist Russia unless they pay us directly in mineral wealth? For Trump, everyone in the world is out to rip us off, and his goal is to rip them off first.
Trump doesn’t just want money; he wants power. He constantly praises dictators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin for what he sees as their strength; he admires their lack of accountability and immunity from democratic constraints. Trump attempted a coup to retain power on January 6, 2021. He and Elon Musk are currently illegally seizing control of federal spending from Congress and the American people in what amounts to a “plutocratic coup,” in the words of progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Trump disdains democratic input from Americans. It’s not surprising, then, that he has even more disdain for democratic input from people in other countries. Trump believes that everyone — Canadians, Mexicans, Danes, Panamanians, Palestinians — should pay him personal fealty. He’s rightfully entitled to the world. He’s isolationist only in the sense that he thinks the world revolves around him and him alone; he resents that anything exists outside of his dominance.
So far Trump has not acted on his latest threats to seize various territories, and the White House is already hedging on whether he’d really ever repeat Bush’s folly and deploy a large number of troops to the Middle East. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, for instance, is already working to soften Trump’s comments. But it’s cause for concern, to say the least, when an unchecked and impulsive commander in chief keeps compulsively airing violent imperialist dreams.
That’s it for today
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Thanks for reading.
@Noah Berlatsky, I appreciate the clarity. Trump isn’t an isolationist. He never was. He isn’t anti-war. He isn’t anti-intervention. He is transactional, authoritarian, and expansionist. He sees the world as something to own, not as people with sovereignty.
Gaza isn’t real estate. Palestinians aren’t an inconvenience. This isn’t foreign policy. It’s colonialism. Naming it matters.
Why bother discussing this anymore. It was a ruse. What’s really happening is takeover of all the levers of power, and all of you guys are focused on the low hanging fruit.
What’s happening at the Pentagon? What’s Flynn’s his goon squad up to? X has gone full fascist and whites supremacist, and Musk is into all of our sensitive government servers with a bunch of kids, who don’t have any experience, or even a security clearance!
Seriously, can’t you tell the difference between policy and flooding the zone wi the BS? This is exactly why they’re winning! Democrats are useless invertebrates, who could get a court order to stop Musk, but aren’t.
And, as soon as he has full access to these systems, and he changes the codes, then we’ll never get back, or learn of all of the changes he’s making to our government: unsupervised!