Trump’s regional ambitions are shaking a weary world

When Donald J. Trump won back to the White House, many countries thought they knew what to expect and how to prepare for what was coming.

Diplomats in world capitals said they would focus on what his administration is doing, not what Trump is saying. Major countries have made plans to mitigate or counter his threat with punitive tariffs. Smaller countries hoped they could simply hide from four more years of America First’s turbulent power.

But it has become difficult for the world to remain calm and carry on.

At Tuesday’s press conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump refused to rule out the use of force in a potential land seizure in Greenland and the Panama Canal. He pledged to rename the Gulf of Mexico to “America’s Gulf.” He also said he could use “economic power” to turn Canada into the 51st state as a matter of US national security.

For those eager to parse the nitty-gritty of threat and intimidation, it seemed like another performance of scatterbrained bluster: Trump II, part two, more liberal. Even before taking office, Mr. Trump, with his surprising wish list, was surprising “here we go again” Comment from around the world.

However, there are serious risks behind gossip. As the world prepares for Trump’s return, the parallels between his preoccupations and the distant era of American imperialism in the late 19th century are becoming more important.

Mr. Trump has already defended the era of protectionism, claiming that the United States in the 1890s “may have been the wealthiest ever because it had a system of tariffs.” He now appears to be adding emphasis to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries On territorial control.

What both eras have in common is the fear of shaky geopolitics and the threat of isolation from lands of great economic and military importance. As Daniel Immerwahr, an American historian at Northwestern University, put it: “We are witnessing a return to a more dispossessed world.”

For Mr. Trump, China looms large, ready, in his view, to seize territory far beyond its borders. He has falsely accused Beijing of controlling the Panama Canal, which was built by the United States. There is also the specter, more deeply rooted in reality, of a move by China and its ally Russia to secure control of the Arctic sea routes and precious metals.

At the same time, competition is increasing everywhere, with some countries rising (India, Saudi Arabia) and others rising and struggling (Venezuela, Syria), creating opportunities for outside influence.

In the 1880s and 1890s, there was also a scramble for control and there was no single dominant state. As nations became more powerful, they were expected to grow materially, and rivalries were redrawing maps and causing conflicts from Asia to the Caribbean.

The United States reversed European colonial designs when it annexed Guam and Puerto Rico in 1898. But in larger countries, such as the Philippines, the United States eventually opted for indirect control by negotiating deals to promote preferential treatment of American businesses and military interests.

Some believe Trump’s focus on Greenland, the Panama Canal and even Canada is a one-man revival of the debate over expansionist endeavors.

“This is part of a pattern in which the United States exercises control, or attempts to do so, over areas of the world viewed as US interests, without having to invoke the dreaded words like ‘empire’, ‘colonies’ or ‘imperialism’, while still “It’s extracting material benefits,” said Ian Tyrrell, a historian of the American empire at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

Mr. Trump’s threats to seize territory may just be a transactional starting point or a kind of personal desire. The United States has already concluded an agreement with Denmark that allows it to carry out base operations in Greenland.

His proposal for Americanization there and elsewhere amounts to what many foreign diplomats and scholars see as more of an escalation than a break with the past. For years, the United States has been trying to limit Chinese ambitions using familiar rules of the game.

The Philippines is in focus again, with new deals for bases that the US military could use in any potential war with Beijing. They are also the most important sea routes for trade in Asia and around the Arctic, where climate change is melting ice and making navigation easier.

“What the United States has always wanted is access to markets, lines of communication and future projections of material power,” Professor Tyrrell said.

But for some areas in particular, the past as prologue inspires awe.

Panama and its neighbors tend to see Trump’s comments as an amalgam of those from the 1890s and 1880s, when the Cold War prompted Washington to intervene in several Latin American countries under the guise of fighting communism. The Monroe Doctrine, another 19th-century origination that saw the United States treat the Western Hemisphere as its exclusive sphere of influence, has reemerged into relevance alongside tariffs and regional deals.

Carlos Puig, a popular columnist in Mexico City, said Latin America was more worried about Trump’s return than any other part of the world.

“This is Trump, with majorities in both chambers, after four years of complaining, a man who only cares about himself and wins at all costs,” Puig said. “It’s not easy for a man like this not to show that he’s trying to keep his promises, no matter how crazy they are. I’m not sure it’s all just bullying and almost comical provocations.

But how much can Mr. Trump actually achieve or harm?

His news conference in Florida mixed vague threats (“Maybe you should do something”) with heartfelt promises (“I’m talking about protecting the free world”).

That was more than enough to wake up other countries, attracting attention and resistance even before he took office.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot warned on Wednesday of the threat to France’s “sovereign borders.” European Union – In reference to the Danish territory of Greenland. He added: “We have entered an era that is witnessing the return of the law of the strongest.”

What may be hard to see from Mar-a-Lago but much discussed in foreign capitals: Many countries are simply fed up with an America that Mr. Trump wants to make great again.

While the United States is still a dominant power, its influence is less than it was in the 1880s or 1890s, not only because of the rise of China, but because of what many countries see as America’s drift into dysfunction and debt, along with Huge rise in debt. Development by other countries.

The international order the United States helped establish after World War II prioritized trade in the hope of deterring invasion—and it worked well enough to build paths to prosperity that made American unilateralism less effective.

As Sarang Chidur, director of the Global South Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington, put it, many developing countries are “smarter, more assertive and more capable even as the United States has become less stable and predictable.”

In other words, the world today is unstable. The post-war balance is being shaken by the wars in Europe and the Middle East. the authoritarian partnership between China, Russia, and North Korea; On the part of a weak Iran that seeks to obtain nuclear weapons; Climate change and artificial intelligence.

The end of the nineteenth century was also turbulent. The mistake Mr. Trump may be making now, according to historians, is to believe that the world can be pacified and simplified by additional American real estate.

The protectionist and imperialist era that Mr. Trump seems to romanticize has exploded as Germany and Italy tried to gain a greater share of the world. The result was two world wars.

“We saw how that happened with 20th-century weapons,” said Immerwahr, author of How to Hide an Empire: A Short History of the Greater United States. “It is likely to be much more serious in the 21st century.”