Heads are shaking, diplomats are desperate, and theorists of international relations are deeply confused. What will US President Donald Trump do next? One day, he contemplates trading away Ukrainian territory to Russia in a deal that entails speaking, in affable terms, to Russian President Vladimir Putin while belittling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The next day, he dreams about US colonisation of the Gaza Strip and its effective ethnic cleansing of tormented Palestinians, creating, in the process, the ‘Riviera of the Middle East’. Tariffs on goods are promised on adversaries and friendly states alike, only to be withdrawn at a moment’s notice.
The answer, in short, is that no one quite knows where the next turn, jolt or manoeuvre will come from. But if one were to identify a geopolitical brand in Trumpland, it can only be understood as a projection of domestic politics, personal engagement, ringed by an emphasis on go-it-alone initiative. Trump remains consistent with the pattern of US history that prefers, at points, muscular, if brutish unilateralism over collaborative, collective engagement. Force, if it is to be used, will be sparingly deployed. When used, it is bound to be impressively violent.
In terms of previous administrations, that of the marauding Andrew ‘Old Hickory’ Jackson (in office March 1829 to March 1837) comes to mind, if only as a distant echo. As historian Walter Russell Mead described it in his work Special Providence (2002), the ‘Jacksonian believes that the most important goal of the US government in both foreign and domestic policy should be the physical security and the economic well-being of the American people’.
While Mead wrote his defining work during the George W. Bush administration, which did see force used, catastrophically, in Iraq, Trump has opted for a distinctly anti-war message. For all the hysterical commentary on Trump’s supposed militarism, the drive towards war is coming, most conspicuously, from European countries seemingly reenacting the prelude to the First World War while fearing abandonment from their US ally. His victory at the ballot box was premised, to a large extent, by avoiding wars, and ending them altogether.
The shift towards ‘Making America Great Again’ (MAGA) foreign policy seems, on the surface, reminiscent of isolationism. It is nothing of the sort. While there is a rich, and consistent tradition of American suspicion of foreign engagements, the US imperium remains embedded in a global system of military bases, agreements and alliances. Trump’s response is to personalise this dimension of foreign policy, removing any notion of internationalism and replacing it with a rather tangy parochialism. He is practising, without perhaps realising it, a policy that eschews friends and advances, as the British statesman Lord Palmerston warned states always do, self-interest. ‘We have no eternal allies,’ he famously observed regarding Britain’s foreign policy, ‘and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual.’
Trump’s policies are not always the anarchical brew they are made out to be. They arise from a trove of precedents that can be called upon to instruct current political instincts. The real estate interest in acquiring Greenland, much to the consternation of Danish politicians, for instance, is a longstanding one, a throwback to the time the United States was a more conventional imperial power seeking to expand its possessions via purchase or invasion.
In 1868, a report for the US State Department compiled by Benjamin Mills Peirce cast a keen eye on the rich natural resources of Iceland and Greenland, acknowledging the treaty with Denmark which was intended to cede control of the Caribbean islands of St. Thomas and St. John to the US. Peirce’s report placed special emphasis on acquiring Greenland, given commercial opportunities that would arise from exploiting ‘whale, walrus, seal, and shark, cod, ivory-cod, salmon, salmon-trout, and herring’ and gaining a territory flanking ‘British America on the Arctic and Pacific’. By acquiring Greenland, the US could limit British influence.
'Trump remains consistent with the pattern of US history that prefers, at points, muscular, if brutish unilateralism over collaborative, collective engagement.'
After the conclusion of the Second World War, the idea again surfaced. Greenland had, indeed, proved vital in US operations. With the onset of the Cold War and the insistence by the Truman administration that the ambitions of the Soviet Union, real or otherwise, should be contained, Copenhagen received another proposal. The Danes, it could be said, should not be surprised.
The dispute with Canada, one typified by Trump’s blustering insistence to make it a 51st state of the US, is hardly odd, when one considers that the United States tried twice to invade it. The first attempt was made by the Continental Army led by Benedict Arnold in 1775 under orders from the less than competent General George Washington. With bravado and zesty hubris, Arnold sought to cultivate the French-speakers in Quebec and win victory over the British forces, hoping ‘to carry the plan into execution and, with the smiles of Heaven, to answer for the success of it.’ The answer was a scowl from Heaven, and ignominious defeat, with the troops of the Continental Army weakened and depleted by their enervating march.
Another effort was made in 1812 by the administration of President James Madison, on the assumption that the British would be too distracted by the prolonged and costly Napoleonic Wars convulsing Europe. Despite launching invasions of Upper and Lower Canada, failure greeted the forces of the fledgling US republic.
The fantasy of invading Canada never quite left the imagination of planners in Washington. In 1930, War Plan Red was approved, envisaging yet another invasion of the northern neighbour. Large war games, involving anywhere up to 36,000 troops, were pursued in readiness for the effort. Central to the plan was the capture of the port in Halifax in Nova Scotia, an important base for British ships. It was a salient lesson that friendships in foreign relations are passing fancies, if not altogether illusory.
The common element to geopolitics in Trumpland is that the international is never as relevant as the domestic. The MAGA base is the audience that never leaves the Oval Office, or Trump’s side. They are the spectral reminders of how potent US domestic politics is in shaping the foreign policy of the imperium. The issue of alliances, marked by that torturous term ‘security architecture’, are less relevant than the personal impression. This is the geopolitics of the deal and steal.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University.
Main image: Chris Johnston illustration.