The threat of transforming Canada into the 51st state of the United States, the ambitions displayed on Greenland, the kidnapping of President Maduro in Venezuela or even the war against Iran: since the return of Donald Trump to the White House, American foreign policy seems to be returning to an imperial logic in defiance of international law.
This desire for domination is nothing new. Territorial expansion, subjugation of populations, unbridled exploitation of natural resources: these logics run through the entire history of the United States. They have been at work since their birth where the first features of an imperial project are taking shape.
The national territory was constructed through the dispossession, expulsion and massacre of indigenous peoples. This internal imperialism, naturalized under the name of “manifest destiny”, has often been obscured by external conquests.
Repeated interference
As early as 1823, the Monroe Doctrine affirmed the exclusive right of the United States to shape the destiny of the American continent. At the same time, the slave economy is based on the exploitation of millions of Africans reduced to servitude, prolonging the relationships of domination imposed on the African continent.
A few decades later, the entire non-industrialized world was forced to open up to American trade, as evidenced by Rear Admiral Perry’s show of force in Japan in 1854.
At the end of the 19th century, the completion of the conquest of the West and the disappearance of the “Frontier” opened a new phase. “The taste for empire reigns over each of us as the taste for blood reigns over the jungle,” writes the Washington Post.
In 1898, the Treaty of Paris placed the Philippines and Puerto Rico under American domination. Cuba becomes a protectorate. The United States annexes Hawaii and Samoa and consolidates its influence in Central America within the framework of Pan-Americanism.
Trivialization of extreme violence
The Philippine War (1899-1902) marked a turning point. It reinforces awareness of imperial power and trivializes practices of extreme violence, such as the massacre of 100,000 to 200,000 civilians by the troops of Governor Arthur MacArthur Jr. or torture by simulated drowning (waterboarding), reused massively after September 11, 2001. Vice-president of the American Anti-Imperialist League, the novelist Mark Twain is moved by this: “We have flouted the honor of the United States and blackened its reputation in the face of the world. »
However, it was the two world wars that marked the apogee of the American Empire. They imposed the domination of the dollar, spread the cultural power of the United States, multiplied military bases across the globe and allowed the creation of one of the most powerful systems of alliances in history with the creation of NATO in 1949. Born from the Second World War, Pax Americana constitutes the contemporary form of the American Empire.
That’s when Donald Trump intervenes. His rise to power radicalizes the most aggressive tendencies of imperialism while undermining the system of international law and the respect, at least theoretical, for human rights that the global domination of the United States purported to embody.
Growing fragility
Washington’s allies see their confidence shaken by the incessant reversals of the White House, where long-term commitments give way to precarious, constantly renegotiable agreements.
The principles once invoked to justify military interventions – such as the defense of democracy – are giving way to an assumed claim to the balance of power. We are a long way from the Obama years, when the massive use of drones – ten times more than under George W. Bush – was still shrouded in the moral discourse of the war against terrorism.
However, behind this demonstration of omnipotence lies a growing fragility. The imperial order built by the United States is faltering. Freedom of navigation offers a striking illustration of this. For a long time, it constituted a pillar of American foreign policy. The war against Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz overturned two hundred and fifty years of maritime doctrine in two weeks.
The paradox is striking: the celebrations of the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence could coincide with one of the most serious setbacks in contemporary diplomacy. The American Empire will not disappear overnight, but the upheavals of its decline could well lead to more violence and instability, even beyond that observed in recent years.
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