This instalment of the anti-empire newsletter pulls together a few different threads from past newsletters and other pieces for Red Flag. It was written for the print edition, as none of it has been published there before. But as it all seems to be settling into a general train of thought about the current situation—though far from being fully worked out—I figured to send it out here as well.
As Washington amassed the largest US military force in the Middle East since 2003, Marco Rubio spoke plainly at the Munich Security Conference last month. The Trump administration, he said, wants to revive “the West’s age of dominance”. Lamenting the “terminal decline” of the “great Western empires” after the Second World War, the US secretary of state condemned the often communist-inspired postwar decolonisation movements and implored his European counterparts:
Against that backdrop, then, as now, many came to believe that the West’s age of dominance had come to an end and that our future was destined to be a faint and feeble echo of our past. But together, our predecessors recognised that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make. This is what we did together once before, and this is what President Trump and the United States want to do again now, together with you.
His speech reportedly received a standing ovation.
“Rubio accurately reflected where Trump’s foreign policy stands today”, Stephen Wertheim, a historian at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told New York Times diplomatic correspondent Edward Wong. “[The president] is working to reinvigorate US military dominance across the board. It’s America First globalism. Far from exiting alliances, Trump is weaponising them as platforms for coercion.”
Indeed, US imperialism’s multi-pronged approach is now in full view.
Shoring up the Americas
Not since before the end of the Cold War has the US so forcefully and directly intervened in the Western Hemisphere as it has under the Trump administration. Amassing an armada to blockade Venezuela before bombing the country and kidnapping its president. Threatening the president of Colombia with a similar fate. Suggesting action against Mexico—and indeed any government that doesn’t toe Washington’s line. Creating a humanitarian crisis in Cuba through a criminal embargo and trade sanctions, with the aim of toppling the government.
The US government couldn’t be clearer about its intentions, which White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller outlined in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper in January:
We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world—the real world, Jake—that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time ... The United States is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere. We’re a superpower, and under President Trump, we’re going to conduct ourselves as a superpower.
The audacity is shocking, but this didn’t come out of nowhere. The first Trump administration made no secret of its desire to shore up what it, and almost every US government of the last 200 years, considers to be its property and primary “sphere of influence”. So in 2019, national security adviser John Bolton, while announcing sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, declared: “Today, we proudly proclaim for all to hear: the Monroe Doctrine is alive and well”.
That policy, outlined in 1823 and later named after its originator, James Monroe, the country’s fifth president, was a warning to the European powers that the US would not tolerate them interfering in the region. It was a bold assertion by a pre-industrial state that had only recently gained independence: we claim an exclusive right to oversee the Western Hemisphere.
Eighty years later, the so-called Roosevelt Corollary, named after Theodore Roosevelt, expanded the Monroe Doctrine. The president addressed the Congress in 1904, declaring that the United States would not only oppose European influence but also directly intervene in the affairs of regional states:
Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.
This was a precedent-setting doctrine for more than a century of overt and covert interventions into the Caribbean and Central and South America. Now, the White House has asserted the “Trump Corollary”, outlined in the latest National Security Strategy, issued in November. The document lists the “restoration of American power and priorities” as one of five “core, vital national interests”:
[T]he United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region. We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets.
The “Trump Corollary” is therefore a refinement of US imperialism’s approach. China has become South America’s main trading partner in recent years. And Beijing has invested billions of dollars in nearly two dozen seaports and the broader continental logistics network, firmly integrating several supply chains into its economic network. Plus, there are increasing financial and military links. So US strategists are initiating what they consider a rearguard action to shore up their region as an exclusive US domain.
Last year, Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino alleged that the US embassy threatened to revoke visas of Panamanian officials because of China’s close ties to the country. And after the US bailed out Argentina, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters that President Javier Milei was “committed to getting China out” of the country. So the “Corollary” is a full-throated strategy not only of political interference, but of economic imperialism:
We must re-secure our own independent and reliable access to the goods we need to defend ourselves and preserve our way of life. This will require expanding American access to critical minerals and materials ... [And] establishing or expanding access in strategically important locations ... All our embassies must be aware of major business opportunities in their country, especially major government contracts. Every U.S. Government official that interacts with these countries should understand that part of their job is to help American companies compete and succeed.
All countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have been put on notice that a new era of US imperialist meddling has begun. It’s here that Greenland comes into focus, both as a resource-rich territory—with significant deposits of rare earth elements, other minerals and metals, and offshore oil and gas—and as an island of military value.
In the interview with CNN’s Tapper, Miller, the White House aide, reiterated that the Trump administration’s position, dating back to the president’s first term, is that Greenland should become part of the US. Because the US is the only NATO signatory capable of projecting power in the Arctic, Miller concluded, “obviously, Greenland should be part of the United States”.
Doubling down in Asia
The posturing and interventions in the Americas aren’t about “retreating” from the rest of the world. Despite Trump’s departures from convention, the core goal of this administration is consistent with that of previous US governments: retaining US geopolitical pre-eminence. Indeed, ever since the first formal strategy document issued by the Republican administration of Ronald Reagan in 1987, US governments have used the language of mobilising or employing “all facets of national power” to maintain US dominance of the world. This motif appeared in the grand strategy documents of presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Barack Obama’s 2010 national security strategy, Trump’s 2017 national security strategy and 2018 national defence strategy, and Joe Biden’s 2022 national security, national defence and national military strategies.
Key differences today are, first, that there is a belated recognition in Washington that a war against China in Asia is probably unwinnable; and, second, that the growth of Chinese industrial power and economic sophistication have been severely underestimated. Indeed, Trump’s and Biden’s attempts to use the tariff weapon have resulted only in Beijing increasing its industrial output and positive trade balance with the world, while precipitating a series of Chinese high-tech breakthroughs considered almost unthinkable just a decade ago. Despite this—indeed, because of it—both the US National Security Strategy and the unclassified version of the National Defense Strategy (NDS), which was quietly released at the end of January, make clear that US imperialism is not letting go of Asia:
The Indo-Pacific will soon make up more than half of the global economy. The American people’s security, freedom, and prosperity are therefore directly linked to our ability to trade and engage from a position of strength in the Indo-Pacific. Were China—or anyone else, for that matter—to dominate this broad and crucial region, it would be able to effectively veto Americans’ access to the world’s economic center of gravity, with enduring implications for our nation’s economic prospects, including our ability to reindustrialize. That is why the NSS directs DoW [Department of War] to maintain a favorable balance of military power in the Indo-Pacific ... our goal is to ensure that neither China nor anyone else can dominate us or our allies.
To this end, US military engineers are deploying across the western Pacific, revitalising World War Two-era airfields to prepare for bombing raids, expanding naval and marine bases and pre-positioning supplies. For example, there’s a new US$9 billion marine base in Guam, the reopening of what was once one of the largest airbases in the world on nearby Tinian island, along with other upgrades or new bases in Palau, Micronesia, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea. As well, at least 85,000 US active-duty troops are stationed in East and South-East Asia and the western Pacific.
Then there’s Australia. The integration of this continent into US strategic planning for a major confrontation with China continues. The federal government is spending up to $17 billion on bases in northern Australia in 2024-34, an area that is now reportedly “the top overseas location for US Air Force and Navy construction spending”. The first British nuclear-powered attack submarine, HMS Anson, has arrived in Western Australia for a month-long visit, and will be followed by more regular rotations of US and British nuclear submarines from next year. Air bases in the north have been repurposed to accommodate the largest US nuclear bombers. The marines have their own dedicated and upgraded facilities in Darwin. And the pre-positioning of US munitions, vehicles and fuel has begun in Victoria, Queensland and the Northern Territory.
Global power through regional domination
According to the most recent figures from the Pentagon’s staffing data, the US military has more than 170,000 active-duty personnel (about 13 percent of the country’s 1.3 million active troops) stationed in some 170 countries. That is up by 3,000 from a year earlier—so there has thus far been no real change of the force posture under this president. Once reservists and civilian staff are included, the figure rises to more than 230,000 US military personnel stationed overseas (out of 2.8 million total).
The NDS will be followed by the Pentagon’s Global Posture Review, which will outline where and to what extent the US military will maintain these forward-positioned assets and troops in the coming years. There may well be some troop drawdowns in Europe and the Middle East. The US military’s overall international footprint might be marginally reduced. But the US is an empire regardless of who occupies the White House. And no other country has the capacity to deploy so much destructive military force to several areas of the globe. Nothing highlights this more than the latest build-up targeting Iran, which comes on the heels of the action against Venezuela, which involved the largest US military build-up in the Caribbean since 1994. And, as noted, all of this is occurring as the US is expanding its capacities in Asia—now arguably the most important section of the world economy.
There are limits, of course. Those are illustrated both in Rubio’s speech to the Munich Security Conference and in the Trump regime’s hectoring of all Western allies to increase their military spending to 5 percent of GDP: despite its enormous power, the US can’t go it alone against an adversary as industrially and militarily powerful as China. Continued US global domination depends on several things.
First, its own unchallenged and unhindered Western Hemispheric domination. Hence, the aggressive moves against Venezuela and Cuba, and the threats against other governments, including Canada and Denmark (which holds Greenland). Second, the broader Western alliance dominating its respective regions with less direct US support. So the European NATO signatories on that continent (even while Trump still pines for Russia to become some form of ally). In the Middle East, the US dream is for an Israel-Saudi alliance built on the foundations of a decimated Iran and neutered Palestinian national movement.
Third is containing China, which requires US resources freed up by the first two things to be deployed in the ongoing fortification of military positions in the western Pacific, plus renewed and deepened alliances with states in Asia prepared to join a military build-up against Beijing—Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia and India being key. Fourth is rebuilding the industrial capacities of Western imperialism, along with an aggressive imperial culture unconstrained by international rules. Rubio spent some time dwelling on both areas:
We do not want our allies to be weak, because that makes us weaker. We want allies who can defend themselves so that no adversary will ever be tempted to test our collective strength ... [We don’t want an alliance] that exists to operate a global welfare state and atone for the purported sins of past generations. [We want] an alliance that does not allow its power to be outsourced, constrained, or subordinated to systems beyond its control; one that does not depend on others for the critical necessities of its national life; and one that does not maintain the polite pretence that our way of life is just one among many and that asks for permission before it acts.
The sum of these goals is Rubio’s exhortation to “build a new Western century”. None of it happens neatly, easily or without tremendous violence or threats of it, as the situations in Ukraine, Gaza, Venezuela and Iran have shown. Rubio’s harking back to the last age of empires, combined with Trump’s clear willingness to unleash hell for political and economic ends, portends a much more brutal world.
We have become accustomed to referring to postwar periods: the post-Second World War era, the post-Vietnam era, the post-Cold War era. But we surely have entered a new and dangerous era of intense superpower jockeying, in which political, economic and social life is increasingly geared toward preparing for war.
