By David Sole
In the weeks before Donald Trump takes office (again) as President of the United States he has managed to create a stir with bizarre statements around foreign policy issues. National and international media have extensively covered Trump’s call to take over Greenland from Denmark, make Canada the “51st state,” seize the Panama Canal and rename the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America.”
While these, and other pronouncements, can be dismissed as weird ramblings, they do betray a view of the world that, actually, is not far removed from the much more dangerous real world of U.S. imperialism. (Trump’s nationalistic threats also can serve to distract his supporters in the U.S. from the fact that he cannot deliver on his promises to lower prices.)
Just a quick look at U.S. foreign policy for the past decades, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, reveals a bloody trail of economic and/or military interventions around the world to maintain U.S. banking and corporate domination. Targets have included socialist countries and nationalist governments that don’t bow to Wall Street’s profit drive
Of course, Western colonialism and imperialism go back centuries. But let’s just look at more recent outrages of the United States that show Trump’s thoughts are not coming out of the blue.
The genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank is entirely financed and supported by the US government. The creation of the zionist settler state in 1948 was a project of the US and its allies to maintain control of the oil-rich nations across the Middle East. To date, the death toll of civilians in Gaza since October 2023 is well over 45,000!
The zionist settler state has also been unleashed against Lebanon and Syria, causing mass destruction of the former and a regime change in the latter, putting terrorist militias into power.
The war between Ukraine and Russia was over a decade in the planning by the U.S. government, starting with the CIA organized coup in Kiev in 2014 with an eye to get Ukraine into NATO. Hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. and EU weapons has flowed into this proxy war. If Trump actually slows or stops the aid to Ukraine it is only because Ukraine is losing and his ruling class faction wants to focus attacks more on socialist China.
Iran has been a special target for the U.S. imperialists ever since the Iranian people threw out the brutal Shah in 1979 and took control of their own oil resources. Economic sanctions (a form of warfare) have continued. With the collapse of the Assad government in Syria it is widely believed that Iran is in the crosshairs for military assault to reconquer that country for imperialism.
The oil rich nation of Libya also had a U.S./NATO military attack in 2011 that overthrew the government of the nationalist leader, Muammar al-Qaddafi, who later was murdered. No viable government was formed to take over the nation, but that doesn’t matter to the imperialists, who are intent on eliminating any sign of independence around the world.
Venezuela elected Hugo Chavez as president in 1999 that started a socialist process in that oil rich nation. He was the target of a U.S. backed coup that failed in 2002. U.S. economic and political warfare has continued for decades in an attempt to return Venezuela to Wall Street’s control.
Cuba, whose 1959 revolution became the first socialist experiment in the Americas, has been the target of military invasion, sabotage, political destabilization and a harsh economic blockade for 66 years.
The United States waged two separate wars against Iraq, another oil rich nation, one in 1990-1991 and the other in 2003-2011. Between those wars U.S. imposed economic sanctions took the lives of millions of civilians. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright publicly stated that the death of a million Iraqi children due to lack of medicine, food or clean drinking water “was worth it.”
The U.S. and NATO waged war against the nation of Yugoslavia in 1999. The imperialists ended up breaking up Yugoslavia into a number of smaller states, all of whom are dependent on the Western powers.
Mineral rich Africa has a long history of colonial and neo-colonial oppression. The U.S. government is constantly monitoring the 55 African nations to keep them under the domination of Wall Street and the Pentagon. For over 40 years the U.S. propped up the hated South African apartheid regime. Economic warfare (sanctions) and CIA subversion and coups have been a regular occurrence across the continent. More direct military subversion has been organized through the formation of the Pentagon’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) which became fully operational in 2008.
Ever since its socialist revolution in 1948 the People’s Republic of China has been a target for U.S. subversion, military encirclement and economic warfare. This continues today as the U.S. builds up the military forces of Taiwan, marshals naval forces off the coast of mainland China and escalates economic sanctions and tariffs on Chinese products.
Other military attacks on small countries of the Western Hemisphere also should be noted. In 1983 then President Reagan invaded the tiny island nation of Grenada whose government was taking a socialist turn. President George H. W. Bush carried out an invasion of Panama. Wikipedia described the invasion as “democratization by foreign-imposed regime change” which, however, was condemned by the U.N. General Assembly, the Organization of American States and the European Parliament.
We should not forget to mention two genocidal wars waged by the United States in the 20th century. Millions of people were slaughtered in the Korean War of 1950-1953 (with U.S. troops still occupying S. Korea 72 years later) and the U.S. war against Vietnam from 1954-1975.
These are only a few of the hundreds of imperialist interventions, covert and overt, that the United States has carried out around the world, all in the name of keeping U.S. banks’ and corporations’ domination everywhere. Millions of people have died from these actions of the capitalist system. The bodies have fallen under “conservative” Republicans and “liberal” Democrats alike.
Donald Trump will not, cannot and doesn’t want to change this order of things. He is one of the capitalists, albeit not very successful personally. He has alarmed some of the “establishment” with his crude unfiltered pronouncements and braggadocio. The U.S. ruling class of billionaires, their politicians and spokespersons usually like to sugar coat and disguise their predatory aims and actions with words like “fighting for democracy” or fighting “dictators” or “communists.” After all they need to get us, the poor and working people to willingly pay for, in blood and treasure, while they rake in untold profits.
However, Trump is also targeting the meager rights and protections won through decades of struggle here at home. This has the potential of unifying a mass movement in defense of union rights, civil rights, women’s and LGBTQIA+ rights; environmental protection, disability rights, Social Security and Medicare, climate change protections, and other laws and regulations that the capitalists feel burdened with.
Our mass movement cannot simply look at and encompass domestic issues. We must also understand and take up the cause of all the many peoples of the world who are fighting to free themselves from capitalist and militarist domination – led by the United States government.
The world struggles are part of a global class war. We must support all those opposed to our own government even if we don’t necessarily agree with every aspect of their government policies. They are still victims of U.S. imperialism. So-called progressive people who support Ukraine or cheered the fall of Syria’s Assad government cannot effectively organize the movement of resistance that is needed right now.
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