The New Colonialism
“America First” isn't supposed to mean taking others’ land
Campaigning for the presidency in November, Donald Trump promised Dearborn, Michigan’s Arab-American majority if he were elected, “You're going to have peace in the Middle East -- but not with the clowns that you have running the US right now.“
Voters heard him. Some were tired of waiting for the Biden administration to get tough on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who followed Hamas’ Oct. 2023 attack with 16 months of bombardment of Palestinian territory that claimed over 46,000 Palestinian lives. Arab-Americans helped Trump win 42% of Dearborn’s vote, 6% more than Kamala Harris got. He took all 15 of Michigan’s 15 electoral college votes.
Little might those voters have known that the previous month, Trump reportedly told Netanyahu to “do what you have to do” in Gaza. Or that he would now be calling for all 2.2 million Palestinian residents from Gaza to be dispatched to some “piece of land, or numerous pieces of land,” paving the path for a U.S. takeover of their homeland.
“I think that Gaza has been very unlucky for them. They’ve lived like hell,” Trump declared without naming responsible party. But in the next breath the U.S. President was exalting Gazan real estate as the “Riviera” of the Middle East, “something that could be so magnificent,” and “a phenomenal location, on the sea, the best weather,” declaring, “We’ll take it over and develop it.”
Asked if U.S. military forces would be deployed to accomplish a takeover, Trump replied, “We’ll do what’s necessary.”
He didn’t think to ask those whose land it is.
Meanwhile in Gaza, the suffereing intensifies. “The world watches the massacres unfold without doing anything,” 39-year-old Ayman al-Jamali,who lives in a tent where his demolished Gaza home sat told Al Jazeera. “I’ve never travelled in my life and I don’t intend to leave the country unless they kill us.”
Just like he’s setting his sights on Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal, or renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
This is Trump’s new colonialism. For the President who recently championed American isolationism, and repurposed the Department of Homeland Security to chase immigrants for breaching U.S. borders, breaching others’ boundaries is fair game now.
Which brings us to Ukraine. Since Russia’s unprovoked 2022 invasion, destroying cities and resulting in hundreds of thousands of military and tens of thousands of civilian casualties, the U.S. has been a firm ally against Ukraine’s aggressor. President Biden called Russia’s attacks premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified, and has supplied $65.9 billion in military aid for Ukraine’s defense.
“This is a war of choice by Putin,” said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. “We want to see Russia weakened so that it can never invade another country again.”
As Biden was departing the White House, the State Department issued a statement calling the defense of Ukraine “an urgent security assistance priority,” and saying, The United States reaffirms its unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders, extending to its territorial waters.”
But approaching Tuesday’s talks with Russia in Saudi Arabi, Trump’s on-the-move reply to how Russia might respond was a glib, “Maybe Russia will give up a lot. Maybe they won’t.” And after the meeting between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian officials, The New York Times declared it “the latest striking swerve by the Trump administration in abandoning Western efforts to isolate Russia.”
For starters, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wasn’t even invited to be in on the discussion about his country’s fate. Second, Trump has unilaterally ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine, which is, as Zelensky has insisted, the only way to guarantee Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence. NATO responds to an attack on any member country as an attack on all.
Russia doesn’t just staunchly oppose Ukraine becoming a member, but wants to rule out any future membership option — hinting heavily of further imperialist objectives over Ukraine. And Trump, consistent with his suggestion about making Gaza a U.S. resort, wants tforeshadowing where it wants this to go. Trump’s Defense Minister Pete Hegseth has called it unrealistic for Ukraine to recover the territory – about 20% — that Russia has grabbed from it since 2014.
In fact, Russia offered no concessions. And Trump wants to appropriate $500 billion in minerals from Ukrainian soil to compensate the U.S. for aid already provided. His Treasury secretary visited Ukraine and told Zelenskyy that the U.S. will provide more security for Ukraine’s people if it has more investment in Ukraine. Literally.
Is that the meaning of “blood money”?
“February 2025 shows us that the Americans no longer feel responsible for European security – and that their interests are fundamentally different from ours,” Reuters quoted a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations saying.
We can go farther and surmise Trump’s interests are aligned with Putin’s. And if that doesn’t scare Americans of every political stripe, they need to wake up.
Under Putin’s leadership some 8 million Ukrainians have been displaced and over 8.2 million had fled the country by April 2023. Tens of thousands of civilians, including some 20,000 children, have been takem hostage, and transferred to Russia, prompting a war crimes indictment against Putin by the International Criminal Court.
This has echoes of Trump sending undocumented immigrants from the U.S. to its detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And it brings us to one of the most paradoxical aspects of this President’s domestic supporters. A majority of polled Republicans (52 %) believe Russia under Putin is a communist country. (The Soviet Union – and communism there — were dissolved in 1991.) In his first presidential term, Trump openly gushed about Putin, calling him a strong and smart leader with whom he “got along great." That means a big swath of those who voted for Trump did so despite his alliance with a foreign leader they believed to be Communist. What sense does that make, given the GOP’s intense hatred of communism?
Then again, in last year’s Russian elections Putin—backed by state election officials — claimed to have won his fifth term with 87% of the vote, in what Politico magazine reported was mathematically impossible. Not to mention that “All prominent opposition figures had been either murdered, imprisoned, or exiled.” But Putin also supported Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Would a majority of U.S. Republicans also be OK with Trump essentially delivering independent Ukraine to a Russian communist or dictatorial, repressive and imperialist leader?
Some U.S-based agencies that have used government funds or grants to support formerly colonized people develop democratic self sufficiency have now been warned not to use the word colonialism. Meanwhile, the U.S. President openly makes claims on other countries’ domain or natural resources for America’s benefit.
“Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia. Never,” Biden said on a visit to Kyiv while in office.
But Trump’s America will capitalize on imperialist powers’ devastation of other people’s homelands, and strengthen his own alliance with dictators. So much for national sovereignty. This is the new “America First,” and Americans shouldn’t stand for it.
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I shake my head in disbelief and disgust at the cowardice within our elected Republican representatives and senators both on the national and state levels. Not only serving as a Committee chairman or on the Senate Committee, but voting in favor of unqualified candidates to serve as national secretaries or directors who have no business serving as such.
This jeopardizes NATO, our Baltic, Scandinavian, Eastern and Western European Allies; our Middle Eastern partners, the two State Solution between Palestine and Israel; our Central and South American partners having to take in ICE impounded undocumented immigrants in feet shackles. Our retracted USAID soft power strategy simply smashed by DOGE teenager hackers. Medicine, food, commodities held up and rotting on US docks intended for sick, starving people within struggling countries in Africa; A much needed conciliatory tone to be struck with Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia after the Vietnam War also adversely affected by the USAID retraction. Malaysia, the Korean Peninsula, Japan, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand. Adam Kinzinger gave another excellent Substack on this very topic.
Can one even imagine how Presidents George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jack Kennedy and U.S. Attorney General John Kennedy would react to these dangerously obtuse actions. We already know how President George W. Bush feels.
Our government is being run by con artists, criminals, sexual predators, conspiracy theorists, McCarthy-like targeted vendetta seekers, and spies, billionaires, and millionaire senators living the lavish lifestyle of an elite executive.
Neither Ukraine nor Gaza deserves such callous treatment and yet here we are. Tens of thousands of innocent civilians dead. Ukraine fighting for its own sovereignty and Gaza conflict resulting in completely destroyed infrastructure in the hands of Israel all while Hamas was responsible for launching a murderous attack upon Israel while Israel hostages are still being held.
Democracy is dying whether it’s in darkness or visible light and I am ashamed of our nation’s current self inflicted vote towards cowardice and ‘alternative truths’, made up anti vaccine hysteria, and alternate realities. We need to demand earnest leadership that is supported amongst our NATO allies. Are these ideals simply dashed because our elected leaders are afraid of being brave and doing the right thing?