Next year, the United States turns 250 years old. Over 90% of those 250 years have been spent locked in some form of conflict.
Its history is as bloody as a Californian sunset. Native Americans were slaughtered en masse to make way for Europeans seeking new fortunes on the great frontier. The fact that those fortunes were not theirs to take is, in their own eyes, irrelevant.
Eventually, even the massive land borders of the nascent United States were not enough to satiate the thirst for conquest. They were, after all, Europeans in all but allegiance. Plunder built the West, and it has had no reason to stop since then.
And on they went, turning to neighbours and far away foes alike to strike deals, crush anti-capitalist revolt, and extract value. The great frontier hadn’t disappeared – it was merely widened to include the rest of the world.
By the turn of the 21st century, we were on the verge of a showdown for the ages. The world’s two superpowers – the US and the Soviet Union – locked in a perpetual arms race that could only lead to mutually assured destruction.
Then, the Soviet Union collapsed, leading the West to believe that the corporate, liberal powers of the democratic world had triumphed over the USSR’s brutal authoritarian communism. All is well, go purchase some commodities.
It seemed like the US’ expansionism would not find any border or barrier that could withstand it. The US’ allies thought they were secure in the knowledge that their juggernaut ally is policing the world on their behalf. Its enemies could expect anything from assassinations to economic sanctions.
While I hope you’ll forgive me for this impromptu history lesson, facts about the past must be laid out for them to spell out the bigger picture in the present.
In this case, we must understand that the US cannot exist without conflict. It was built by war. It thrives on it. Every aspect of an American citizen’s daily life revolves around besting your competitors by any means necessary. In Donald Trump’s own words: “what counts is winning.”
Those dystopian scenes we saw in the White House last week did send shockwaves across the world. The cascade of repercussions is colossal. The horrified disbelief that many felt as Trump and vice-president JD Vance tore into Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was merited.
However, the reality is that those who have been watching closely know that this is merely the next logical step in the evolution of America’s war on the world.
In spite of its self-declared supremacy, the US never quite achieved the status of undisputed superpower. Russia reforged itself from the ashes of the Soviet Union into an organised oligarchy. China caught up at breakneck speed, wedging its foot firmly in the door as the US desperately tries to shut it out.
In this sense, Trump’s thuggish politics are an extension of America’s greatest obsession: enforcing the notion that you are doing better than everyone else, and that therefore, your life is the object of the rest of the world’s envy. “Make America Great Again.”
In truth, the only greatness Americans ever aspired to was the fanciful idea that, through the sheer mass of their own prosperity, others would benefit by proximity. Work for us, and we will take care of you, because we are just that great.
Trump’s diehard MAGA crowd believes that by wielding American braggadocio like it’s the roaring 20s all over again, American dominance across the world will be restored and that, by extension, its own people will be the first to prosper.
This is the blanket excuse that’s being used to gut the federal government, erase decades of incremental progress on civil rights, eliminate critical aid for humanitarian causes across the globe, and impose trade sanctions on countries that conduct business with the US.
This is how Trump and his adoring supporters justify humiliating a wartime leader whose survival depends on their support – it is simply not in their interest to support Ukraine. ‘Doing the right thing’ is an irrelevant talking point best left to bleeding-heart liberals.
Providing military aid and selling weapons are entirely different transactions, and Trump is only interested in the latter.
Just yesterday, Trump froze US military aid to Ukraine, the negotiating equivalent of holding the other party by the heels while dangling them off a building.
EP President Roberta Metsola’s hopeful overture to an EU – US transatlantic partnership that will last is either a catastrophic misreading of the situation at hand or just another pathetic olive branch offered to an individual who will sell off your orchard if it means turning him a profit.
Malta’s government is just about as transactional as the White House itself. Our offer to host a peace summit is like a goblet overflowing with hemlock: drinking it will certainly bring some reprieve, though for Ukraine, it’ll be of the suicidal sort.
The idea that Zelenskyy could have ever justified standing down when the Russian army went over its borders three years ago only makes sense if you apply that transactional frame of mind. You cannot hand a government to a merchant on a silver platter and expect him not to carve it up and sell it off for parts.
The only people who ever believed that the US would continue providing support to anyone without boorishly asking ‘what’s in it for us?’ were our own soft politicians in Europe who sincerely believed the US would not dare do such a thing.
The idea that before Trump, an international, rules-based order was holding our planet together was hopeful at best.
While it did prevent the worst of calamities from unfolding while simultaneously providing us with some of the best shining examples of why collaboration is essential for human survival, it also papered over a lot of the cracks which America’s brand of capitalism thrives on.
Funding, grants, and charitable donations masked the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. Diversity, equality, and inclusion programmes were a band-aid for decades of institutional neglect.
All this time, this hopeful collage of agreements and cooperation frameworks gave us a glimpse of what world we could build if we agreed not to repeatedly blow each other up in the name of profit.
Now, even these tokens of equitable wealth distribution are off the table.
The logic that underpins our own survival has been undone by the desire to be the king of the hill, even if the hill is made up entirely of corpses.