This space began almost ten years ago with the idea of trying to see how the election of Donald Trump in 2016 would impact US foreign policy, with a particular interest in how Trump would alter and and shape the idea of “American Empire.” In this instance, “American Empire” referred to the still potent US led world order cemented together through a network of international institutions, widely adopted norms and standards of conduct for states and dominant cultural narratives disseminated through mass media. Actors and agents who behaved in a way that defied this interlocking assemblage of power risked being coercively disciplined by the military capabilities of the United States which may or may not have the seal of approval from organizations like the United Nations but were sufficiently powerful that few states or other global actors could resist them.

     Trump arrived in office in 2016 skeptical, but not necessarily hostile to this apparatus of power. Whatever reservations he had about the virtues of the US -led world order, his key foreign policy and military advisors of his first-term were firmly on board with them and the US continuing to occupy the central leading position among them. Trump’s first significant deployments of military force in his first term included deployments of special forces in places like Niger in Africa as part of the the continuing “global war on terror” and missile strikes on Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for his continued attacks on civilians in the civil war that was raging at the time. In the latter incident, the CNN commentator Fareed Zakaria, a man who uses his prominent platform on cable news to breathlessly spout the endless advantages and positive qualities of the US-led liberal world order, famously said that “Donald Trump truly became president tonight” upon news of the missile attacks. From Zakaria’s perspective, using military force to punish and coerce authoritarian actors violating human rights norms was a core responsibility of an US president and on that night, Trump seemed to finally understand this.

     In Trump’s second term, however, the situation is vastly different. Trump has used military several times since assuming office in January of 2025, including airstrikes on Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia, Iraq and Syria. He ordered an invasion of Venezuela to seize and arrest the country’s president Nicholas Maduro and, in coordination with Israel, began an open-ended war against Iran. Most curiously, Trump’s use of military force has also included strikes against random boats moving through the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific. Trump claims these boats are carrying drugs but has offered no proof that this is the case. On top of all of this was Trump’s rhetoric regarding annexing Canada and making it the “51st” state and the persist insistence that the Danish protectorate of Greenland be ceded to US sovereignty in order to properly protect it from Russian and Chinese aggression and that its natural mineral wealth can be more effectively harvested.

     Some of these actions do not appear to be all that different from previous administrations. Airstrikes on nations–especially those in the Middle East–have long been a staple of US foreign policy. Other actions, however, indicate something new and different might be afoot. Indeed, when one considers some of the other elements of Trump’s foreign policy, including widespread tariffs on most of the world’s nations, a hostile attitude toward traditional allies and alliances like NATO, and a seemingly deferential disposition toward authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, it seems that whatever the Trump version of US empire is, it is a new and different nature than what came before it.

Future posts will focus on arguments that what we see in Trump’s foreign policy is a new iteration of US empire for a new era of global politics. Whereas previous expressions of US empire have been in service to maintaining a global liberal world order built around a particular set of ideas, norms, institutions and forms of state power, the actions of the “Trumpire” reflect a Caesarist interregnum in world order where no one particular assemblage of power can claim hegemonic preponderance and thus demand or induce the rest of the world to conform to its various elements. Trump’s own actions with regard to the imposition of universal tariffs and demands for territorial and resource concessions from past friends and current foes helped to drive in the final nails in the old liberal world order, but his actions also reflect new dynamics in how powerful states will assert themselves in the absence of global rules and norms that required some kind of minimal adherence. Chief among these is the creation of a digital information space less susceptible to control by a small number of gatekeepers but is more accessible to a wider array of both state and non-state actors who can use this digital space to warp and distort perceptions of reality. In this unique environment, Trump foreign policy actions are less about attempts to gain distinct measurable gains in US economic and military power, and more about delivering the appearance of US strength, power and might while simultaneously making Trump appear to be at the hub of global decision-making–a veritable Caesar before whom the world’s leaders arrive and prostrate themselves before agreeing to the terms to some kind of lopsided deal that Trump imposes.

     Guy Debord used the term “spectacle” to describe a world where appearances became the main means by which humans related to each other, thus causing a major shift in how people understood politics and society. This paradigm was connected with the evolution of capitalist production into an advanced stage of development. According to Debord: “The first stage of the economy’s domination of social life brought about an evident degradation of being into having–human fulfilment was no longer equated with what one was, but with what one possessed. The present stage, in which social life has become completely occupied by the accumulated productions of the economy, is bringing about a general shift from having to appearing–all “having” must now derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances.” (Debord, 5, 2014) In this hyperreal world, it is not enough for a state to be powerful or possess the various implements of power (military capability, advanced industrial productive capacities, stable unified societies, etc.), but the state must also demonstrate and exhibit that power on a consistent and heavily curated basis in order for it to be able to maintain its claim as a great power or empire. Moreover, even if a state is not a great power or empire, it can still be considered as a major world power so long as it can maintain the appearance of a strong state acting with confidence and swagger in its relations with other states. It is through this lens that the unique form of US imperialism under Trump is best understood. Future posts will attempt to elaborate on this thesis.