America First: MAGA wants to be a colonial power

MAGA is rapidly descending into 21st-century colonial fantasy, dressed up in the language of national security and draped in the flag of patriotism. “America First” is currently being reimagined as the public resurrection of a colonial project. Along with Saturday’s military assault in Venezuela to capture President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, which killed around 75 people according to an estimate by U.S. officials, Donald Trump has also bombed targets in Nigeria, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia in his first year back in office. Now his administration is openly encroaching upon Greenland, a NATO ally, which is finally raising bipartisan alarm bells on Capitol Hill. 

The resurrection of the Monroe Doctrine sits at the heart of Trump’s imperial project. He has openly embraced this 200-year-old policy, which essentially declared the Western Hemisphere to be the domain of the United States. “We sort of forgot about it,” the president said. “It was very important, but we forgot about it. We don’t forget about it anymore. Under our new national security strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.” He has since dubbed his version the Donroe Doctrine.

The administration has formalized this worldview through what they’re calling the Trump Corollary, which defines the hemisphere in broad terms, extending from the Aleutian Islands in the northern Pacific Ocean to Greenland in the north Atlantic, and from the North American Arctic to Antarctica — effectively claiming an unprecedented sphere of influence that encompasses millions of square miles and hundreds of millions of people.

Trump and his allies insist that “America First” is about peace and prosperity for Americans. According to a February 2025 YouGov poll, however, only four percent of Americans support U.S. expansion if it requires military force. Yet Trump is barreling forward with a philosophy of Manifest Destiny updated for the 21st century and drawing from the worship of past efforts, the glorification of extreme violence and a deeply white supremacist, patriarchal ideology. “America First” sees the world as hierarchically ordered, with “civilized” Christian nations entitled to rule and others destined to submit or disappear.

For decades, neocons maintained at least the pretense of respecting sovereignty, supporting democracy and human rights, building international coalitions and working through multilateral institutions. Following Trump’s lead, the MAGA coalition has stripped away that pretense entirely, revealing the raw will to dominate that has always lurked beneath the surface of American power. When the president talks about seizing land in Panama, or appropriating Greenland and all its vast mineral resources without considering the will of the indigenous population that lives there, he is offering an updated version of the European colonial project of the 19th century and Germany’s fascist colonial project of the 1930s and ’40s.

On Monday, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller argued on CNN that because Greenland lies in the Western Hemisphere, it falls under the U.S. sphere of influence as defined by the Monroe Doctrine and therefore should not remain a semiautonomous territory of Denmark. When host Jake Tapper later asked why Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was not acceptable to the Trump administration as a transitional leader, Miller erupted. He dismissed elections as a “neoliberal frame” and launched into a tirade about the Monroe Doctrine and the Trump Doctrine as guarantors of “the future of the free world.” When Tapper pointed out that the U.S. had invaded Venezuela and seized its leader, Miller shouted back, “Damn straight we did!” because, he claimed, the U.S. would not allow “tinpot communist dictators” to send rapists and drugs into the country.

Fox News’ Jesse Watters laid out the rationale to his viewers on Tuesday. “Trump says, ‘take the oil.’ Democrats call that imperialistic. We call it common sense. You know, we won spoils after World War II.” Far-right podcaster Nick Fuentes updated his infamous line to support the president’s position, posting on X, “Your oil, our choice.”

Daily Wire podcaster Matt Walsh posted to X: “I totally support turning other countries in our hemisphere into subordinate vassals of the United States. That’s the very definition of an America First foreign policy.”

On Capitol Hill, some Republican senators were starting to fall in line. When talking about Trump’s desire for Greenland, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz observed: “To become an American is the greatest gift we can give anyone on planet Earth.” 

South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham looked to Iran, issuing a warning to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Fox News Tuesday night: “Donald J. Trump is gonna kill you.”

The president’s imperialist strategy, as articulated most clearly by Michael Anton, who served on Trump’s National Security Council during his first term and is now director of policy planning in the State Department, is rooted in “principled realism” and national self-interest that explicitly embraces conquest. “To the victor nations go the spoils,” Anton wrote in a 2019 essay in Foreign Policy, crystallizing a worldview that sees international relations as zero-sum competition where might makes right.

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The question now is whether Congress will find the courage to confront this new colonialism before it spirals into something even worse. After all, why would MAGA stop in the Western Hemisphere? 

The war powers resolution that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has promised to bring to a vote is a start, but it is not nearly enough. Congress could immediately cut off funding for any military operations in Venezuela beyond what is necessary to withdraw American forces. It could launch investigations into the planning and execution of Operation Absolute Resolve, including whether Trump and his advisers deliberately misled Congress about their intentions and whether war crimes were committed in the strikes on boats and the invasion itself. It could pass legislation explicitly prohibiting the use of military force against Canada, Greenland, Panama, Colombia, Cuba or any other country without explicit congressional authorization. It could hold hearings on the imperialist revival, examining whether these policies serve American interests or simply enrich corporations. 

“If you feel like you’re losing your mind as this administration plays footsy with the idea of INVADING GREENLAND, then you’re not alone,” wrote Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wa. “Let me be clear: America will NOT invade a NATO ally. My Republican colleagues need to join me in making that crystal clear.” Her Democratic colleague, Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, called for Miller to resign after his belligerent CNN interview. 

In a rare bipartisan statement, Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., defended Denmark’s territorial integrity, declaring that “when Denmark and Greenland make it clear that Greenland is not for sale, the United States must honor its treaty obligations and respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark.” 

Other Republicans are beginning to speak out against the administration’s stated plans. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski wrote on X, “I continue to hope the administration’s rhetoric on Greenland is nothing more than posturing for a new era of cooperation.” After News Nation’s Katie Pavlich wrote on X, “Someone is getting Greenland, one way or another. It’s either going to be us, Russia or China. I know my choice,” Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon posted, “Greenland is a part of NATO, and so are we. Greenland decides its future. Stop the baloney.”

These dissenting Republicans, though, do not represent MAGA. For the most part, from Fox News to Infowars, MAGA media is completely cheerleading the country’s turn toward colonialism. But the open embrace of American colonialism will not bring stability or prosperity, as MAGA insists. It will only hasten the very decline the movement fears. Empire is a destiny that exists only in the fever dreams of men who believe God put them in power.

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