When Lebensraum Comes to America

First it was Trump the conquistador, flirting with a half-coup in Venezuela. Then came his revival and expansion of the Monroe Doctrine in his 2025 National Security Strategy. Now it is Greenland, paired with threats of tariffs and economic punishment against states that do not comply. Let us call this what it is: Trump’s Lebensraum.

Lebensraum was the political philosophy that guided twentieth-century German expansionism. It reached its most lethal expression under Hitler. Rooted in racism, nationalism, and imperialism, it asserted that Germany possessed a natural right to dominate land within its “sphere of influence.” Territory, resources, and peoples were to be absorbed or subordinated in the name of national destiny. This was not defensive policy. It was ideological expansion dressed up as security.

Trump’s ambitions in the Western Hemisphere are not meaningfully different.

The original Monroe Doctrine was both boastful and quaint. When issued in 1823, the United States lacked the military power to enforce it. Its warning to Europe to stay out of the Western Hemisphere was more aspiration than reality. But as American power grew, so did its willingness to impose the doctrine by force. The twentieth century is littered with examples: the Spanish-American War, Johnson’s intervention in the Dominican Republic, Nixon and Chile, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the obsessive fixation on Castro, Reagan and Nicaragua, and the long shadow of American economic domination over Canada and Mexico.

Combined with nineteenth-century Manifest Destiny, the Monroe Doctrine became an American ideology of expansion. Call it imperialism, colonialism, or a sphere of influence. Or call it what it really was: an American version of Lebensraum.

Trump is not inventing something new. He is refurbishing an old doctrine and stripping it of even its pretense of restraint. Venezuela and Greenland are modern expressions of the Monroe Doctrine rebranded as the “Donroe Doctrine.” The language may be updated, but the impulse is the same. Economic coercion replaces gunboats, tariffs replace troops, and threats replace diplomacy. But the logic remains conquest without accountability.

It is impossible to separate Trump’s foreign ambitions from his domestic behavior. Many recoil at comparisons to Hitler, yet the parallels are not accidental. Trump’s use of ICE in Minneapolis and elsewhere to root out immigrants employs tactics disturbingly reminiscent of secret police operations. His racist immigration policies, including the Muslim travel ban, family separation, and the disappearance of individuals by masked agents, are not policy disagreements. They are authoritarian practices.

Declaring the press “enemies of the people” is not rhetorical excess. It is a classic authoritarian move. Stacking the federal courts with loyalists, punishing states that resist him, and pursuing phony investigations against critics such as James Comey and Letitia James all follow the same pattern. Power is centralized. Opposition is criminalized. Institutions are bent to personal loyalty.

Trump’s efforts to rig elections through gerrymandering, voter suppression, and delegitimizing outcomes he dislikes mirror the playbook of illiberal regimes. His elevation of Truth Social as a quasi-official source of information, combined with restricting press access, would have made Joseph Goebbels proud. Add to this the encouragement of violence on January 6, 2021, and the continued normalization of political violence afterward, and the picture sharpens further.

Trump’s defenders argue that comparisons to Hitler are inappropriate. If that is the case, then the solution is simple: stop acting like him. As the saying goes, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it deserves scrutiny as a duck.

Which brings us back to Greenland. Trump’s coveting of it is no different in principle from Hitler’s fixation on the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia. In both cases, allies were urged to appease expansionist demands in the name of stability. Neville Chamberlain’s failure is now a cautionary tale, not a strategy. NATO’s deployment of forces to Greenland reflects a recognition that appeasement invites escalation.

Trump’s hostility toward allies echoes Hitler’s eventual betrayal of agreements, including the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Appease Trump on Greenland and what comes next? Iceland? Cuba? Canada as the “51st state”? He already claims influence over Venezuela, proposes to “run” Gaza, and openly muses about territorial reordering.

History does not repeat itself exactly, but it rhymes. Trump’s Lebensraum is not a metaphor. It is a warning.

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