‘America First’ is the Dawn of New American Imperialism |
The U.S. invasion of Venezuela signals a decisive return to overt imperialism, reshaping global politics around coercion rather than consent.
The Imperial Rhetoric
The Venezuelan operation was not cloaked in the familiar language of humanitarian intervention or collective security. It was justified as a blunt assertion of U.S. national interest. Within hours, the president’s allies threatened to extend U.S. military pressure on multiple states — from Colombia and Cuba to Mexico and Iran — in language that resembles 19th-century power politics more than 21st-century diplomacy. In the context of Trump’s ‘America First’ narrative, the rhetoric from the White House’s own advisers confirms this shift. Top aide Stephen Miller told CNN that the US “is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically” and that it was “absurd” to let nations in the hemisphere supply resources to US adversaries but not to America. He even asserted that “sovereign countries do not get sovereignty if the US wants their resources.” And it does not stop at resource extraction. Miller went further: “Greenland should be part of the United States,” questioning the legitimacy of Denmark’s control and dismissing resistance: “Nobody’s going to fight the US militarily over the future of Greenland.”
A Challenge to a New Global Order
Such assertions of power do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, they show an effective embrace of the geopolitics of (dis)order. For the last decade, China and Russia have been building alternative........