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Maybe Trump the isolationist had imperial ambitions all along

The president is trapped in a Gilded Age bubble where tariffs and resource grabs are prized.

By MAX BOOT

Washington Post
January 12, 2025

Until recently, President Donald Trump had a reputation as a quasi-isolationist. In his first inaugural address, he complained, “We’ve ... spent trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.” In his second inaugural address, he vowed to “measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end — and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.”

And yet, following his attack on Venezuela and his threats against Greenland, the president is looking more like an imperialist than an isolationist. The world should have seen it coming. Trump may have been the only person on the planet who criticized the 2003 invasion of Iraq because it wasn’t a “war for oil.” Citing the ancient maximum “to the victor belong the spoils,” Trump insisted that the U.S. should “take the oil” from Iraq.

He never explained how he could seize oil without a costly occupation, but, now in Venezuela, he thinks he has figured it out. Following the salutary arrest of the odious Nicolás Maduro, Trump says he wants to run Venezuela — possibly for years, he told the New York Times. But he isn’t sending troops, and he hasn’t said anything about nurturing democracy (although he did apply welcome pressure to free some political prisoners).