In the wake of Donald Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, critics have decried his actions for breaking international law and expanding the United States’ imperialism. However, critics of the Trump administration who support presidents of the past but decry Trump’s imperialism are hypocritical because every single administration has either contributed to or led to Trump’s brand of authoritarianism in some way. Take Venezuela, for example, we attempted a failed coup d’etat against them in 2002 under Bush, Obama declared Venezuela a threat to national security in 2015, Trump was aggressive towards Venezuela in his first term, and Biden increased the United States bounty on Maduro to $25 million. The major difference between Trump and past president’s intervention in Venezuela is that Trump is honest, except for making up a fake cartel to justify kidnapping Maduro, that the reason he is intervening in Venezuela is their large oil reserves, saying, “We built Venezuela oil industry with American talent, drive and skill, and the socialist regime stole it from us during those previous administrations, and they stole it through force. This constituted one of the largest thefts of American property in the history of our country.”
Venezuela isn’t unique in being a victim of the United States imperialism; take the rest of Latin America, for example, where, from 1898 to 1994, the United States was successful in changing Latin American governments at least 41 times. In another part of the world, Iraq, we invaded under the pretense that there were weapons of mass destruction, which we were unable to find. Now we have kidnapped Maduro for alleged narco-terrorism, and on December 15, Trump declared fentanyl a WMD, meaning we are falling for the same pretense we did in Iraq. The United States empire has intervened in much of the world, with the United States militarily invading or intervening in 96 countries since 1945. From proxy wars to wars on terror, the military-industrial complex of the United States has expanded all across the world, boosting the economy through military manufacturing globally, creating the most successful perpetual war economy ever.
From Vietnam to Iraq, the United States has been able to get away with warmongering and countless war crimes over the decades because we put ourselves above international law. This has been especially prevalent since the advent of the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, known informally as the Hague Invasion Act, a law signed in 2002 by President Bush, in which we declared that if any of our personnel were to be taken to the International Criminal Court, we would use military force to get them back. We don’t just use this privilege for ourselves, but our allies as well, particularly Israel in recent years, as they’re facing charges of war crimes and genocide in Palestine, which has been funded by both Democrats and Republicans over decades. We help the ICC investigate Russia for its war crimes in Ukraine, but we prevent justice from happening to ourselves or our allies because we have the military dominance to do whatever we want.
Trump has brought Maduro to be tried in New York, and it’s fitting that a socialist president would be tried in court where a democratic-socialist, Zohran Mamdani, was just elected mayor of New York City. The Red Scare has long stood as another justification for the United States’ imperialism, with proxy wars against Russia spanning the entire globe. Fear of communism has also internally affected the United States, from the decline of unions to the demonization of universal healthcare. The Red Scare is the reason why the Democratic Party, the “left-wing” party of the United States, is afraid to adopt popular policies of a Green New Deal, Universal Healthcare, and ending constant wars. Not only would adopting these left-wing policies like their counterparts of other countries lose them their corporate donors, but also the scary title of “socialist” would be placed onto them by Republicans, and they couldn’t risk either of these outcomes happening, because how else do they keep money and power?
Now in the United States, Trump has escalated the size of Immigration Customs Enforcement, which has led to many incidents, including the murder of American citizen Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis on January 7. Her death is tragic, but it should not be surprising at all in the United States; government-sanctioned violence is nothing new. Minority groups have been brutalized by police, and the houseless are being criminalized for sleeping outside, the only reason her death is shocking to the public is that she was a white woman, because if a white woman is being killed by ICE, are any Americans safe? Beyond government-sanctioned violence being the norm in the United States, progressives have long called for the abolishment of ICE, such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who ran on abolishing ICE in 2018, and even before that, immigration rights advocates were fighting against ICE. This is not only an issue of Trump; both Democratic and Republican administrations have also continued to give funding to ICE since its inception.
The history of the United States has always held imperialism and violence. Trump is not solely responsible for the conditions of the United States, but the historical conditions of the United States have led us to where we are today with Trump. From constant wars and rising inequality, the United States was struggling, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was the 2008 financial crisis. This crisis led to a rise in populism against the establishment in both parties. Democrats responded by rejecting Bernie Sanders’ run for the presidency, while Republicans embraced the right-wing populism of Trump, and he won the 2016 election. While he lost in 2020 due to unpopularity, the rise in populism stayed, so when Kamala Harris ran in 2024 on a platform that wasn’t populist and was largely a continuation of Biden’s, it makes sense that Trump won against such unpopular policy, even if he was unpopular too.
Trump is a symptom of the United States’ imperialism, not a cause. This is not to say his actions are justified, or that past presidents are just as bad as him, but the way the United States is today has been coming for years; it is the natural conclusion of faux-populism in response to wars and inequality in a country. To attribute the United States’ condition to Trump being the primary factor is to subscribe to the great man theory of history, a theory of history that attributes major historical events and changes to people with greater natural attributes, such as high intelligence, courage, and great leadership. This theory of history is wrong, though, because the material conditions of the world are what cause historical change and create the people in them. Without Trump, populism would have still risen in the United States, and a right-wing populist candidate would still have risen and won in 2016, especially due to the Red Scare and propaganda making left-wing populism virtually impossible to succeed on a national level, especially in 2016.
Now, if there is an election in 2028, with even that being called into question with Trump’s supporters floating the idea of a third term or suspending an election due to war, what likely will happen is that a Democratic candidate will win the presidential election, whether that be Gavin Newsom, AOC, or some other Democrat, Trump is just that unpopular right now. After that, this cycle will likely continue, where the overtone window of politics in the United States shifts to the right, we elect a Democrat, and then, when the system is not fixed, we go back to a Republican promising to change the system for the betterment of the people for real this time. Unless Americans stop supporting politicians and a system that repeats this cycle of war and inequality over and over again, things are not going to get better in the United States. You may look back at previous presidential administrations fondly, either through nostalgia because you genuinely believe that they were a good president, or because you just wish we had a president who was not as unpopular as Trump is, but remember, it was the actions of all past presidents of the United States that got us to where we are today, and as long as the imperialism of the United States continues, the entire world, including us, will suffer for it.
