The Sources of Trumperialism (why this sh*t is happening)
What nobody gets about empire as an American exception.
Expansionism and revisionism are as American as apple pie.1
Imagine being an indigenous citizen of a US colonial territory in 2025, watching mainstream media decry Trump’s imperialist claims against Greenland and the Panama Canal. How do you say, “Welcome to empire!” in Chamorro? From the perspective of Guam, CNMI, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, or the native Hawai’ian sovereignty movement, the novelty with which the commentariat views Trumperialism must be pretty fresh.
I was one of the earliest critics of Trump’s foreign policy for being categorically imperialist, but I’m concerned people are losing the plot about why it matters to call out Trump’s tendencies in the first place.
To draw attention to the imperialist contours of Trump’s foreign policy without attempting to explain why this particular political form is emerging is not just analytical malpractice; it lends itself to understanding Trump as an anomaly rather than a symptom. His mafioso rhetoric targeting other sovereign nations is not coming out of nowhere, is not happening in a vacuum, and is part and parcel of an American exceptionalism that relies heavily on national security reasoning.
Let me explain.