Hit-and-Return Imperialism

 LOOKS LIKE THE RUNNING DOGS of imperialism are left with no choice but to bark in self-defence. Only if we spend too much time in the echo chambers of ideological harrumphing in the age of “kidnapped” Nicolás Maduro and “war-threatened” Iran. What else but cry for a shattered international order can the moral majority in a trampled-upon-by-Trump world afford?

Still, let’s dare to ask:

What does matter most—freedom from a dictator who steals elections, silences dissent, starves the people, cripples the economy, and mocks every warning by his eventual nemesis; or the convenient invocation of international law?

And what’s more threatening to the international order—a brutalising theocratic state firing upon the young protesters and struggling to dispose of the body bags; or an America warning and reminding before the inevitable happens?

In the first, imperialism was brought back to the glossary of anti-Americanism. But it was, strictly speaking, an attack not on a country but on a specific rogue ruler—nothing has much changed in Venezuela except the leader-change. Maduro, in the end, did not meet the fate of all those commanders from Gaza and Iran, the Sinwars and the Soleimanis. A pliable Venezuela minus Maduro, dancing to the tune of America, shows the shifting imperial trait: unlike the neoconservatives, the national conservatives, certainly of the Trump variety, have no appetite for regime change. The new liberator, inadvertently, takes us back to a fundamental fact about the lands without freedom: it all boils down to one mad man, the Leader who owns destiny—and in socialism’s last comic-strip societies, his reign is very Maduro-like. The history of unfreedom is a collective biography of such men, identifiable with names such as Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Saddam. Maduro, like his predecessor Hugo Chávez, will get a passing mention.

By targeting such a dictator, Trump’s imperium doesn’t score much morally. The consequences of imperial interventions have been more than a series of plunder and subjugation. Historians with a certain ideological persuasion have refused to see the other side: the spirit of modernisation. Remember: consequence, not intention. Trump is a different story. His is hit-and-return imperialism, with no moral obligation to a stifled society. He is there only to make a quick deal with history—and to get rid of the guy who holds the key to the riches. An alternative to the dictatorship is none of his concern. And if Greenland is in his sights now, it, too, is a mark of deal-making imperialism: the largest island; the mineral wealth; and the strategic importance of the Arctic. The Donroe Doctrine or whatever you may call Trump’s revision of the dusty Monroe Doctrine (his 19th-century predecessor’s wall against European colonialism to protect Latin America) is an enterprise with flimsy ideological foundation—and the politics of which is marred by the aesthetics of the personal.

Worse cases of imperialism are at work, and they don’t attract any liberal angst either. Take Russia. The Soviet empire may have fallen long ago but, in the head of Russia’s neo-tsar, it’s intact. Putin’s imperial fantasy has launched this century’s first land war, his tanks rolling into Ukraine an image straight out of World War II. His imperialism is non-Trumpian. He is fighting not to change the leader or his regime but to annex Ukraine to Russia. He is there on an imperial restoration project.

Take Iran. The Great Islamic Revolution is dying on the street, but it comes after more than four decades of Islamic empire building by proxies. The so-called ring of fire around Israel was made possible by the Iranian sponsorship of terror. Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, and the erstwhile Assad regime in Syria—they were all indebted to Iran. Religion was revolution. Its export was the call of God’s imperium—or so believed the ruling clergy.

Or take China. Xi Jinping has the makings of the last emperor with an eternal mandate, unless some unseen forces in Zhongnanhai make him look mortal one day. His imperial project, like anything seriously Chinese, is meticulously thought-out and methodical. China expands its spheres of influence by not conquering territories (though Taiwan might be counting its days of sovereignty) alone. Trade and infrastructure are effective instruments of the Chinese imperial project, and Venezuela has been very much one of its zones of interest.

The historian Niall Ferguson calls the imperial legacy of Great Britain Anglobalisation and argues that there could not have been a less bloody path to modernity. Trump’s transactional imperialism has no purpose other than strengthening the cult of the instant deliverer. And his Chinese or Russian counterparts cannot afford even a moral fig leaf. Despite all his imperial daredevilry, Donald Trump is still denied a place among the kings.