US imperialism didn’t begin with Trump, but bragging about it on social media is new

Donald Trump’s recent actions have laid bare the EU’s weakness. Its leaders’ knee-jerk calls for ‘more Europe’ will only strengthen Washington’s hand.

Everyone’s an anti-imperialist now… The struggle against American hegemony, once dismissed as a leftwing relic or a symptom of a stubborn cold war mindset, has experienced an unexpected revival since the start of this year. The New York Times, which has supported every previous US invasion, is suddenly full of righteous indignation at Donald Trump’s adventurism: ‘After a century of defending other countries against foreign aggression, the United States is now positioned as an imperial power trying to seize another nation’s land’ (20 January 2026).

Le Monde, which had hitherto reserved the term ‘imperialist’ exclusively for Russia’s foreign policy, has revived the language of the 1970s to lambast ‘the United States’ new imperialism’ (22 January). And you pinch yourself when you hear Thierry Breton – after a career as an entrepreneur spent trying to get France to adopt the ‘American model’ (and privatising infrastructure) – now railing against the ‘neo-imperialist elite’ running Washington. On air with Breton, LCI presenter Darius Rochebin, who is usually dutifully in step with the Pentagon, became exercised too, even sounding a bit like Che Guevara.

This sense of disorientation, reminiscent of the febrile elite backlash against ‘the masters of finance’ in 2008-09 after the subprime crisis, is a sign of commentators’ panic when faced with Donald Trump’s distinctly undiplomatic initiatives. Condemned, to use one of their favourite phrases, to ‘think against themselves’, all of them now claim to be able to make out a ‘Trump doctrine’ that explains the disorder of the international scene.

One approach is to take the US administration’s statements and publications seriously. Defending the operation in Caracas, homeland security adviser Stephen Miller said, ‘We live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.’ Consequently, the US is entitled to ‘[use] its (…)

Full article: 2 660 words.

Benoît Bréville

Benoît Bréville is president and editorial director of Le Monde diplomatique.

* Jean Monnet chair for European Economic Integration at the INP-ENSAT (National Agronomic College at Toulouse), associate researcher at Dynamiques rurales, and author of L’Agriculture, talon d’Achille de la mondialisation. Clés pour un Accord agricole solidaire à l’OMC, L’Harmattan, Paris, 2001, 509 pp, 220 FF

(1) José Bové and François Dufour, Le Monde n’est pas une marchandise. Des paysans contre la malbouffe (The World is Not a Commodity: Farmers Against Junk Food), La Découverte, Paris, 2000.

(2) See Jacques Berthelot, "Agriculture, le vrai débat Nord-Sud", Le Monde diplomatique, March 2000.

(3) Jacques Berthelot, "La mystification du découplage des aides agricoles", Economie rurale, n° 261, January-February 2001.

(4) The Group of Cairns comprises 15 net exporting nations that do not subsidise their exports, and includes three developed countries (Australia, Canada and New Zealand).

(5) Louis-Pascal Mahé and François Ortalo-Magné, Politique agricole. Un modèle européen, Presses de Sciences Po, Paris, 2001.

(6) Louis-Pascal Mahé and François Ortalo-Magné, op. cit.

(7) Wilhelm Henrichsmeyer and Heinz-Peter Witzke, Overall Evaluation of the Agenda 2000 CAP Reform, University of Bonn/European Commission, February 2000.

(8) Verts-ALE (European parliament’s Greens/European Free Alliance), press conference, 7 February 2001.

(9) The French Greens obtained approval for a CAP along the same lines as the present strategy at the General Assembly of the European Green party in Paris in February 1999, but this strategy was not fully endorsed by the Green party members of the European parliament at their last press conference.

(10) See "L’Europe s’ouvre aux agricultures du tiers-monde", Le Monde, 8 March 2001.