Cromwell

The reactionary Iranian regime has sent its thuggish security forces into the street to stop the demonstrations. The regime is determined to intimidate the population and stifle dissent. Thousands of people have been killed to date.

Trump says he supports the Iranian demonstrators. In the meantime, however, he has sent a large force of his thuggish ICE agents into the streets in Minnesota. This has been done primarily to intimidate the population and stifle dissent, not to identify and capture illegal immigrants who represent a genuine danger to the community. One person has been killed by an ICE agent to date.

This is a difference of degree, not kind.

The Chinese economy has never really recovered from the real estate crash. Unemployment for young people is way up. Consumer confidence is in the dumps. National morale, by all accounts, is flagging. The promise of a better life for hundreds of millions of people is gone, it seems.

But China ran a record trade surplus last year. By Trump’s standards, that means the country has never been richer! So cheer up, guys!

If you’re a wokester, you probably think American imperialism started when the English colonists landed at Jamestown in 1607. I don’t agree. The initial efforts at colonization were generated by private actors, and the notion of ruling over vastly numerically superior Native Americans at that time would have seemed ludicrous. The objective at that point was to find adequate land to develop without antagonizing the natives too much.

By about 1650, however, things had changed. European governments were taking more of an interest in the colonies. The Navigation Act was passed, thereby establishing a mother country/colony economic relationship that would continue for over a century. The European colonies were starting to bump into each other. The colonists were no longer grossly outnumbered by the natives. An era of imperialism, albeit one in which the interests of private actors still predominated over those of governments, had begun.

Lindsey Graham is back in the Oval Office to talk about foreign policy.

G: I still can’t get over how gold this place is! It’s blinding me!

T: That’s the point, Linseed. It reminds you of what a winner I am.

G: As in your latest triumph in Venezuela.

T: Right. There was a point when I was worried that the helicopters might not make it. It might be another Jimmy Carter episode. But then I remembered, Jimmy Carter was a loser, and I’m a winner. The helicopters made it because I’m a winner.

G: But what happens now? You’ve always been opposed to regime change.

T: We have a better way of doing regime change. We keep the thugs in place, but we force them to do our bidding. No troops on the ground.

G: MAGA will approve of that, but can you really trust the regime to take orders from you? They’ll probably just slow roll what you want and hope you lose interest.

T: If they start doing that, we’ll make them offers they can’t refuse. Trust me, no one gets away with ignoring my will. I’m the boss. They have to do what I say.

G: But what if they don’t? What if you have to send in the troops and occupy the country?

T: It won’t happen. They know I’m the boss. That’s it.

G: What about Cuba?

T: Cuba doesn’t have oil or minerals. It has a basket case economy and lots of old people who didn’t have the energy to leave and start over. Why would I want it?

G: Don’t you want to free the people from the Marxist yoke?

T: Marco does. I’ll leave it to him. We’re not sending troops there, however. It’s not worth it. It wouldn’t help make us rich.

G: And Greenland? Would you really break up NATO when we have all the rights we need to extract minerals and establish bases?

T: We’re the boss of the hemisphere, Linseed. We have to own it. There’s nothing like ownership. I know from my developer days.

G: So you’re prepared to go to war for it?

T: I hope it won’t be necessary. The Europeans give me everything I want when I push them really hard. We’ll be doing that again. They’re more afraid of China and Putin than they are of me, so they’ll give in when push comes to shove.

G: Well, I hope you’re right. Losing NATO would be a big mistake. (He leaves)

I identified three characteristics of liberalism in a post in 2024. Humility, because every individual and party recognizes that the truth is not self-evident, and the other side could be right; tolerance, because it is stupid to be intolerant of people who may be right; and optimism, because we have the ability to learn by experience. But what is the opposite of liberalism?

Imagine a state in which the leaders believe the truth is on their side, and self-evident, so the opposition is clearly evil. As a result, they have no reason to tolerate dissent. In addition, they see society as being in decline, and view all transactions as being zero-sum, so the nation desperately needs to put up barriers and keep resources out of the hands of others.

Oh, wait. You don’t have to imagine that. It’s here.

We need to start with a definition. What is “imperialism?” In my view, it is a government-supported effort to attain and exercise political, social, and economic dominion over another nation.

The key term here is “government-supported.” A purely private-sector entity trading with representatives of a different nation is not engaged in imperialism. The VOC and the British East India Company, however, were sufficiently intertwined with their respective governments to meet the definition.

How does this relate to American history? I will address that question throughout American history in several posts this week.

The protesters believe the Iranian government is their instrument and is accountable to them. Since it has failed miserably, it should be changed. The leaders of the regime, on the other hand, think the point of government is to please God; they are his instruments, not the people’s. The transient desires of the population are consequently irrelevant and can be ignored or even crushed with impunity.

In a slightly different form, this is the divine right of kings versus the Enlightenment all over again. It is Muhammad against Jefferson.

Japan in the 1930s and early 1940s had a large population, an advanced economy, a powerful military, and very few natural resources. Its leadership thought the solution to the resource problem was obvious–create an empire in China. The Americans ultimately responded to the Japanese aggression and atrocities by imposing an oil embargo. The Japanese consequently had a choice: give up their dreams of empire in China or go for broke, attack the Americans, and seize as many resources as possible in the process.

As we know only too well, they decided to launch surprise attacks against a variety of targets in the Pacific and Asia in order to establish dominion over their neighborhood and solve their resource issues. Is this ringing any bells for you?

The Israelis attacked a notorious Tehran prison during last year’s war in an apparent effort to encourage regime dissidents. In those terms, the attack was a miserable failure; it killed lots of innocent Iranians, angered the dissidents, and increased support for the regime, at least temporarily.

Trump is now talking in public about providing military assistance to the protesters. He is clearly high on imperialism at the moment, so notwithstanding my previous post on this subject, it is not altogether impossible that he would try something. If he does, what should he do?

He needs to avoid the Bibi precedent. Airstrikes should be off the table. Instead, he should tell the Iranian nation that the creation of a new regime which no longer threatens its neighbors will result in an end to sanctions, the possibility of economic assistance, and hope for a better life in the future. In other words, it’s time for well-placed carrots, not sticks.

Trump doesn’t appear to have any qualms about attacking Greenland and blowing up NATO. What that proves, of course, is that NATO only exists today as a formality. The Euros, as they usually do, are responding cautiously; they insist that nothing is wrong with America and the alliance while supporting Greenland’s right of self-determination. Is this reliance on the power of wishful thinking likely to work?

No. It reminds me of what happens when you feed alligators. They lose the idea of boundaries and demand more and more. It never ends well.

Trump is a predator, just like Putin. He openly says he doesn’t feel bound by treaties or international law. If he has the power, he is going to use it. At some point, the rest of the world needs to take him at his word.

Dissent in Iran is starting to look dangerous to the regime, which has no answers for the economic problems for which it is responsible. Businessmen and students alike are demanding fundamental change. Some people are even calling for the return of the Shah. Is this, at long last, the beginning of the end for the theocracy?

I don’t think so; it won’t happen until important elements of the regime lose their faith in its legitimacy and refuse to support repression. I don’t see any evidence of that yet. But the situation definitely bears watching.

Greenland is not a source of drugs or immigrants. It is run by a liberal democracy. America already has the legal ability to put additional military facilities there and to mine for rare earths. So why is Trump so determined to take it away from Denmark?

The answer is clear–Trump bears a grudge for the impacts the Vikings made on Christian civilization a thousand years ago. That explains why he hates Minnesota so much, as well.

What, you think there’s another reason?

Vladimir Putin does regime change, but not nation-building. He finds the most competent, ruthless, and loyal thug in the area, gives him the keys to the car, and mostly leaves him to his own devices. If the guy doesn’t work out, he finds another one. This limits his military and financial exposure if things go wrong.

Trump has clearly decided this is the way to handle Venezuela; it can’t turn into another Iraq if there is no occupation and no effort to recreate liberal democracy. The problem, of course, is that Venezuela could tear itself apart and turn into another Libya. Obama tried the no boots on the ground approach there, and it didn’t exactly end well.

And as Putin found out in Syria, and his Soviet predecessors discovered many times before that, the choice of a new thug may be out of your hands if your guy can’t cut the mustard.

The neocons are back, baby! Trump has removed the murderous dictator from Venezuela. We’ll be installing the real victor from the last election, and liberal democracy will be reinstated. Life in Venezuela will be good again, and the righteous power of America will be on full display. No one will remember Iraq anymore.

But . . . wait! Trump says there won’t be elections for the foreseeable future, and he’s playing ball with the remainder of the corrupt regime, which is all of it less Maduro. All he talks about is making money off of oil. That doesn’t sound much like liberal democracy to us.

But no worries. It will just take a little time. Trump has shown his heart is really in the right place. He can be steered in the right direction. And you can trust Marco, right? Right?

Dream on, gang. Venezuela, like everything else, is about Trump showing his dominance over his opponents. Oil is also important to him. Liberal democracy, not so much, particularly if it would require a lengthy and large-scale occupation, as it would.

Pete Hegseth is determined to punish Mark Kelly for making public statements about the obligation to disobey unlawful orders. Kelly’s words are consistent with liberal democratic values and are still the official policy of the American military as of today. What is going on here?

The only possible explanation I can see is that Hegseth is determined to make the American military a right-wing militia that is unconditionally obligated to obey Donald Trump. It’s a point I’ve made many times over the past year because it represents a huge danger to our political system.

Can you think of any other reason he would do it?