The geopolitics of Trumpist imperialism

The prevalence of the United States as the sole superpower after the end of the Cold War and its deployment as the most complete total hegemon in history produced an exceptional situation never before seen in the study of superpowers. To date, every great empire sustained, in part, its power in territorial expansion. Rome, China, Spain, Portugal, Holland, England, etc. are examples of great powers that had an important colonial deployment and whose duration as hegemony was directly related to the maintenance of those conquered/annexed territories. However, in the case of the USA, as a total hegemony, it has not been necessary to establish a system of conventional imperial rule to date.

The type of hegemony that the US has exercised in the last three decades has taken shape in the diplomatic, financial, economic, commercial, military and cultural spheres. The uniqueness of this American hegemonic moment lies in the fact that, unlike its imperial predecessors, it never enjoyed such dominance in all areas. For example, the Dutch Empire (17th century, its hegemonic moment) exercised its hegemony in the commercial and financial sphere thanks to a dominant naval power that allowed it to project its power from New Amsterdam (New York) to Indonesia, but it competed in the rest.

Dutch ships ramming Spanish galleys off the Flemish coast in October 1602 (1617), oil on canvas by Cornelisz Hendrick Vroom (Haarlem 1591-1661), Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

The unipolar force exercised by the US to date has been so overwhelming that it has not required too many forms of direct and “on the ground” control like the rest. Although it cannot be ignored that it has had recent colonizing attempts such as the large deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan that have resulted in disaster.

The design of the new emperor's suit

A few weeks before taking office as the 47th President of the United States of America, Donald Trump laid out his expansionist foreign policy project. This project pursues two geopolitical objectives: the first is to turn the USA into a territorial island and, to this end, he says he wants to annex Canada and Panama and the second is to prepare to conquer the Arctic via the annexation of Greenland.

The seizure of the Panama Canal-country seeks to reverse the Torrijos-Carter treaty signed by the late President Jimmy Carter in 1977, which returned sovereignty of the Canal to the Panamanian state by 1999 after almost a century of legal control of it. Prior to the signing of this treaty, the area adjacent to the Panama Canal had been directly controlled by the United States since 1903. With this move, it wants to control both the north and south of the “island” that is North America, as well as the maritime trade route that connects by sea the west coast with the east coast of the United States.

Map of North America as an island thanks to the Panama Canal

The second objective, from a geopolitical perspective, is to control as much of the Arctic as possible. To this end, the United States has the right to a share of the ice cream pie thanks to its 19th century purchase of Alaska, but it does not consider this sufficient. At present, the North Pole is a territory “free” of territorial disputes and is co-governed by the Arctic Council. This collegiate governing body is made up of the USA, Canada, Denmark (Greenland), Iceland, Finland, Norway, Russia and Sweden, in addition to representatives of the six indigenous communities living there and up to 13 observer states (Spain, India, China and Singapore, among others). The Council's tasks are basically to safeguard the region's nature and fight against pollution. On paper, Trump seeks to place the U.S. in the “best starting positions” for when the North Pole is completely thawed. The Arctic is a territory with special international protection that limits its use to exclusively scientific research work. However, when climate change (by now inevitable) puts an end to the territory's glacial uniqueness, the abundant natural resources that reside there, as well as the trade routes that will be opened up, will be the subject of geopolitical dispute.

Arctic Circle countries, Arctic region countries, Arctic political map

The material of the emperor's suit

The logic of this expansionist project is the result of an increasingly insecure power. This insecurity, which for the moment it shares with Russia, is embodied in the need to control a region politically and physically in order to exploit it economically. The liberal globalization of the last 30 years was based on the idea that free trade and the interconnection and global integration of markets would result in relative gains for all parties in such a way that no one would lose and no one would gain. The territorial factor would lose weight because access to raw materials would be facilitated by the progressive absence of tariffs. As we have seen, this idea evaporated as soon as its founder and main supporter, the USA, began to lose out to other players such as China. Today, the geographical factor has a renewed importance and diplomatic channels such as free trade agreements are no longer valid for the new Trump administration.

The suit Trump wants must be “made in America” and, if America does not produce it, it must expand to do so. For that reason, he has set his eye on Greenland, the largest island in the world and too rich in natural resources not to be exploited by the great powers. Greenland is home to about 25% of all the world's rare earths, materials that are needed for the production of electric appliances and vehicles (such as Tesla) and to lead the green transition. China currently controls almost all (>95%) of the global rare earth supply, including those extracted from Greenland.

The Arctic region contains, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, 13% of the world's oil reserves and about 30% of the world's natural gas reserves. The wealth of the far north is not only limited to fossil fuels, but it is also a region rich in mining (gold, iron, titanium, coal, etc.). For this reason, the plans that the major powers have been making for years with an eye to the long term include polar melting as a desirable factor. The consequences of global warming, which are already being exponentially devastating every year, can be very profitable for a variety of actors. The viability of polar trade routes promises to substantially shorten distances between regions in the Northern Hemisphere; and, as was the case when the Suez or Panama Canal opened, whoever controls them will have a privileged position on world trade.