Two weeks ago, in his address to Saudi Arabia’s leadership, U.S. President Donald Trump denounced the “nation builders” and “neocons” of past governments for “giving lectures” to other nations on “how to live” and “how to govern.” This was taken, rather naively, as a sign of isolationism, supposedly indicating a shift in foreign policy that would end U.S. intervention in the domestic affairs of foreign countries. A similar line was later adopted by U.S. Vice President JD Vance, this time targeting what he called the West’s “ideological crusades.” Crucially, Vance lamented that the governing class of the American empire of the last few generations had committed the grave mistake of trading “hard power” for “soft power.”
Despite these performative critiques, however, the only shift in foreign policy with the current U.S. government has been the shedding of the veneer of benevolence that both Trump and Vance so clearly detest. For a “successful businessman” and a promising “entrepreneur,” it is unnecessary and “unnatural” to go to great lengths to justify what “hard power” can achieve on its own – no pretense is required so long as the goal can be reached by “straightforward” means.
To say that this is not isolationism would be an understatement, of course. For it is the most blatant form of imperialism – one that seeks, first and foremost, to project dominance as deterrence. It was for this reason that the U.S. sanctioned the International Criminal Court (ICC), for example, for the sole "crime" of issuing arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and top genocidaire, Benjamin Netanyahu. And it is for the same reason that Trump keeps enabling the empire’s vassals to get away with absolutely anything. In this way, the empire intends to impose domination on the rest of the world, presumably in the hope of “deterring” perceived enemies.
And how could it be otherwise? Two decades ago, in the context of the invasion of Iraq, journalist and political activist Kent MacDougall noted that, contrary to former U.S. President George W. Bush’s claims that “America has never been an empire” and seeks nothing of the sort, the most prominent of the “Founding Fathers,” George Washington, had described as early as the late 18th century the nascent republic as a “rising empire.” Indeed, this has always been a striking and unique feature of the U.S., that it has not become an empire over time but was already founded as one.
Whence did the veneer of benevolence come, however? Looking at what the British imperialists openly admitted in the 19th century, for instance, one can see that imperial dominance has always been justified on dubious “moral” grounds. However, it was with the rise of the liberal intelligentsia in the second half of the last century that the public finally discovered how to “objectively” analyze world events. In this context, professor Noam Chomsky once observed that “although the benevolence of imperialism is a familiar refrain, the idea that the issue of benevolence is irrelevant, an improper, sentimental consideration, is something of an innovation in imperialist rhetoric.” Vance’s somewhat artificial persona might be the perfect fit for the kind of “objectivity” demanded by those liberals, after all.
That the main political divide within the governing class of the American empire is between those who advocate for intervention in the domestic affairs of other nations (thus exercising soft power) and those who find it unnecessary to seek “sentimental” and apparently subjective justifications for bombing those nations (therefore preferring hard power) is certainly alarming. It is perhaps the greatest harm of imperialism that it forces us to even entertain the notion that there is something to argue here. What has been effectively normalized over the course of the last 19 months shows, once again, that it is not the veneer of benevolence, but rather that of “objectivity,” that has been plaguing the public discourse on the most horrific chapters of human history.
Maintaining “professionalism” in the face of unspeakable atrocities is doubtless a strange yet surprisingly effective feat of the liberal intelligentsia. It is also central to the imperialist doctrine. The idea that the description of the charred bodies of little children requires “objectivity” is such a perversion of human understanding and morality that it hardly merits counterargument. And yet, this very perversion continues to be the rhetorical bedrock of the political discourse of our time.
