Summary
Donald Trump stated that U.S. aid to Ukraine should be compensated with $500 billion worth of its mineral resources, including rare earth elements.
He claimed Ukraine had “essentially agreed” to this arrangement. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has hinted at allowing U.S. access to these resources to maintain support.
The idea aligns with Ukraine’s “victory plan” for post-war recovery.
Trump’s comments drew criticism, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemning his approach as “very egotistic, very self-centered.”
American imperialism mostly halted under Clinton and Obama. The cold war was over and they weren’t jingoistic like Bush or Trump.
Even Bush jr wasn’t as much imperial as he was militaristic. Iraq and Afghanistan would both have arguably benefited from a time as an American protectorate like Germany or Japan, but W handed over “sovereignty” while the wars were still ongoing.
Trump isn’t coherent enough to have an understandable philosophy
Yes but it could be argued that that militarism is a form of imperialism.
Not sure if a puppet is meaningfully less imperialist than a protectorate.
Iraq and Afghanistan are nothing like Germany or Japan and if you cannot create a stable government after 20 years of occupation, then there is no indication that more occupation would have done any better.
Frankly the notion that countries being invaded and have masses of their population slaughtered is “for their own benefit” is fascist talk.
You’re right, the behavior of how Iraq and Afghanistan were handled was entirely different from either Germany or Japan after WW2.
My assertion is that the USA did too much “occupation” and not enough “governance”. Both Iraq and Afghanistan essentially had anti-government resistance movements forced into pseudo-national rule without any time to develop local governance.
Once the states were broken W wanted to get out, essentially since he feared accusations of imperialism. Which kept a good twenty year plan from being implemented, and instead led to a twenty year quagmire with one of the two essentially being a failed state.
(Man, that’s a lot of essentially’s)
I don’t mean to defend either invasion as either good for the people or necessarily for American security. I just want to point out that W’s position was “go and break things then go home” which is about as imperial as a viking raid.
Are you kidding? Trump is incredibly consistent: he simply does exactly what he thinks would most benefit him, personally, and fuck everybody else. No more, no less.
It’s only not an “understandable philosophy” in the sense that it’s so vile and shamelessly greedy that philosophers are too embarrassed to formalize it (and Ayn Rand doesn’t count).
“I just do what I want” isn’t a philosophy, because it doesn’t give guidance as to what someone else should do . It’s just childishness.
Even Randism / Objectivism stretches selfishness into “rich people should do what they want”. Trump doesn’t even get that far
I’ll grant that the orange felon is consistently selfish, though.
Obama escalated Iraq and attacked Syria…
Military operations against Isis isn’t imperialism, and it is a long shot away from other presodents’ foreign policies.
The US’s foreign policy under Obama and Clinton was anti-imperalist.