Abhijit Bhattacharyya | Will America On Rampage Define The New Global Era?
The American logic is fiery and threatening. “Either submit to US domination or face American boots on your icy ground”. “Don’t forget we can walk into any part of the globe unhindered and unchecked. We bought Louisiana from the French not out of generosity, but to deny space and control of the Mississippi to Paris. We backed Panama to secede from Colombia to take over the Panama Canal in future. We purchased Alaska to keep Russia far away from our proximity”
On July 4 this year, the United States of America will celebrate 250 years of its independence. A few weeks earlier, on June 14, 2026, America’s sitting President, Donald Trump, will turn 80 years old.
By now, the world has become familiar with the propensity of the maverick US President to create havoc, with spectacularly surprising or abysmally shocking acts, without caring for any kind of diplomatic niceties or courtesy. All now wait with bated breath for the next display of “shock and awe”. To suggest that both the West and the rest are mortally scared of what the world’s new “supercop” will do is an understatement.
It seems almost certain that 2026 will witness more turbulence than the tempestuous 2025. America’s 47th President began early, on January 3, with naked aggression in Venezuela, kidnapping its President, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife, and jailing them both in New York. One can expect more such US actions on land, sea and in the air, with international laws and rules brazenly flouted.
In Mr Trump’s own words, who describes himself as an “embarrassingly honest” man, his only guardrail for seizing more global power is “my own morality”, and openly declared that he “does not need international law” to dictate his foreign policy. “I do not need international law. Only my own morality, my own mind can stop me.” How many heads of state in history have had the “courage of conviction” to tell the truth and reveal his secret ambition and thoughts, however unscrupulous it may be, in public?
Mr Trump resorted to gunboat diplomacy with forced entry into a sovereign Venezuela to capture a head of state, President Nicolas Maduro, and his wife, put them on trial in New York, and, more important, seize and control the world’s largest oil reserve in Caracas. And if that were not enough, POTUS, as a ceaseless profit-seeking real estate developer, considers virtually all territories beyond the United States open to be explored and expropriated if necessary for constructing golf greens, casinos and spas for cash and wealth, all in pursuit of his declared ambition to “Make America Great Again”.
The entire world is fair game. Someone, somewhere in the White House is pouring over critical geographical maps and demographic data in search of fresh fields to conquer. The second year of Mr Trump’s second term will focus on land, resources, choke points and islands to enlarge US territory and multiply the locations for the Stars and Stripes to dominate, and particularly in the Western Hemisphere, and from pole to pole, to checkmate rivals such as China, which has been steadily creeping into the Western Hemisphere with its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
With Greenland as a target, Europe is in his cross-hairs. If he’s successful, POTUS will then dominate the geography of a “Super Continent” of 35 countries’ 1.2 billion people, and $46 trillion in GDP (of which the US alone contributes $34 trillion). That’s not all. While Americans and Europeans had till recent times focused on liberalisation, globalisation and privatisation, with comparatively free movement of capital, goods and labour, Mr Trump’s MAGA movement has given a rude jolt to Geneva-headquartered World Trade Organisation (WTO), of 166 member-states. Thanks to MAGA, WTO is, for all practical purposes, virtually defunct and a shadow of its past self. Mr Trump’s US is determined to tear up all multilateral treaties, protocols and conventions, and it’s not just about trade. His naked play to grab Greenland from Denmark, and convert it into America’s 51st state, has the Old Continent floundering, not quite knowing what to do.
The Middle East has not been left out. Mr Trump’s proposed new Board of Peace for Gaza is all set to be a new centre for global domination. It’s not just about the Palestinian territories though that may be where the action starts. The Washington media has started spelling out the details of the new Trumpian doctrine. The American logic is fiery and threatening. “Either submit to US domination or face American boots on your icy ground”. “Don’t forget we can walk into any part of the globe unhindered and unchecked. We bought Louisiana from the French not out of generosity, but to deny space and control of the Mississippi to Paris. We backed Panama to secede from Colombia to take over the Panama Canal in future. We purchased Alaska to keep Russia far away from our proximity”.
The 27-member European Union, most of whom are also key US allies in Nato, is on notice. President Trump, weeks after celebrating his 80th birthday, is going to preside over the 250th anniversary festivities of the United States with a victory trophy in the form of land, as a gold medal around his neck, so what if he was denied the Nobel Peace Prize.
Today’s all-round muscular policy and deployment of America’s armed forces at the drop of a hat, from Tehran to Caracas, and Baghdad to the Caribbean Sea, opens up potentially another lucrative opportunity for US arms manufacturers, who have been itching for major US-initiated conflicts to sell weapons. The way Mr Trump is personally endorsing the corporations’ products reminds one of President Gerald Ford’s determined personal push to Europe to purchase US F-16 fighter jets made by General Dynamics in 1975. That was the landmark beginning of a US President’s role as a “salesman” or arms lobbyist.
The US President’s 2026 agenda is growing by the day. First is the land acquisition in Greenland, Panama, Colombia and Cuba. Then the repeat bombing of Tehran, to be followed by punishing India with further tariffs to compel New Delhi to fall at Washington feet. Today’s US is determined to take full advantage of the five million Americans of Indian origin to be used as hostages in a diplomatic power play. In the Pacific too, China’s Belt and Road Initiative must be curbed, hence the renewed American naval buildup. And finally, Russia, with all its success, failure, setbacks or counter-offensive, is still a distant destination for the mercurial POTUS, which makes his desperation more troublesome for both sides of the Atlantic. So, while Mr Trump may try his best to stop or even start a war, the planet still remains too large for a single individual to conquer, curb, command or control. While Mr Trump can certainly win tactical battles against the weak and tiny nations, he may be less successful with strategic conflicts encompassing the globe.
The writer is an alumnus of the National Defence College, New Delhi. The views expressed here are personal.
