America First Isn’t Isolationism—It’s a License for Empire

America First Was Never “Leave the World Alone.” It Was Always “Put America Above Everyone Else.”

People keep saying Trump is “betraying” America First. I think he’s finally saying the quiet part out loud: America First doesn’t mean restraint — it means America's interests come first... including power and (increasingly) resource grabs.

There’s a version of America First that many people want to believe in though. The clean version. The “let’s focus on problems at home” version. The “no more wars, no more regime change” version that works with what America has and focuses on its people's lives.

But that’s not what the slogan actually promises.

America First is not a commitment to non-intervention. It’s a commitment to U.S. interests first - as the priority - and however the government defines those interests, and whatever methods it uses to secure them is up to those currently in power.

That difference matters, because it explains what we’re watching right now: not a betrayal of America First, but a harder, more explicit, and less ethical version of it.

The Key Misread: “America First” ≠ Isolationism

People talk about America First like it’s the opposite of empire: stop meddling abroad, stop forcing our worldview on other societies, stop policing the planet.

But the phrase doesn’t say any of that.

It says: America first. Not “America only.” Not “America stays home.” Not “America minds its business.”

It’s about priority — and in practice, that can easily become dominance, doing whatever is necessary to secure what U.S. leaders claim America “needs.” Security. Minerals. Oil. Strategic geography. A compliant hemisphere. A favorable global order.

If you listen to Trump’s rhetoric, this is exactly how he frames it: America has needs; America has interests; and America - like a bully taking someone's lunch money - will take whatever it requires to feel powerful.

That is not a deviation from America First. That is America First as an imperial doctrine.

The Trump Nuance: Power, Authoritarian Envy, and “The Biggest Stick”

Here’s the nuance Trump brings — not as an abstract ideology, but as temperament and instinct.

Trump has always had a soft spot for authoritarian tactics. He doesn’t seem to respect law so much as power. He watches leaders like Putin, the Saudi leadership, North Korea, China, Viktor Orbán, and a whole range of right-wing strongmen and he doesn’t recoil — he seems to admire the simplicity: the ability to just do what you want, to treat politics as force by dominance, to make the biggest stick into the ultimate moral argument.

So on the campaign trail, America First can sound like restraint — “we’re not going to waste money abroad; we’ll focus on ourselves.”

But Trump’s America First with full institutional control — a compliant Supreme Court, control over Congress, control over the executive — is something else. It’s not “we’re stepping back.” It’s “we finally have the clearance to step forward harder, bigger, bader.”

And that’s where the older American imperial scripts start to reappear without embarrassment: Manifest Destiny, Monroe Doctrine, and now what he calls the 'Donroe' doctrine the idea that borders, norms, and even law are negotiable when the U.S. decides something is in its strategic interest.

In that frame, “America First” becomes a survival-of-the-fittest worldview: I’m going to take what I think is mine, because I can.

Greenland: When “National Security” Becomes Territorial Hunger

Greenland gets talked about like it’s a joke — a weird Trump obsession, a headline generator. But it’s not funny when leaders frame land acquisition as a “security necessity” and treat sovereign territory like an asset on a balance sheet.

Call it strategic positioning. Call it Arctic defense. Call it mineral access. The logic is the same:

We want it, we need it, therefore we should have it.

That’s not a foreign policy of restraint. That’s a foreign policy of entitled domination.

For context and reporting: AP on the White House saying military action is “always an option” in Greenland, and ABC on why Greenland is strategically important.

Ukraine’s Minerals: Transactional Empire in a Suit and Tie

The U.S.–Ukraine minerals deal is often defended as “just economics,” or “reconstruction,” or “investment.” But the way it’s been publicly framed matters: as access to resources, and as a form of payback, and as a strategic guarantee for the U.S. (not just a solidarity guarantee for Ukraine).

Even if you think the deal is defensible, the underlying message is clear:

Support is conditional. Security has a price. Resources are the collateral.

That’s not “we’re staying out of other people’s affairs.” That’s not, this is the moral thing to do. Instead, it's “we’re involved — and we’re getting something concrete out of it.”

Background and structure: U.S. Treasury on the U.S.–Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund and CSIS on what the signed minerals deal does.

Venezuela: When the Resource Grab Stops Pretending

And then there’s Venezuela — the country with the largest proven oil reserves on the planet.

Whatever label people want to use — “strike,” “operation,” “intervention,” “regime change” — a U.S. military attack on Venezuela resulted in Maduro being captured and removed, and intense debate about legality, escalation, and U.S. motives.

And here’s the core point for me:

When the justification is openly tied to oil, “stability,” and U.S. control over outcomes - even the country itself - we are no longer watching soft-power influence or backroom leverage. We are watching something closer to the old force + resources + power model.

If you want to call that neocolonialism, fine. But the more direct and coercive it becomes, the more it looks like taking the material wealth of another country through direct power, and which isn’t even neocolonialism anymore. It’s OG, the original colonialism — resource extraction logic, backed by force, dressed up as national interest.

Reporting and fallout: AP live updates on the U.S. operation and casualties, Reuters on UN Human Rights Office criticism, and PBS on what we know so far.

“Do You Think Britain Colonized the World Out of Altruism?”

This is the part people don’t want to say plainly. 

Empires always have stories about themselves. They always claim moral purpose:

• We’re civilizing 'them'.
• We’re stabilizing 'them'.
• We’re bringing order.
• We’re protecting the world (and ourselves).
• We’re defending freedom...

Britain had its story. The U.S. has its story. But underneath the moral varnish, the throughline is usually the same:

resource access, strategic dominance, and the megalomania of being “the” global power.

So when people say Trump is “betraying” America First, I think they’re clinging to a comforting fantasy version of it — the fictious version that means humility, restraint, rebuilding at home.

But Trump’s version is brutally coherent:

American domination first — economically, militarily, culturally — because domination is framed as survival.

So What? Stop Laundering the Slogan

Here’s what I think needs to happen if we want to be intellectually honest (and politically serious):

1. Stop confusing “America First” with anti-war politics. They are not the same thing.
2. Name what this is: an imperial doctrine of entitled domination framed as “national interest.”
3. Reject the (fake)moral cover stories. If oil, minerals, and dominance are central motivations, say that out loud.
4. Push the debate onto law and legitimacy: sovereignty, international law, war powers, and the precedent this sets for every other major power watching.
5. Build a real alternative: a foreign policy rooted in restraint, reparative justice, and cooperation — not “dominance with better branding.”

Because if America First can mean “we take what we want because we say we need it and don't care about anyone else,” then it’s not a philosophy of national renewal.

It’s a permission slip for empire.

Sovereignty Without Permission: Why Latin America Needs their own version of 'NATO'

Sovereignty Without Permission: Why Latin America Needs its own version of “NATO”

Watching the latest coverage of Venezuela, one thing is impossible to ignore: the United States is no longer even pretending to operate within a rules-based international order. What we are seeing is not Cold War containment, not democracy promotion, not humanitarian concern. It is open imperial aggression—stripped of justification, framed as entitlement, and enforced through raw power.

For Latin America, this is not a rhetorical shift. It is an existential one. If the United States is willing to openly threaten, destabilize, or take control of a sovereign country in the region simply because it can, then no country stands outside that risk. And responding to this country by country—through negotiation, appeasement, or isolated resistance—is no longer viable. Latin America - or perhaps even the BRICS - needs its own defensive version of NATO.

When Legitimacy Collapses, Force Takes Over

We have seen this moment before.

After the Iraq War, governments the U.S. sought to discipline—Syria under Assad is an obvious case—responded by pointing directly back at the United States. You don’t get to lecture us about invasion, stability, or human rights anymore, they said. You invaded a country on false pretenses. You destabilized an entire region. You have riots, racial violence, internal breakdown, repeated cases of police killing innocent people in the streets, and unrest at home. You have lost the moral authority to police the world.

That response mattered because international power isn’t just military—it rests on legitimacy. Once legitimacy collapses, restraint disappears. And when restraint disappears, coercion is unmasked. That is where the United States now stands.

Venezuela as a Sovereignty Test Case

Venezuela is not just another “crisis.” It is a long-running sovereignty test case in the Americas.

Under Hugo Chávez, Venezuela became a symbol—messy, contradictory, imperfect—of refusal. Refusal to accept that Latin America exists inside a permanent U.S. sphere of influence. Refusal to treat U.S. capital and U.S. geopolitical priorities as the ultimate arbiters of legitimacy.

Under Nicolás Maduro, that refusal hardened into confrontation: sanctions, economic warfare, diplomatic isolation, regime-change theater, and now the steady insistence that Washington retains the right to decide who governs.

Oil matters, of course. But oil alone doesn’t explain the intensity of the response. What Venezuela represents is more threatening than a resource dispute: a precedent of disobedience.

If a Latin American state can be punished indefinitely for asserting political and economic independence, for siding with China, Iran, Russia, and BRICS members then sovereignty in the region is conditional—not guaranteed.

Trump and the End of the Cover Story

U.S. intervention in Latin America has always relied on narratives—communism, stability, corruption, democracy, drugs, humanitarian concern. These narratives were often cynical, but they functioned as cover. They preserved the appearance of principle.

Under Donald Trump, the cover story collapses.

Trump represents a post-ethics, post-facts style of power. Anyone who watched him operate in New York in the 1980s and 90s recognizes the pattern: he wants something, and the only real question is whether he can get it. If there’s a loophole, he uses it. If there’s leverage (no matter how devious), he applies it. Whether it is right or wrong is irrelevant. There is no higher code—only outcome.

In the past, that logic operated within local constraints: zoning boards, courts, regulators, press scrutiny. Now it operates at the level of the state itself, and with the unlimited backing of the world’s largest and most advanced military. This isn’t simply the familiar story of capital capturing the state—capital has always shaped power. What Trump adds is ideological and post-fact state capture: control over perception itself, achieved through media saturation, manufactured consent, and a cult of personality that becomes larger than evidence, institutions, or accountability; while fully exploiting the tools already built into a capitalocentric system.

Trump takes the approach that he doesn’t need to justify action before the fact. He acts, then manufactures consent afterward—through repetition, spectacle, and sheer narrative force (true or not). When that mentality is paired with the world’s most powerful military and information/social media infrastructure, the result is not policy. It is domination. This is not a return to Cold War discipline. It is something even more reckless.

When a Superpower Behaves Like a Rogue State

A rogue state is not defined by rhetoric or elections. It is defined by whether it recognizes restraints—whether it accepts limits on what it is entitled to do simply because it is strong. A state that asserts the right to destabilize governments, strangle economies through sanctions, manipulate internal politics, threaten takeover, or treat territory and resources as commodities when convenient is not behaving as a stabilizer. It is behaving as an aggressor. At that point, the language of “protection” no longer applies.

This is not simply about capital influencing policy—capital has always done that. What we are seeing now is ideological capture of the state; the capture of truth, legitimacy, and narrative authority. A cult-like personalization of power, amplified by media ecosystems that manufacture consent after the fact, not before. That combination is what makes the current moment so dangerous.

The Precedent Problem

Once the United States normalizes the logic that it can take, punish, or control states in its orbit because it wants to, other powers take note. If Russia can invade Ukraine and survive the consequences, why would China restrain itself over Taiwan? Why wouldn't the US go to Cuba, Colombia, and even Greenland next?

And if the U.S. starts treating sovereignty as negotiable—territory as something you can “take” if you’re strong enough—why would any rising power respect boundaries if the existing hegemon abandons restraint? This is how international order collapses—not through ideology, but through example. Venezuela matters because it signals whether sovereignty is real, or conditional on U.S. approval.

A Multipolar Opening—and a Collective Choice

This moment also arrives during a broader structural shift. We no longer live in a unipolar world where U.S. dominance is uncontested. The rise of BRICS, the diversification of trade and financial relations, and the erosion of U.S. moral authority have opened space—real space—for maneuver.

But space alone does not equal security. In a multipolar world, isolated states are easier to coerce, not harder. Independence cannot be exercised individually. It must be defended collectively. That is the central lesson Venezuela forces the region to confront.

Collective Defense Without Becoming the Empire

The conclusion is unavoidable: Latin America needs collective solidarity, collective defense, and collective red lines. Not as ideology. Not as provocation. But as survival.

This does not mean copying existing military alliances or reproducing imperial forms of power. But the logic of NATO—collective defense, where an attack on one is treated as an attack on all—does carry weight (see NATO’s Article 5, and NATO’s own note that for much of the Cold War its “mere existence” functioned as deterrence: a short history of NATO).

This is exacerbated by the complexity of modern “warfare”—ranging from military aggression to sanctions, covert destabilization, economic strangulation, narrative warfare, and the erosion of legitimacy—which makes the current shape of deterrence less obvious.

Still, what matters here is not the blueprint, but the necessity. Without collective capacity—political, economic, and defense—Latin American sovereignty remains theoretical. With it, intervention could become costly, contested, and uncertain.

Those questions—what forms deterrence can take, how sovereignty is defended without mirroring empire, how aggression is resisted beyond the battlefield—are to be worked out. They require sustained debate, regional leadership, and political courage.

But the first step is recognizing the moment for what it is. The mask is off. The threat is real. And standing alone is no longer an option…. as America is now policing the world as it polices at home—especially in racialized communities of color—where force is used first, accountability fabricated later, and facts are inconsequential. Call it a global extension of the logic that produced Derek Chauvin (and for broader documentation of policing and civil-rights concerns, see the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report on police use of force).

Further reading on long-run U.S. interventionism in the region: Oxford Research Encyclopedia: U.S. interventions and occupations in Latin America; Brown University: Understanding the Iran-Contra Affairs; International Court of Justice: Nicaragua v. United States (case materials).