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.