The true Yankee imperial face

Nationalism depends on mythologies to exist. In the case of the USA, its founding myth has always been that of its exceptionalism. They were the nation founded on the dream of the pursuit of freedom and, later, democracy; a country so exceptional that, in order to preserve itself, it would oblige its rulers to promote its model around the world.

Thus, although one of the fundamental tenets of American foreign policy is George Washington's farewell address, in which he urges his followers to stay away from the world's problems, over the years the US would gradually, but consistently, adopt an expansionist and interventionist project around the world.

While in its initial expansion across the American continent the US would have relied on the missionary logic of Manifest Destiny, in general, unlike the European neocolonial powers of the late 19th century, where cultural (or civilizational, in the language of the time) superiority was presumed, imperialism yanque Beyond North America, it exhibited a more decentralized logic and a more mercantile bias.

It is clear that in both cases, eugenic theses about white racial superiority were also fundamental. The expansion of the United States, first in the Caribbean and Central America, then in the rest of the hemisphere, and then throughout the globe, tended, however, to occur more through economic and religious entrepreneurs (pastors and missionaries), whose presence would later require the powerful North American state to come to its defense, more or less explicitly.

Thus, as the country consolidated itself as a major industrial power, the self-proclaimed "land of the free" would establish informal imperial arrangements for itself, either in the form of protectorates or through customs control of Dollar Diplomacy throughout almost the entire Caribbean and Central America in the first decades of the 20th century. Of course, at times the direct involvement of state coordination would be more evident, as would be the case in Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Panama.

But, in general, the focus was on supporting the international activities of their companies, something that often required the landing of Marines, but without the striped and starred flag (Star spangled banner) would come to replace local national symbols once and for all.

Upon assuming the position of the world's leading military and economic power in the immediate aftermath of World War II, American imperialism – previously ashamed and always camouflaged by the argument that, unlike European imperialism, its interventions were always temporary and well-intentioned – developed new, more sophisticated and complex ways of exercising its global hegemony. Going beyond what it had previously proposed, but not implemented, with the League of Nations, the US established a new way of coordinating its actions around the world through arrangements that were, in theory, universal and egalitarian – although always unequal and compromised by the dynamics of the Cold War – that would guarantee (or at least purport to guarantee) that the world's designs, therefore relevant to all, required the participation (albeit not equitable) of all the nation-states thus constituted.

Even though it was an instrument of North American interests, especially of the economic logic of its liberal capitalism, what would come to be known as the UN System represented something unique, built on the ruins of the greatest conflict of all time, by allowing the notion of national representation with formally isonomic bases to expand to all corners of the planet.

Thus, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, actors from what is now called the Global South managed to coordinate themselves in order to promote theses not previously envisioned by their creators, such as cooperation for development, technology transfer, and even the pursuit of a new global economic order.

And even though such demands never came to fruition, the mere fact that they were even possible to include on the agenda represented something new and potentially transformative. And that is exactly what Donald Trump will now structurally prevent, violently if necessary.

In concrete terms, by eliminating resources for promoting diplomatic actions around the world, promising to recover old, or acquire new, colonial possessions, breaking agreements and treaties, and especially promising to resolve problems through force and coercion of the strongest, Donald Trump not only completely reverses the way American hegemony has functioned for the last 80 years, but also re-establishes imperial diplomatic patterns from the 19th century, where, in plain Brazilian Portuguese, "might makes right, and those with sense obey."

This eliminates all pretensions of promoting the supposed American democratic logic around the world, and lays bare the most explicit features of the true Yankee imperial face.

This development is doubly tragic because it diminishes the spaces for negotiation and multilateral dialogue at a time when these are more necessary than ever in order to try to address the urgency of the climate crisis, as well as the growing inequality and political polarization.

That key states, such as Brazil, manage to coordinate efforts with democratic peers in the Global South in order to contain the spread of the aggressive and overbearing logic expressed by American neo-fascism, which definitively negates the thesis of its civilizational and diplomatic exceptionalism.

*Rafael R. Ioris is a professor in the Department of History at the University of Denver (USA).