Groucho Marxism

If 2026 has had a theme so far, it has been US imperialism. The year has already seen US interventions in Venezuela and Iran, and threats of future interventions elsewhere, such as in Colombia and Greenland. Many seem to be surprised by these events, but they really shouldn’t be. The US has a long history of meddling in other countries’ affairs, often with disastrous consequences for the people living in those countries. Anyone who thought Trump’s ‘America first’ policy meant discontinuing this practice was deluding themselves. Indeed, the reason the US does this is precisely because it is putting its own interests first, above the interests of other countries. Or more accurately, the ruling class in the US is putting its interests first, above the interests of everyone else.

The US has intervened militarily in dozens of countries throughout its history, with estimates varying from around 70 nations to over 100, depending on your definition of military intervention. This policy has its roots in the so-called Monroe Doctrine, first articulated by President James Monroe in 1823. The Monroe Doctrine is a US policy position that opposes any foreign interference in the Western Hemisphere, and effectively established the Americas as a the US’s sphere of influence by asserting that any new European attempts to colonize or intervene in there would be seen as hostile acts against the US itself. It was later interpreted to justify US military intervention in Latin America as the nation gained power.

The first such intervention was the Mexican-American war of 1846-1848, which the US started by invading Mexico. Although ostensibly a border dispute, the US’s real aim was to fulfil it’s ‘manifest destiny’: the 19th-century belief that the US was divinely ordained to expand across the North American continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. This war marked the beginning of US military imperialism. However, although the US won the war easily, it had its fingers badly burnt as the conflict subsequently led to the American Civil War (see my previous blog post on this for more details). As a result, the US did not attempt any serious military interventions again until 1898. This time, it invaded and occupied Spanish-controlled Cuba, leading to the Spanish-American war.

Again, the US won this war easily. However, unlike the Mexican-American war half a century prior, this time the US profited significantly from its victory. The peace treaty saw Spain cede control over its colonies of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the US, and to Cuba effectively becoming a US puppet. This emboldened the US, and between 1898 and 1935 it launched several interventions in Latin America, resulting in significant US military presence in Cuba, Honduras, Panama, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. By the time WWII broke out, the US was effectively in control of most of Central America and the Caribbean. At this stage, though, the US had largely limited itself to intervening militarily in its own back yard.

That all changed after WWII. The US formed North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949 to resist socialist expansion, and over the next 40 years supported resistance movements and dissidents in dozens of socialist countries around the world. Although this period became known as the ‘cold war’, during this time the US took part in two ‘hot wars’, in Korea (1950-1953) and Vietnam (1955-1975). It is often said that the latter war was a disaster from the US’s point of view. But both wars achieved the primary aim of the American ruling class, which was to stop the spread of socialism. Largely as a result of these and other interventions, we now live in a world where the idea of socialism taking hold globally seems like an impossibility to most people.

Anyone who thought that the end of the cold war and global decline in socialism would result in a corresponding decrease in US imperialism would have been sorely mistaken. US imperialism has continued unabated since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the attention shifting away from preventing the spread of socialism and towards protecting American oil interests. This has resulted in many military interventions in oil-rich nations, particularly Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Libya. The recent interventions in Venezuela and Iran are a continuation of this policy of oil imperialism that has now been going on for over 30 years. An invasion Greenland would also represent a continuation of this policy.

However, a US invasion of Greenland would also mark a qualitative shift from previous interventions. Greenland is owned by Denmark,  a NATO member, so an attack by the US on Greenland would represent an attack by one NATO member on another, which would be unprecedented. In theory, other NATO members would be obliged to defend Greenland against such an attack, which would entail them going to war with the US. In practice, no national government in its right mind would even consider doing such a thing, as war with the US would mean almost certain annihilation. However, a US invasion of Greenland might mean the end of NATO and a significant weakening of relations between the US and Europe. That would only be a good thing in my view.