What’s Trump’s Game? Trying to Save a Weakened US Empire
—Kim Scipes
Donald Trump has hit the ground running, asserting himself and his will to power to the maximum, starting before his second presidency began but accelerating upon his assumption of the Office of the Presidency, barely three weeks ago. Talking out of both sides of his mouth, and using Elon Musk as his hitman, Trump is following the principle “Chaos are us!” From talking about annexing Greenland to Canada to the Panama Canal and all of Gaza, much less obliterating agencies such as US AID (US Agency for International Development) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) while remaking the Department of Justice his satrapy, Trump has dazzled on-lookers with his audacity and lack of limits.
This is not being done to help working class voters, whose lives he promised to improve. It has been done to cause confusion, doubt and uncertainty among those who oppose him, and to scare the Democrats into acquiescence. Some have described this as “shock and awe”; I prefer the more specific name of “Blitzkrieg”; it wasn’t for nothing that Musk gave what appeared to be a Nazi salute to one of his recent audiences.
In an excellent encapsulation of the insanity of all this, Michael Albert wrote a piece titled “Appropriate Response,” https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/02/10/appropriate-response/,which appeared in Counterpunch on February 10. He captured the ranges of responses to Trump rather well. How to tell what is “real,” and what is “diversion”? Albert has been trying decipher what’s going on but hasn’t been able so far; yet he is far ahead of many others.
I think the message is understandable once it’s approached at the correct level.
Unlike most critics, I see the world as an integrated whole; I reject just reviewing the United States as an individual country. But it’s not enough to simply be aware of the US’ interconnection with other nations and their corporations, as evidenced by global trade: we must see the US elite’s historical determination since at least 1945 to dominate other countries. Therefore, I argue we need to see the United States as the homeland of the US Empire. The purpose of the Empire is to enable the US elites to dominate the world in every way, while making the individual and familial rich and their ilk even more insanely wealthy.
Once we become aware that the US ruling elites are operating on these lines—and Alfred W. McCoy in his brilliant 2017 book, Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power (Haymarket Books) claims that all serious US political analysts accept this understanding, with debates being over whether the US Empire will fall or if it can be maintained—then it behooves us on the left to drop our hesitancy and adopt this perspective of Empire.
What we are seeing in an inter-elite “debate” as to how to maintain if not expand the Empire.
To explain, however, we must take it out of the Democratic-Republican dichotomy; keeping it like this only confuses things. The Democrats and Republicans have traditionally been united in supporting the Empire in this post-1945 period, although specifics have varied by presidential administration. We have got to approach this with fresh eyes.
The reality is that the US Empire was established after World War II under President Harry S. Truman, beginning in 1947 with the Greek-Turkey crisis of that year, leading to the Marshal Plan that same year. The CIA was also established that year. Despite very little attention being paid in the electoral campaign to “foreign affairs,” Truman’s approach was “legitimized” by his victory in the 1948 presidential election over Thomas Dewey.
Now, the Empire was not launched “fully developed” out of the heads of Truman and top members of his administration but they had a framework from which the Empire has generally been constructed: blaming everything terrible on the then-existing Soviet Union and subsequently on “bad guys” US intelligence services have decided to demonize.
When this project began in the late 1940s, the US had almost unquestionable dominant power in the world, and especially outside of the Soviet Union and its Empire, which included Eastern Europe and after 1949, also China, at least until 1963. Besides the greatest Navy and Air Force in world history, the US Empire had the atomic bomb—two of which it had dropped on Japan—and the CIA. But, underlying all of this military, political, cultural (including scholarly), and diplomatic power, it had the strongest economy in the world. In the early 1950s, the US produced 50% of all the goods and services produced in the world! That means the US alone produced as many goods and services as the rest of the world combined! The US appeared to be all-but-unchallengeable outside of the Soviet Empire.
But what was also expanding was the concept of “third world” national liberation, as shown by success of the Chinese Communists in 1949 in seizing state power. This was projected by US politicians, and dutifully followed by the mainstream media, as “communism” seeking to conquer the world, and arguing that the US had the duty to fight it to keep the “free world” safe from this infestation. Thus, the US fought wars in Korea and later Vietnam (and elsewhere).
The reality of these upsurges around the world from below was not because of “the communists”—although to their credit, communists were often involved—but were people rejecting imperialism and how the imperial countries had oppressed their countries and exploited their peoples. (By 1915, every country in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East had been colonized by the imperial countries, including the United States; there were only three exceptions: Ethiopia, Siam-now Thailand, and Persia-now Iran.) These formerly colonized countries wanted their independence and freedom, and a growing number of their peoples were willing to fight for it.
Those anti-colonial forces often included labor movements. Workers in ports, on docks, in transportation, and mining industries often unionized and participated in anti-colonial liberation efforts. The American Federation of Labor (AFL), beginning in the very late 1890s-early 1900s under Samuel Gompers, began fighting against these efforts around the world, and especially in Latin America, as these workers’ efforts often targeted US investments in their respective countries; see his intervention in the Mexican Revolution about 1915, before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The AFL also became very adamant in opposing “communism” before World War II, while the CIO turned on its left in 1948-49. (The work detailing labor imperialism around the world has almost been ignored by most labor scholars. See my article, “The AFL-CIO Foreign Policy Program: Where Historians Now Stand” at https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/classracecorporatepower/vol8/iss2/5/.)
In addition to the national liberation struggles, the post-World War II economic recovery of countries such as the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Japan—each imperial countries on their own—came to increasingly challenge the economic dominance of the United States, first by competing against US corporations in their own countries, then by importing into the US, and then to setting up production facilities inside the US. The US lost its overall economic dominance in the world economy.
The US responded, especially to the national liberation struggles, with the CIA. Along with the US labor movement in some cases, the US overthrew democratically-elected governments in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Brazil (1964), and Chile (1973); they also tried in Venezuela in 2002, but failed. The US also supported dictatorships in a number of efforts to ensure that resistance would not emerge in the world.
In 1962, the US Government under President Kennedy created USAID, the Agency for International Development as a counterpart to the CIA. USAID was supposed to be the “good guys,” providing aid to organizations in the “developing world.” (The term developing world was utilized to avoid mentioning the reality that these countries had all been plundered relentlessly by imperial countries like the US, England, France, the Netherlands, etc.) What was hidden from Americans, for example, was that USAID would offer “aid” in exchange for support for US foreign policy, say in the UN, etc., but what must always be remembered is Robert Heinlein’s claim that “there is no such thing as a free lunch”: the US does little or nothing in the world that doesn’t directly benefit the US Empire. So, while USAID has provided health care and other humanitarian benefits around the world, its ultimate purpose is to protect the US Empire.
These programs collectively became known as “soft power” institutions. Basically, they were intended to get the US’ way without having to send in the Marines.
In 1983, after seeing the CIA get exposed for its operations around the world, and seeking new ways to continue its dominance, the Reagan administration created the NED, the National Endowment for Democracy. Based on the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute, the US Chamber of Commerce’s Center for Private Enterprise and the AFL-CIO’s “Solidarity Center”—each the international wing of their respective organizations—they have operated around the world to maintain the US Empire as an expansion of “soft power.” They operate under the concept of “democracy promotion,” but it is an attenuated, constrained type of democracy, not the one person, one vote form of popular democracy that most Americans recognize: it’s as phony as a $3 bill! And more dangerous!
The problem for the Empire is that escalating economic challenges from the other imperial countries as well as from some corporations from the formerly colonized countries have gutted the US economy. The ability to maintain the Empire became questioned.
By the late 1970s, this began getting serious and, in response, US corporations decided to leave the US and relocate major operations outside the US; and by the early 2000s, this definitely included China. Massive US investments, along from those of other imperial countries, has allowed China to become a serious economic competitor to the US, and the Chinese have used money derived from these investments to modernize their military, drastically reduce the poverty of their people, and expand foreign aid around the world to enhance their economic, political, diplomatic and military power.
In response, the US has been increasing its national debt; the US Government is now over $36 trillion in debt—which is approximately 120 percent of the entire US Gross Domestic Product—and this has grown from under one trillion ($909 billion or $ .9 trillion) in 1980 and continues to grow. In other words, as bad as our economy is doing over the last 40+ years, it is still doing as well as it has not because of solid economic growth but because of political leaders writing hot checks or checks with “insufficient funds.”
So, the economic and political challenges continue to take place despite the US spending millions if not billions of dollars in “soft power” operations around the world, thus showing the continuing contraction of the power of the US Empire; it’s dying.
With that understanding, what Trump is doing is clear: he is gutting soft power operations—why pay for them if they are failing?—and going back to “traditional” imperialism. This will be shown in the expansion of the US military, and the billions of dollars spent on war fighting capabilities while the US social order continues to disintegrate internally. In fact, the Republican Party (a wholly owned subsidiary of Donald Trump) just proposed increasing the US war budget—I refuse to call it “defense”—for this year by $150 billion, from $800 billion to $950 billion.
Where this becomes even clearer is that, as said above, the AFL-CIO has been conducting overseas operations for over 100 years to advance the well-being of the US Empire; its leaders believe that the US should rule the world, regardless of cost.
Yet, despite supposedly being funded my union members’ dues, during this period of “soft power,” the AFL-CIO has garnered over 90% of its annual foreign operations budget from the US Government with a back-of-envelope calculation of this totaling over $1 billion since 1983, all unmentioned and hidden from AFL-CIO affiliated unions and their members. It has proven itself as subservient to the US Government, and this has been developed from forces internal to the labor movement and not outside, such as the US Government, the State Department, the CIA, etc.; the AFL-CIO has not been forced to take these actions by outside organizations. And still, it has lost major funding that previously had been channeled through USAID or NED.
This is despite the efforts of the Solidarity Center, whose website proclaims (https://www.solidaritycenter.org/):
No other organization matches the breadth and depth of the Solidarity Center’s work
The Solidarity Center is a leading international, U.S.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing global worker rights. As a critical force in the global labor movement, our programs are instrumental in fostering fair economies and vibrant democracies.
And it brags about being active in over 60 countries and serving over 70 million people.
Yesterday, an inside source reported that, in response to the cuts in the budgets of USAID and NED, both have been funding conduits for the Solidarity Center, that the Solidarity Center had cut approximately 50 percent of its staff worldwide, somewhere around 400 people. Obviously, its’ work was not as important as they thought it was!
It is this attack on the AFL-CIO’s “Solidarity Center” and its operations that illuminate the Trump game most completely: even if one is serving the interests of advancing the US Empire, as the Solidarity Center has been, if it had been unable to run its operations efficiently and be able to prove desired results, it has been thrown in the trash heap.
The US Empire is failing. The US economy has been gutted, people’s living standards are falling, with homelessness and unemployment rising, and spending more and more money on the war machine will not improve things for working people. They need this money to go into education, a national health care system, investments in infrastructure, projects to mitigate the climate crisis, transfer into alternative energy systems, and support for good people around the world. Trump cannot overcome this.
His desperation shows.
We need to provide viable alternatives, such as telling the truth to our people.
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For a much deeper analysis, with stunning data on economic inequality in this country, see my “Special History Series: 40 Years of the United States in the World (1981-2023) at https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/special-history-series-40-years-of-the-united-states-in-the-world-1981-2023/. For a listing of all my writings, many linked to original articles, go to https://www.pnw.edu/personal-faculty-pages/kim-scipes-ph-d/publications/.
For an analysis by LEPAIO (Labor Education Project on AFL-CIO International Operations), of which I’m a co-founder, about the cutbacks against the Solidarity Center—over 400 people have already lost their jobs—go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqJ0aWKlGng; for a number of webinars about AFL-CIO operations around the world, go to LEPAIO’s website at https://aflcio-int.education/.
For two excellent reports on “soft power,” which came out after I completed my article, see “Far From Benign: The US Aid Industrial Complex” by Binoy Kampmark at https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/02/14/far-from-benign-the-us-aid-industrial-complex/ and “How the US Uses ‘Aid’ as Soft Power to Dominate the World” by Matt Kinnard and Rania Khalek at https://znetwork.org/zvideo/how-the-u-s-uses-aid-as-soft-power-to-dominate-the-world-w-matt-kennard/.