O ne of the challenges of comprehending the current moment in the United States is that it requires knowledge of a different set of historical references than the usual ones. We are accustomed to seeing presidents summon the aura of Ronald Reagan on the right and John F. Kennedy on the left. Most references, sensibly, are to the high point of America's military and economic might in the decades since the end of the Second World War. Yet Donald Trump harks back to an earlier moment, indeed to an earlier century. Trump's most common reference is to President William McKinley, inaugurated in 1897 and not particularly well-known even in the US itself. Explaining the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Trump's favorite allusion has been to the Monroe Doctrine – updated to the “Donroe Doctrine” – first articulated in 1823 under President James Monroe, a leader even less famous than McKinley. “We were at our richest from 1870 to 1913,” Trump said last year. It was a dubious claim. After all, most striking about the 19th-century talk is that America was not number one at that time but one empire among many. Understanding why the 19th century has become a usable past is essential to making sense of the present. Read more Subscribers only William McKinley, US president from 1897 to 1901, the model for the ‘golden age' extolled by Donald Trump One of the first things these evocations can teach us is that it has always been misleading to refer to American policy before the Second World War as “isolationist.” Isolationism suggests a desire to contain power within the nation's own borders and a distaste for overseas intervention. Yet the period when America was known as isolationist before the First World War was also the relative high point of its involvement in Latin America and the Caribbean. In the 19th century, the US intervened dozens of times in the Americas, including many regime changes. It also annexed whole territories. The figure of McKinley celebrated by Trump is known for adding Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and Hawaii to the footprint of what had become by the time of his assassination in 1901 an overseas empire alongside the better-known Spanish, British, Portuguese, and French. Isolationism is an odd term for such a policy. McKinley is also known for his tariffs, which are similarly misunderstood. Tariffs never meant a withdrawal into economic autarky or national self-sufficiency. The high points of US protectionism were also times of surging volume in American foreign trade. The nineteenth century was also far from a time of isolation in terms of immigration. It was actually the high point of people moving to the country, but it was also a time when certain people, based on race – Asians in particular – were targeted for exclusion. The 19th century shows us that apparently contradictory things can coexist: an isolationist policy that nonetheless takes military action overseas; a protectionist policy that nonetheless remains heavily economically engaged globally; and an open-door immigration policy that nevertheless draws a firm line against certain foreigners. Such contradictions have cut through the period of globalization even at its more recent peak. But Trump has shifted the emphasis in important ways, flipping the narrative from one of openness that conceals aspects of exclusion to one of exclusion that conceals ongoing interdependence. He may yet be caught up in this attempted somersault. Newsletter LE MONDE IN ENGLISH Sign up to receive our daily selection of “Le Monde” articles translated into English. Sign up In grand strategy terms, Trump's cabinet is summoning the sphere-of-influence politics that characterized the late 19th century, a time when geographers coined the term “geopolitics” to understand the relation between land, sea, and military force. Certain conservatives always looked back fondly at the 19th-century moment when competing empires held a balance of power without any single one dominating. The Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt talked about what he called “great spaces” (Großräume), where states could exercise regional dominance and govern vassal polities without interfering with each other's respective demands. Column Subscribers only ‘The raw and brutal display of American power in the Trump II era is finally opening the eyes of Washington's allies' As Schmitt saw it, the advantage of this system was that it prevented anyone from speaking in the language of the universal, and thus from making territorial claims that were potentially limitless. Eschewing the language of the planetary or the global – or even the international – was for Schmitt the first step toward a sustainable global order that would not be constantly threatened by the expansionary efforts of a hegemon, whether it be one who spoke the language of world peace, free trade, or human rights. The far-right world-order thinking of philosophers from the Russian Aleksander Dugin to the Frenchman Guillaume Faye is based on this rejection of the universal in favor of territorially-segmented identitarian demands – from a globe under American supervision to a multipolar world of non-interfering regional hegemons. It seems paradoxical that US leaders would themselves embrace this demotion of status but this seems to be what is happening. They have convinced themselves that the post-Second World War arrangement from which they profited so greatly was in fact an asymmetrical system of parasitism from which they have only suffered. Discarding the international system assembled after 1945 – the US has withdrawn from 31 United Nations agencies in the first week of the new year alone – is a bold and reckless gamble when the fantasy destination is a world where they were one power among many. Nevertheless, the current administration seems to have convinced itself that the only way back to greatness is through a return to a lesser regional supremacy. The action against Venezuela alongside ongoing threats to its neighbors seem designed to signal that this withdrawal – like its predecessor in the 19th century – will not mean military restraint. Yet whether the would-be vassals in the US sphere of influence conclude that they have no choice but submit to the hemispheric hegemon is an open question. Four Mercosur countries (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay) recently signed a major agreement with the European Union, and China overtook the US as South America's leading trade partner several years ago. The world may have the same physical dimensions as 150 years ago but technologies of transportation, information and communication have made it de facto much smaller. Read more Subscribers only Trump's brute force will not drive China out of Latin America It is also much more interdependent. An urban US population of nearly 350 million, accustomed to endless consumer variety, requires more from the world's factories and supply chains than the largely poor and rural population of 76 million with which it entered the 20th century. We have heard much about the return of a new Gilded Age in the US in terms of wealth inequality and we are now seeing a Gilded Age foreign policy to match. But the United States may yet find itself the master of a great space of one. ¶Quinn Slobodian is a Canadian historian specializing in global history and a professor at Boston University. He is the author of Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (2018) and Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy (2023). Quinn Slobodian (Historian) Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version. Reuse this content O ne of the challenges of comprehending the current moment in the United States is that it requires knowledge of a different set of historical references than the usual ones. We are accustomed to seeing presidents summon the aura of Ronald Reagan on the right and John F. Kennedy on the left. Most references, sensibly, are to the high point of America's military and economic might in the decades since the end of the Second World War. Yet Donald Trump harks back to an earlier moment, indeed to an earlier century. Trump's most common reference is to President William McKinley, inaugurated in 1897 and not particularly well-known even in the US itself. Explaining the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Trump's favorite allusion has been to the Monroe Doctrine – updated to the “Donroe Doctrine” – first articulated in 1823 under President James Monroe, a leader even less famous than McKinley. “We were at our richest from 1870 to 1913,” Trump said last year. It was a dubious claim. After all, most striking about the 19th-century talk is that America was not number one at that time but one empire among many. Understanding why the 19th century has become a usable past is essential to making sense of the present. Read more Subscribers only William McKinley, US president from 1897 to 1901, the model for the ‘golden age' extolled by Donald Trump One of the first things these evocations can teach us is that it has always been misleading to refer to American policy before the Second World War as “isolationist.” Isolationism suggests a desire to contain power within the nation's own borders and a distaste for overseas intervention. Yet the period when America was known as isolationist before the First World War was also the relative high point of its involvement in Latin America and the Caribbean. In the 19th century, the US intervened dozens of times in the Americas, including many regime changes. It also annexed whole territories. The figure of McKinley celebrated by Trump is known for adding Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and Hawaii to the footprint of what had become by the time of his assassination in 1901 an overseas empire alongside the better-known Spanish, British, Portuguese, and French. Isolationism is an odd term for such a policy. McKinley is also known for his tariffs, which are similarly misunderstood. Tariffs never meant a withdrawal into economic autarky or national self-sufficiency. The high points of US protectionism were also times of surging volume in American foreign trade. The nineteenth century was also far from a time of isolation in terms of immigration. It was actually the high point of people moving to the country, but it was also a time when certain people, based on race – Asians in particular – were targeted for exclusion. The 19th century shows us that apparently contradictory things can coexist: an isolationist policy that nonetheless takes military action overseas; a protectionist policy that nonetheless remains heavily economically engaged globally; and an open-door immigration policy that nevertheless draws a firm line against certain foreigners. Such contradictions have cut through the period of globalization even at its more recent peak. But Trump has shifted the emphasis in important ways, flipping the narrative from one of openness that conceals aspects of exclusion to one of exclusion that conceals ongoing interdependence. He may yet be caught up in this attempted somersault. Newsletter LE MONDE IN ENGLISH Sign up to receive our daily selection of “Le Monde” articles translated into English. Sign up In grand strategy terms, Trump's cabinet is summoning the sphere-of-influence politics that characterized the late 19th century, a time when geographers coined the term “geopolitics” to understand the relation between land, sea, and military force. Certain conservatives always looked back fondly at the 19th-century moment when competing empires held a balance of power without any single one dominating. The Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt talked about what he called “great spaces” (Großräume), where states could exercise regional dominance and govern vassal polities without interfering with each other's respective demands. Column Subscribers only ‘The raw and brutal display of American power in the Trump II era is finally opening the eyes of Washington's allies' As Schmitt saw it, the advantage of this system was that it prevented anyone from speaking in the language of the universal, and thus from making territorial claims that were potentially limitless. Eschewing the language of the planetary or the global – or even the international – was for Schmitt the first step toward a sustainable global order that would not be constantly threatened by the expansionary efforts of a hegemon, whether it be one who spoke the language of world peace, free trade, or human rights. The far-right world-order thinking of philosophers from the Russian Aleksander Dugin to the Frenchman Guillaume Faye is based on this rejection of the universal in favor of territorially-segmented identitarian demands – from a globe under American supervision to a multipolar world of non-interfering regional hegemons. It seems paradoxical that US leaders would themselves embrace this demotion of status but this seems to be what is happening. They have convinced themselves that the post-Second World War arrangement from which they profited so greatly was in fact an asymmetrical system of parasitism from which they have only suffered. Discarding the international system assembled after 1945 – the US has withdrawn from 31 United Nations agencies in the first week of the new year alone – is a bold and reckless gamble when the fantasy destination is a world where they were one power among many. Nevertheless, the current administration seems to have convinced itself that the only way back to greatness is through a return to a lesser regional supremacy. The action against Venezuela alongside ongoing threats to its neighbors seem designed to signal that this withdrawal – like its predecessor in the 19th century – will not mean military restraint. Yet whether the would-be vassals in the US sphere of influence conclude that they have no choice but submit to the hemispheric hegemon is an open question. Four Mercosur countries (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay) recently signed a major agreement with the European Union, and China overtook the US as South America's leading trade partner several years ago. The world may have the same physical dimensions as 150 years ago but technologies of transportation, information and communication have made it de facto much smaller. Read more Subscribers only Trump's brute force will not drive China out of Latin America It is also much more interdependent. An urban US population of nearly 350 million, accustomed to endless consumer variety, requires more from the world's factories and supply chains than the largely poor and rural population of 76 million with which it entered the 20th century. We have heard much about the return of a new Gilded Age in the US in terms of wealth inequality and we are now seeing a Gilded Age foreign policy to match. But the United States may yet find itself the master of a great space of one. ¶Quinn Slobodian is a Canadian historian specializing in global history and a professor at Boston University. He is the author of Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (2018) and Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy (2023). Quinn Slobodian (Historian) Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version. Reuse this content Read More
January 12, 2026