(C) OpenDemocracy This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Trump buying Greenland: US neocon war on terror project [1] [] Date: 2025-01 Donald Trump's controversial statements this week about the US claiming territories like Greenland and the Panama Canal zone are no doubt absurd. Can Russia now claim to have been conned out of selling Alaska to the US nearly 200 years ago? Can France make a similar claim over the 1803 Louisiana Purchase? Would Mexico like to take California and Texas back? And yet, Trump is doing more than merely pre-bargaining scene-setting here – and there is recent historical precedence for taking him a lot more seriously than we are. We’ve been here before with the US’s post-9/11 neoconservative dream and failed war on terror. During Clinton’s second term in the White House in the 90s there was a strong view on the political right, especially in the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, that the US was missing a trick in world affairs. The Soviet Union had collapsed, leaving just one world superpower. Surely this meant that the US had the God-given task of leading the world to a great new American century? To further this aim, the Project for a New American Century was set up in 1997. It was seen by its supporters as rooted in US values and espousing market fundamentalism across the world in the true neoliberal mould. Moreover, this was just the right time, with the 2000 presidential election beginning to loom on the political horizon. Get our free Daily Email Get one whole story, direct to your inbox every weekday. Sign up now There was certainly a religious dimension to the idea, perhaps dating right back to the Puritans and the idea of America as the “city on the hill”. After all, that was not too far away from the Victorian view of the British Empire with its global civilising mission. The PNAC certainly attracted attention, though its appeal was far from universal, but Bush’s administration was formed to include a clutch of neoconservatives and assertive realists, especially when it came to foreign and security policy. They included Vice-President Dick Cheney, with his chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby. At the Pentagon there was the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and with him was a key advisor, Paul Wolfowitz. Finally, and keeping an eye on the State Department, there was John Bolton. For all of them, along with scores of others across the administration, PNAC had a strong following. The extent of the shift was seen in the very early months. The new administration moved rapidly towards developing a national missile defence even if it meant withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and risking a new arms race. There was opposition to UN conventions on the prevention of terrorism and the initiation of negotiations to prevent the weaponisation of space as well as a markedly critical view of UN discussions on the control of light weapons. Although it might have seemed a specialised matter, one change in US Policy was a negative approach to plans to strengthen the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC). That had been designed to ban the development of a whole range of weapons but from the start it had lacked any mechanism for policing it. There was plenty of support to improve it but there was also opposition, not least from US biotech industries, so the chance was lost. Perhaps the most controversial change of all was the new administration’s decision to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocols on climate change, a move that was strongly opposed in Europe where many states continued with the treaty while ignoring the Bush stance. Overall, what was clear was that from then on the US would only consider multilateral agreements where they were clearly in US interests. It was a stance described by a leading neoconservative writer, Charles Krauthammer, five months into the new administration in June 2000. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/trump-buy-greenland-panama-us-neocon-war-on-terror/ Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/