Trump’s New Brand of Imperialism

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

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4.2 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 12 January 2026

⏱️ 33 minutes

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Summary

U.S. intervention in other countries, whether overt or covert, is by no means new, and Daniel Immerwahr notes that the open embrace of expansionism by the President and associates such as Stephen Miller goes back to the nineteenth century. Immerwahr is a professor at Northwestern University and the author of the 2019 best-seller “How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States.” He discusses Trump’s disdain for international law; tensions between the U.S. and Russia and China; and the historical link between imperialism and appeals to masculine pride.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the political scene. I'm David Remnick.
0:08.3	Early each week, we bring you a conversation from our episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:16.1	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:23.5	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. So many things about Donald Trump's
0:30.5	presidency have been without precedent. But the U.S. seizing power over a smaller country,
0:36.9	well, there's a very, very long history of that.
0:38.9	The American record of military intervention and adventure overseas, it goes back well into the 19th century and forward to Vietnam, Iraq, and beyond.
0:51.5	In Venezuela, Trump has made no secret of his desire for oil revenues and who will be running the show.
0:58.0	So we are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.
1:08.0	Daniel Imervar is a professor of history at Northwestern and one of our most
1:12.6	interesting writers on foreign policy and American imperialism. His most recent book, a bestseller,
1:18.6	was called How to Hide an Empire. At the New Yorker, he's covered subjects from 17th century
1:24.2	piracy to the seizure of Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro. I spoke with him last week.
1:33.2	Daniel, let's start with the events of the past week. They're astonishing. In your 2019 book,
1:41.2	How to Hide an Empire, you wrote of the United States that even when it comes to oil,
1:46.9	flare-ups of naked imperialism have been rare and haven't ultimately led to annexations. You wrote this
1:53.9	during Trump's first term. Yeah. What's changed? Exactly that has changed. I described in the book the passage from a desire for annexation as a form of projection
2:09.6	of power, so claiming large territories, to a more subtle form of power projection, lots of military
2:16.6	bases all over the map, other ways of
2:18.4	exerting power. And it seemed to me at that time that the age of colonial empire was not totally
2:25.1	over. There are still some colonies, but, you know, really near extinction. And it is extraordinary
2:30.3	to hear Trump talk in a way that not only presidents haven't talked in decades,
	...

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