Donald Trump’s offhand suggestion that the U.S. should take control of Gaza was met with the kind of international disbelief usually reserved for dictatorships and dystopian fiction. Yet, here we are, again, parsing the words of a man who treats foreign policy like a real estate deal. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Britain is fumbling its way through another colonial reckoning, as it finally agrees to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, all while ensuring that Diego Garcia, a key U.S. military outpost, remains under Western control.
These two stories may seem unrelated, but they both expose a deeper issue: the persistence of imperial thinking in the modern world.
Trump’s Gaza: A Throwback to Colonialism
Let’s be clear, what Trump proposed was not just reckless, it was dangerous. The idea that Gaza could somehow be a U.S.-controlled territory, with its people forcibly relocated, is nothing short of a modern-day Nakba. Aram Fischer put it bluntly on the podcast, “There’s no other way to interpret moving a set of people off their land under threat of death—that’s ethnic cleansing.” But beyond the moral outrage, Trump’s comments also reveal a fundamental shift in American foreign policy.
For decades, the U.S. at least maintained a veneer of respect for international norms. Now, Trump has stripped away that façade, operating in a world where might makes right, alliances are transactional, and human rights are an inconvenience. As Logan Phillips observed, “The thing about Trump is he doesn’t have inconsistency. He just doesn’t care about human rights. It’s not a sometimes thing. It’s a never thing.”
That should terrify everyone. It’s one thing when a global superpower bends international law to suit its interests. It’s another when it openly disregards it. The question now is, how will the world respond?
Britain’s Colonial Legacy: The Chagos Conundrum
While the U.S. flirts with 19th-century imperialism, Britain is still cleaning up its own mess from that era. The agreement to return sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius is a long-overdue step, but let’s not pretend it’s a purely altruistic move. Britain is keeping Diego Garcia for military purposes, and as Leah Brown made clear, the financial negotiations behind the scenes have been less about justice and more about a price tag, “If Britain were truly committed to righting the wrongs of empire, it wouldn’t be haggling over a lease price for Diego Garcia.”
And then there’s the political backlash. The right-wing outrage in the UK isn’t about the Chagos Islanders or the principles of decolonization, it’s about power, control, and the ever-present fear that Britain will be asked to make more amends for its colonial past. The same crowd that’s suddenly obsessed with the Chagos Islands would have struggled to find them on a map a year ago. As Michael Donahue put it, “We’re into Obama tan suit, Dijon mustard levels of outrage.”
The Bigger Picture
Both of these stories, in their own ways, highlight the fraying of the international order. The world is in the middle of a power realignment, and old imperial habits die hard. The U.S. is abandoning its pretense of global leadership in favor of brute-force politics, while Britain is still dragging its feet when it comes to decolonization.
But here’s the problem, these approaches are unsustainable. Trump’s America-first, rule-breaking foreign policy might appeal to his base, but it isolates the U.S. and weakens its global standing. Similarly, Britain’s reluctance to fully reckon with its colonial past only ensures that these issues will keep resurfacing.
As Leah Brown aptly put it, “The only thing Trump is offering is chaos, and that chaos is intentional.” The question now is whether the world will allow itself to be dragged into it.
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