Territorial Ambitions Support Power Grab and Impending National Demise
By Tom Kagy | 05 May, 2025

Autocrats use territorial aggression to neutralize institutions that can oppose their quest for absolute power and set their nations up for self-destructive conflict.

Donald Trump's refusal to rule out military force to take Greenland in a recent interview with NBC News shows he's oblivious to the biggest lesson of 20th-century history: our civilization has entered an age in which imperialism is self-destruction.

During the past century this lesson was illustrated by Germany (twice), Japan, the Soviet Union, even Argentina's petty effort at imperialism toward the insignificant Falkland Islands, leading to the collapse of the ruling junta.

In this century China appears to be setting itself up for a ruinous conflict with its aggression in the South China Sea, the Yellow Sea, and provocative naval maneuvers around Taiwan.  These acts have done two things that always precede national collapse: boost Xi Jinping's absolute control over China's government and provokes rival nations, especially the US, to prepare for a war against the aggressor.

Xi's aggressive tactics to buttress flimsy, not to say downright mythical, claims to well over a million square miles of international waters in the South and East China Seas  include building artificial islands, blasting Filipino and Vietnamese fishing boats with water cannons and treating the fishermen like captured enemy combatants.  

Aggressive acts toward neighbors are the usual strategy of autocrats and would-be emperors.  It's the best way to strengthen real-time working control over the military and give the uneducated working class — the rabble most easily roused during perceived "national security threats" — the kind of jingoistic pride that builds mindless loyalty to the leader. 

These tactics lead to military and economic conflict that ultimately bring about the aggressor's demise.  In this globalized age of many developed nations, aggressive nations, even those who perceive themselves to be superpowers, are inevitably brought to heel through international cooperation.  We are all witnessing how Putin's aggression toward Ukraine, a conquest he expected to pull off within a few weeks, has turned into a loss-making slog against international opposition.  He has essentially set Russia up for decline and himself up for ouster.

Sadly the US is now following in China's footsteps toward defeat and decline thanks to a freakish election decided by economic and social insecurity among the working class.

Even before taking office Trump has sounded off about absorbing Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal.  More recently he has talked of taking control of Gaza.  He has even posited a "national security threat" posed by the millions of undocumented migrants providing essential labor for industries that produce food, housing and care for the elderly.

Of course this jingoism has been used to bolster Trump's claim of a "national security" justification for usurping legislative powers and imposing what amounts to martial law over trade, universities, the media, immigrants and naturalized citizens and anyone seeking to travel outside the US.  He has even taken a page out of Xi's playbook by threatening to jail citizens who express opposition to his policies!

His unilateral imposition of pointless tariffs on all trade and an insane level of tariffs on imports from China amount to an undeclared economic war against the world and a semi-declared war against China.  His action shows a lack of understanding of how dependent the US — a post-industrial nation with an aging population — is on foreign-born labor, trade with China, and on foreign tech talent, to maintain our high standard of living.  

So we now have a scenario out of some dystopian movie in which two would-be emperors have set themselves up for a clash that will reduce both nations to smoking rubble, not necessarily from pushing the nuclear button but from sustained stubborn resistance to rationality.  

Of course there is the likelihood that Trump and his people will rethink their untenable stance before it's too late to turn back.  And he has shown signs of softening his stance on tariffs.  But his insane effort to destroy all opposition in academia, the media and among the general population points to the need for righting the ship of state with a Constitution-based action by the legislative branch.