August 25, 2025
There was hope among Trump watchers that, as President, he would not seek war. He would put America first, bring troops home, and strengthen the US through economic liberty and even - wait for it - sound money! The most cynical never believed it; Trump haters in both parties didn't want it, but there is no doubt he lied to the MAGA crowd over and over again. American First got Donald " war hero" Trump, as he claps for that king of war heroes, Bibi Netanyahu.
Part of the problem is academic. The US is an imperial nation, late and deep in its financial, military and demographic collapse. But to admit this is to get ahead of ourselves as Americans. Imperialism as a concept is a legacy of ancient Rome, pre-enlightenment Europe, Marxist and Leninist language we read about somewhere and it wasn't us. MAGA voters and most other Americans have been reluctant to use the term, and that's understandable.
Americans have been habituated to believe we are just spreading good government around the world, and that we don't profit from the empire. 55% of Americans today were ten or younger when Nixon unleashed money-printing and took the US off the Gold Standard. Most of us have known nothing but unconstrained US fiat manufacture and annual inflation far higher than the government admits. We all accept as normal what was once unimaginable: the massive and immeasurable depredation of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness that has occurred because of the 1913 Federal Reserve Act.
What we need is peace and a real republic; to get there we need a better explanation of the philosophy of American foreign policy. For years I thought neoconservatism explained a lot, but that label is really just a play on neoliberalism on one end, and a placeholder for Israel First in all things, foreign and domestic, on the other. Neither of these labels is useful to the average American, and beyond that, they are divisive, arrogant and off-putting depending on where you sit on the spectrum of demographics and politics. We have seen the term isolationism similarly used, not to explain a preferred approach to dealing with the world, but to politically divide and conquer. Realism and its variants sound good, if you are over 60, but it is quite vague in a practical sense as to what is allowed. As we were told in the Melian Dialogue, "The strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must." Realism is Gaza for the past two years, and Palestine since 1948. Realism is an American elite and military consortium that has the power to make permanent war for profit while 95% of America begs for peace.
Trump is a blessing of sorts, because he is the blurter-in-chief; he says the quiet part out loud, as so many have observed. This helps educate American, and we need that education. Word salads from the incoherent Kamala Harris, or another endless weekend with Biden, would have failed to provide this necessary education for the precious generations who will receive what's left after American imperialism retracts, condenses, collapses, and is finally abandoned.
The American government seeks war for the sake of war. Not conquest, not expansion of territory, not actual ownership of assets classes like oil or minerals or water, but rather control at the margins for enrichment of the governing class. It is a pirate's code, without the fiscal conservatism and wise risk management of a real pirate. It is neo-Vikingism, without the erudition or the ability to induce great fear and trembling. It is George III's " seventy years of war" driven by high taxes, debt and endless war. It is war for the sake of business, and the business is war.
US "foreign policy" follows a simple rule: No war may be ended without a new one of equal or greater value being initiated.
The Cold War, which was really a series of hot "little wars" everywhere, suddenly collapsed in 1989. The prevailing "war for the purpose of war" crowd on left and right in Washington was unprepared. Whatever could it do? Well, they did this: The American George I invaded Iraq - starting a long war in the Middle East that has yet to end; his Arkansan successor served the cause in expanding NATO and conducting the inconceivably monikered Humanitarian War in the former Yugoslavia; George II oversaw a massive increase in war globally - creating Israel's necessary regional disruptions and a permanent global war on "terra"; Obama's malleable continuation the above, then Trump's first term where the unprofitable Afghanistan war was ended even as Trump eyed new regional conflicts and set the stage for more NATO expansion. Afghanistan was a two decade war that would never have happened except for CIA and western central bank dependence on opium money, and Israel's need for the destruction of " seven countries in seven years ." That war was made pointless - not because the Taliban had outlasted US and NATO expeditionary forces - but because fentanyl and other cheap opioids, and aging boomers now on Medicare, had already removed the profit from that war. Biden's sloppy withdrawal from Kabul was possible and predictable, only because of another long-brewing NATO war against Russia, this time in Ukraine.
This brings us to Trump 2.0, associated with military claims to Greenland and the Arctic, NATO expansion to the Pacific, airtight Netanyahoo-ism with billions more to Israel this year, a courtesy billion dollar overnight US attack on Iran, air superiority exercised over Mexico, and a pending invasion of Venezuela. Oh, and 6 "new" peace deals in 6 months. The 7th, planned for Ukraine, is being ended on the battlefield by Russia, but the pattern remains - no US war "investment" ends without a new investment in war to ensure continuity of the US banking, industrial, and pro-Zionist war-class. The framework can seamlessly interchange a global war on terror with a global war on any and all who reject the purchase-power deadweight of the US dollar. This war is evenly applied to BRICS, or to average young Americans who'd like to buy a brick house someday.
The Mises Wire published an incredibly timely piece by Joseph Solis-Mullen reminding us of Charles Beard's proposals for a wise US foreign policy - and reminding us of libertarian realism, that correctly views all foreign policy as " essentially a function of domestic policy."
It features David Gordon's talk on Beard's foreign policy at a recent Mises Institute conference, and re-introduces the idea of continentalism as an ideal foreign policy.
How strange it is that Trump's America First-ism echoes Beard's continentalism, with common sense ideas for seeking American peace and prosperity, and yet how absolutely impossible it is for Trump, or anyone else to shift, shape or end DC's " Devil Theory of War."
We have inherited a US foreign policy - and an explicit domestic policy - of war for the sake and profit of war industries, central banks, and ruling elites.
Fighting men from Smedley Butler to Dwight Eisenhower to JFK to Tony Agular, and millions in between have seen it clearly for exactly what it is - and they have told us honestly. Americans today have all we need to end the cycle, and I believe we are on the cusp of permanently burying this foreign and domestic policy of destruction and deprivation. Turn away from Washington, withdraw your consent to the state, and grab a shovel!