The schema of Risk type board games is as follows: armies seize territory, territory yields money, money buys armies, A → M → A1. Following, no doubt, beliefs long held on the American right Trump is not straying far from just such a scheme for his interpretation of imperial status. American military dominance, as expressed in the worldwide system of American military bases, is the result, in this view, of conquest. Trump has connected this with American nagging for increased military spending by NATO countries and arrived at what amounts to a 2% tributum capitis payable, retroactively, to the imperial treasury.
Properly certified experts on the affairs of empire can scarcely find the words for their astonishment. There are such experts within the Trump entourage and, we are told, the President was fully briefed on the standard expression of policy in NATO forums. Trump wasn't having it. Our allies, preoccupied with the strategic maneuvering that they certainly recognize by now as necessary in light of the new American "condition", were, by turns, bemused and publicly cautious. As Blessed Reagan would say, "there he goes again".
In our modern world imperialism is neither expressed nor conducted so nakedly outside of private clubs and gun shows. There are ways to do these things which are effective, or were effective, and deniable. But Trump is only comfortable in private clubs that he owns. Occasionally convinced of the necessity of addressing a proper audience in a proper manner his rhetoric never, at those times, really escapes the gun show.
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