This article follows “Misinterpretations of the Evolution of the United States (1/2)”, by Thierry Meyssan, January 28, 2025.

The Return of Southernism

The United States was both Southern and Federalist. The Southerners having been defeated at the end of the Civil War, their victors imposed the myth according to which this war had pitted slaveholders against abolitionists. In reality, at the beginning of the war, both sides were pro-slavery and, at the end, both were abolitionists. The real issue of the conflict was whether customs fell under the jurisdiction of the states or the federal government.

The Jacksonians, precursors of the Southerners, wanted a “minimal federal state.” They thus sent many powers back to the states. This is what Donald Trump did during his first term when he supported sending the issue of abortion from the federal state to the states. Personally, he does not seem to have a strong opinion on this subject. His rival, Kamala Harris, was wrong, as a woke, to present him as a reactionary when half of the states respect women’s rights and authorize voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG). This is one of the main causes of her failure.

When Donald Trump announced the creation of a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), he intended to break up a federal administration that decided from Washington how each citizen should live even 2,500 kilometers away. True, he put a libertarian, Elon Musk, in charge, but he is not trying to slim down the federal government through Reaganite liberalism. He is going to dissolve thousands of government agencies, not because they are expensive, but because they are, in his eyes, illegitimate.

In some ways, the debate between southerners and northerners, between confederalists and federalists, is reminiscent of that between the Girondins and the Montagnards during the French Revolution. However, in the United States, the federated states had only a short history, while in France, the regions had a millennium of feudal history: returning power to the provinces has always been suspect for Paris of rehabilitating feudalism.

US expansionism

The United States, which only brought together 13 federated states at the time of its creation, now has 50, plus 1 federal district and 6 territories. From a US point of view (again, this has nothing to do with Donald Trump), it has not finished growing. Since the 1930s, it has aspired to absorb the entire North American continental shelf, including Canada, Greenland, Iceland and Ireland, as well as Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, not to mention the entire Caribbean [1].

In this national mood, Donald Trump announced in his inauguration speech that his country would henceforth call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” which he decreed a few hours later. In addition to the fact that U.S. citizens do not consider themselves as such, but as “Americans,” this word refers not to a local name, but to the coloniser Amerigo Vespucci.

He did not announce the annexation of Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal, as he had previously mentioned, but the colonization of the planet Mars.

However, contrary to comments in the European press, Donald Trump has never spoken of conquering the North American continental shelf by military force, even if he has mentioned the development of military bases in Greenland. As a Jacksonian, he is keen to buy these territories. It seems that he is currently “negotiating,” in a particularly aggressive manner, with Denmark, the cession of Greenland in exchange for a defense commitment.

Note that the Trump administration continues to threaten Cuba, towards which it has colonial ambitions, but not Venezuela, which is outside the North American continental shelf. Yet it calls both states “communist” and claims to treat them the same.

Given the ideological proximity between the two “chosen peoples,” the Trump administration approaches the question of Israel as if the Palestinians were Indians attacking stagecoaches. President Andrew Jackson decided to end the Indian wars by negotiating treaties with the various tribes. Very few were implemented, but his great “achievement” was with the Cherokees. He deported them south of the Mississippi. It turns out that, despite the bloody episode of “the Trail of Tears,” the Cherokees were the only Indians to respect these agreements. And today, they are the only tribe to have survived with their culture. They run a casino empire together. But applying the same method to the Palestinians cannot work: the Cherokees do not think they own “Mother Earth,” they can remain Cherokees wherever they are. The Palestinians, on the contrary, are attached to their Land and know that they will die, as a culture, if they lose it.

The substitution of trade for war

The last important point for Jacksonians: the substitution of trade for war. Donald Trump believes that most wars are useless massacres. They are only a means of manipulating the masses to achieve unspeakable goals. Since, in the end, it is often only a question of money, trade must be substituted for wars.

This doctrine works very well in most cases, however some wars have complex motives unrelated to commercial objectives. In these cases and in these alone, Jacksonism does not work.

This is for example the war in Ukraine. If one claims that Russia wants to annex its neighbor, one can negotiate with it something that satisfies its appetite without harming the integrity of this country. But if we believe that Moscow sincerely wants to end the “Great Patriotic War” (World War II), defeat the Nazis and the fundamental nationalists (the “Banderists”), then no trade negotiations will be able to stop it.

This is the Achilles heel of the Trump administration: the war in Ukraine has no economic motive, contrary to what Western politicians have claimed. Moscow is serious when it demands to denazify Ukraine. On this point, the United States will have to give in or confront it harshly.

If it gives in, a second problem will arise: Russia is a huge territory whose borders (more than 20,000 kilometers) no one can ensure the defense of. Therefore, Moscow traditionally demands that its belligerent neighbors be neutral. This is the meaning of the misunderstanding about NATO: Russia recognizes, through the Istanbul Declaration (2003), the right of each country to join a military coalition, but it refuses that this membership opens the way to the storage of weapons from third countries on its soil. However, during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, the United States, repeatedly warned, continued its pressure to include the various post-Soviet states in joining NATO, except Russia, which nevertheless asked them to do so.

The Jacksonians have no reason to continue the enlargement of NATO, but giving it up would imply that they abandon the expansionist policy of the Republican and Democratic parties to concentrate on their own: that of the North American plateau.

Concerning the trade war, non-Americans were shocked by the way in which President Donald Trump envisages customs duties. They think that these only make sense to protect economic sectors, while the Jacksonians think that they can also be used as political weapons.

For example, Donald Trump increased customs duties on Colombian products for a few hours to 25%, and he also threatened to increase them to 50% the following week if Bogota persisted in opposing the repatriation of its nationals. They were lifted as soon as Bogota repatriated its illegal nationals itself.

The same thing is happening with Canada and Mexico (15%), and with China (10%). The Trump administration, again, has no economic argument, but has a political one. It considers that China supplies chemical precursors to drug cartels and that Mexico and Canada allow these drugs to enter the United States.

As for the European Union, it is quite another matter. The Trump administration intends to even out its trade balance. It could impose 10% tariffs, but only on certain products. This is a conventional treatment of these duties, although it is difficult to understand how it fits with the commitments made when joining the World Trade Organization (WTO).