25 June 2025, NIICE Commentary 11350
Abhimanyu Bhardwaj
For decades, it has been believed—or at least vigorously propagated—that the United States functions as a global force for good. The narrative of American exceptionalism has served as the ideological backbone of U.S. foreign policy since the Second World War. As Charles Krauthammer asserted in Things That Matter, “If someone invades your house, you call the cops. Who do you call if someone invades your country? You dial Washington... In the unipolar world, the closest thing to a centralized authority, is America—American power.” In this view, the U.S. was not just a superpower, but a custodian of the liberal international order, wielding both soft and hard power under the guise of benevolent leadership. In essence, U.S. hegemony was justified not as dominance, but as moral responsibility.
However, the emergence of Trumpism has exposed the underlying hypocrisy of this mythos. Far from being a rupture, Trump’s foreign policy represents a discursive shift rather than a strategic one. Washington’s longstanding practices of coercion and regime destabilization were no longer disguised in multilateral language. Instead, threats became explicit. Recently on his Truth Social platform, he infamously wrote: “We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding. We are not going to take him out (kill!)—at least not for now… Our patience is wearing thin.” Minutes later, he followed up with “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” Such rhetoric marks a shift from hegemonic subtlety to imperial bluntness.
Yet, the global response to this shift has been largely mischaracterized. Analysts and commentators often interpret this phase as a deviation from the norm, when in fact it is a continuation of American hegemony, only without the pretense. The discomfort with Trump’s rhetoric stems not from a divergence in objectives but from the collapse of the moral framing that once legitimized those objectives. What is now perceived as American brazenness is not a new pathology but a long-concealed ethos now laid bare.
The Myth of Benevolence: Origins and Persistence
After the end of the Second World War, and more definitively following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States emerged as the uncontested hegemon in international politics—a position it sought not merely to occupy, but to justify through the moral language of benevolent hegemony. The transition from the Monroe Doctrine’s selective isolationism—which nonetheless included aggressive interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean—to the Truman Doctrine’s active internationalism marked a paradigmatic shift. No longer content with hemispheric dominance, the U.S. rebranded itself as the indispensable guarantor of a liberal world order. This was codified in its Cold War posture: to act as the global “policeman against communism”, shielding “free peoples” from the forces of totalitarianism.
Whether it was military intervention in Korea (1950), the prolonged war in Vietnam (1955–1975), or the covert destabilisation of governments in Latin America, the United States consistently justified its actions as being in service of a greater global good. Later interventions followed the same template but adapted to new enemies: the Global War on Terror post-9/11, airstrikes in Pakistan and Afghanistan to the full-scale invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. Each of these operations was justified in the name of international security and democracy promotion.
Yet, this belief system rests on a deeply selective historical memory and a well-calibrated machinery of soft power. American benevolence has been less a reality than a strategically cultivated myth, sustained through Hollywood narratives, public diplomacy, and an overwhelming dominance in global media discourse. As Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky famously argued, the U.S. has long relied on its ability to “manufacture consent”—not just domestically, but globally.
The Reality Behind the Rhetoric: A Legacy of Interference and Intervention
U.S. foreign policy, far from being grounded in idealism or the spread of universal values, has consistently been guided by the imperatives of national self-interest and strategic dominance. While the rhetoric of democracy and freedom has remained central to its public diplomacy, American actions have often contradicted these lofty pronouncements.
As political scientist Dov H. Levin meticulously documents, between 1946 and 2000, the U.S. engaged in at least 81 instances of electoral interference globally—ranging from covert funding of political parties to disinformation campaigns and more overt interventions. One of the most well-known examples of this interference was in Russia, where the U.S. played a decisive role in shaping the 1996 re-election of Boris Yeltsin. The manipulation was so overt that Time magazine ran a cover story hailing U.S. advisors who “saved” Russia’s democracy—oblivious to the irony of undermining democratic sovereignty in the name of democracy.
At the same time, the United States has demonstrated an institutional inability to confront its own atrocities, both past and present. It remains the only country in history to have used nuclear weapons in war, targeting the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945—an act that resulted in the deaths of over 200,000 people, mostly non-combatants.
American alliances have not been contingent upon human rights or democratic values, but upon strategic utility. The apartheid regime in South Africa, military dictatorships in Pakistan, and the occupation policies of Israel have all enjoyed unwavering American support, despite widespread international condemnation.
Perhaps one of the most chilling articulations of American disregard for accountability came in 1988, when the U.S. Navy cruiser USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655, a civilian passenger plane, killing all 290 people on board. In response, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush unapologetically stated, “I will never apologize for the United States. I don’t care what the facts are.” This chilling statement encapsulates the pathological confidence with which U.S. foreign policy often operates—prioritizing strategic impunity over moral responsibility.
Enter Trump: The Naked Emperor
Donald Trump’s “America First” doctrine did not signify a radical departure from the traditional goals of U.S. foreign policy—namely, the preservation of global primacy, and protection of strategic economic interests. Rather, it marked a rhetorical rupture, wherein long-standing imperial objectives were no longer obscured by the language of liberal internationalism.
His infamous statement in October 2019, regarding U.S. troops guarding oil fields in Syria—“We're keeping the oil. I’ve always said that. We want to keep the oil.”—was not a strategic misstep but an unvarnished declaration of resource extraction as policy. While prior administrations had pursued similar objectives covertly, Trump simply made them explicit. Likewise, his staunch defense of arms deals with Saudi Arabia, even after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, highlighted the transactional logic that undergirds U.S. alliances.
In the context of the Russia-Ukraine war, Trump once again broke with diplomatic precedent. During a televised event alongside Senator J.D. Vance, he openly chastised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, insisting that Kyiv express more gratitude for U.S. assistance. Trump’s accusation that Zelensky was “gambling with World War Three” by rejecting ceasefire proposals brokered by Washington was not just a deviation from the established tone of alliance solidarity—it was an explicit indictment of U.S. aid as conditional patronage, not principled support.
Yet the central point remains: Trump is not an anomaly. He is the logical extension of a system that has long prioritized power over principle, merely articulated with unprecedented bluntness. His administration made explicit what others had executed discreetly—supporting coups, arming despots, and enforcing sanctions that disproportionately harmed civilian populations. In that sense, Trump didn’t break the system—he simply broadcast it.
Abhimanyu Bhardwaj is a Senior Research Scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
