Every president redesigns the Oval Office upon entry into it. In Donald Trump’s Oval Office hangs a portrait of the seventh president of the United States of America, Andrew Jackson. “Old Hickory”, as he’s sometimes called, is remembered for his policy of “Manifest destiny” — that it was America’s destiny to expand westward.
What this meant in practice was the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which forced tens of thousands of Native Americans off their land and led to the ‘Trail of Tears’. Jackson called this a “benevolent” policy, justifying White expansion across the American plains. It meant the expansion of slavery; Jackson personally owned 150 slaves and is said to have treated them with exceptional cruelty and violence even by the standards of the time. It meant the implementation of the 1836 ‘Gag rule’, designed to prevent anti-slavery petitions, targeting and silencing abolitionists, and directly violating the First Amendment.
Jackson was driven, in no uncertain terms, by his belief in White supremacy and the pursuit of American territorial expansion. His belief and his pursuit were coordinated and mutually justified.
This is the second time Trump has chosen to hang Jackson’s picture in the Oval Office. But it’s the first time that his Jacksonian pronunciations of American ‘territorial expansion’ have been so loud. He teased at taking Greenland during his first term but these claims were mostly dismissed as the feverish ramblings of a man out of touch with political reality. At his inauguration on January 20, they were reaffirmed in guttural tones.
I was in Washington on Inauguration Day. Amid the balls and pageantry celebrating the incoming administration, those who had tickets to the inauguration were disappointed as it was too cold to watch from outside the Capitol building; so thousands waited in line to enter the Capitol One arena while those turned away huddled in bars scattered across Washington’s downtown. In a bar on 14th Street, supporters cheered as Trump referenced promises to retake the Panama Canal and invade Greenland, which would violate NATO as Greenland is owned by allied Denmark.
This past week, Trump suggested that the US should occupy Gaza and build a glistening resort property — a new “Riviera of the Middle East”. Roughly two-thirds of the buildings in the enclave have been destroyed or damaged after 15 months of fighting that came to an end on January 19 when a ceasefire was announced. The debris produced is estimated to be 17 times the total debris produced from previous conflicts between Israel and Gaza since 2008 and may take up to 21 years to remove, let alone rebuild.
His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had also said last year that Gaza’s “waterfront property would be very valuable.” Trump has adopted that sentiment in full. In typical Trump-speak, he waved away the obvious potential violations of human rights and international law that have structured the world since 1945: “Everybody loves it.”
As ever, it remains unclear how serious Trump is or how he would implement such a plan. But even the suggestion is meant to terrify and terrorise Gaza’s already traumatised population. The suggestion of territorial expansion, under the watchful eyes of Jackson in the Oval Office, spells a changing of the American order not seen for nearly two centuries.
Of all the unhinged things Trump has said and done in the first few weeks of his second term, his suggestion of reviving American expansionism may be the most damaging, at least to the world order as it currently stands. It feels worthless to point out that it’s extremely dangerous, but what else is a member of today’s federation of Cassandras to do?
Not only is it dangerous but it is also senseless. To echo the points made by the former US assistant secretary of state for Europe, Daniel Fried, who reported takeaways from a recent trip to Denmark, one should consider Trump’s claims on Greenland. There are limited natural resources in Greenland. According to experts, no oil or gas has been found and their presence remains speculative, while processing capacity outside of China for Greenland’s rare earths and minerals is not sufficient. Then there’s the question of defence, but Denmark has consistently indicated that it would support increased US military presence on the Arctic peninsula. Denmark would also support American exploration of oil and gas.
And yet, Trump has indicated that if Denmark were to not capitulate to his territorial demands, he would retaliate with tariffs, which would place punitive pressure on Danish companies operating in the US, including major manufacturers such as Lego, Maersk, and the ascendant pharmaceutical company, Novo Nordisk, responsible for the fashionable weight-loss drug, Ozempic. These companies employ tens of thousands of US workers in manufacturing and tariffs would undoubtedly put Americans out of work. This is the exact opposite of Trump’s stated aims.
A world in which territorial expansion is an accepted norm is deadly. India surely knows this from its own history. A precedent set by the US may throw gas on the flame of long-simmering conflicting territorial claims among India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and China. These conflicts, even though they are mostly dormant, have led to dozens of lost and damaged lives. Too often in recent memory has all-out war on these borders seemed a possibility, only to be diffused by the international norm of protecting established territory and clear messaging from the rest of the world that violation of such a norm would not be tolerated. Without such safeguards, conflicts may escalate much more quickly and severely.
As Jackson peers from the Oval Office, he watches over uncertain times. That is probably what he would want, no doubt. But as the world watches, it becomes clear that the true cost of this new American expansionism may not be measured in miles or minerals but in the erosion of the very ideals that once made America a beacon, not a bully.
Carol Schaeffer is a journalist based in Berlin, Germany, and is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington D.C.
