AT LEAST THE MARXISTS LOVE HIM:

To the frustration of those who benefit from it, Trump worked to unwind the American empire. Indeed, he has done more to restrain the US imperium than any politician in 75 years.

Within a few months of his arrival in the Oval Office, it became clear that Trump's seemingly preposterous rhetoric about ending America's "forever wars" wasn't a joke. Yes, he ordered a few missile and drone strikes here and there, but unlike all of his recent predecessors, he didn't start any new wars. Indeed, he wound down numerous small wars and negotiated a peace settlement in Afghanistan, even if the dirty work of the final withdrawal fell to President Biden.

By early summer 2017, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had become so worried that they held a meeting with Trump at the Pentagon at which they attempted to explain how America's informal empire functions. Trump didn't dig the presentation. Calling his generals "dopes and babies" and "losers," he demanded to know why the United States wasn't receiving free oil from the Middle East. "We spent $7 trillion; they're ripping us off.... Where is the fucking oil?" After the meeting, Trump continued to take an executive-branch-sized hammer to the elaborate political, diplomatic, economic, and military architecture of US global hegemony.

Trump's assault on the foreign-policy status quo is all the more remarkable for the near total lack of literature discussing it. Here is a very brief sketch of what he did: Trump ordered the withdrawal of one-third of all US military personnel from Germany, which is a central fulcrum for the entire American imperial project. The 40 German military installations housing US troops support American military operations in 104 countries and contain an estimated 150 nuclear weapons; among other projects, the military's Africa Command is headquartered in Germany. Trump also ordered the Pentagon to explore withdrawing troops from South Korea, which plays a similar role to that of Germany as a central, high-tech node of US power projection throughout the entire East-Asian region.

Trump likewise drew down the US military role in Syria, even as the foreign-policy establishment urged him to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. He withdrew troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, refused to escalate in Libya, and withdrew almost all US special forces from Somalia. In the rest of Africa, he mused about closing all US embassies--important nodes of Central Intelligence Agency operations.

On the economic and diplomatic front, Trump pursued similar anti-imperial policies. He repeatedly talked about withdrawing from NATO entirely. He insulted European leaders to their faces while he became buddies with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. He pulled the plug on the Trans Pacific Partnership, which was to have been the mother of all free-trade agreements and the centerpiece of the "pivot to Asia" sought by Barack Obama. He renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement after having first attempted to scrap the whole thing unilaterally.

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