The United States under President Donald Trump is again acting as an assertive imperial power, combining territorial ambitions, resource grabs and military pressure from Venezuela to Greenland.[1][2][3] At the same time, core democratic checks and balances inside the US are eroding, making it easier for the executive to pursue this expansionist course with fewer internal constraints.[4][5][6][7] For Europe and Canada, this mix of democratic backsliding and aggressive power projection transforms a traditional protector into one of the central security risks of the 2020s.[8][9][10][11]
Imperial turn in US strategy
Trump’s second-term National Security Strategy (NSS) openly re?centers the Western Hemisphere as privileged US sphere of influence and dresses this up as a 21st?century version of the Monroe Doctrine.[12][11][3] The document casts migration, ideological “enemies within” and Europe’s political course as security threats, giving the White House a broad pretext to intervene in neighboring states and to weaken the cohesion of Allied democracies.[12][11]
This imperial turn is not rhetorical only.
- In Venezuela, Washington has moved from sanctions to direct regime change by force, including the capture and removal of President Nicolás Maduro and open claims that the US will “manage” the country and its oil exports.[1][2][3]
- In Greenland, Trump links talk of purchase, annexation and military coercion with an explicit claim to control Arctic sea lanes and missile corridors, despite existing treaties that already allow extensive US basing on the island.[2][3]
Historically, this pattern echoes classic imperialism: the combination of military preponderance, economic leverage and legal reinterpretation to subordinate formally sovereign states. Britain’s dominance in Egypt after 1882 and the United States’ own interventions in Central America in the early 20th century showed similar mixtures of “protection,” debt control and de facto tutelage.[3][11] What distinguishes the current phase is that it unfolds inside a still formally rules?based international order, using language of security and democracy to justify actions that hollow out both.
Erosion of checks and balances
Research by democratic?governance institutes now places the United States firmly in the pattern of “executive aggrandizement” typical for backsliding regimes.[4][5][6][7] Trump’s administrations have systematically weakened counter?powers that could constrain foreign?policy adventurism.
Key elements include:
- Purging and politicizing the executive branch through dismissals of inspectors general, pressure on civil servants and tighter political control over agencies that historically enjoyed independence.[4][5]
- Undermining the autonomy of prosecutors and law enforcement by replacing critical officials, launching “weaponization” inquiries into perceived opponents and signaling that loyalty to the president matters more than professional standards.[4][5][6]
- Attacking independent media and civic organizations, shrinking space for organized opposition and thus weakening societal checks on the presidency.[4][6]
Constitutionally, Congress and the courts still exist as formal counterweights. Yet legal scholars warn that hyper?partisanship has turned many of these institutions into extensions of party strategy rather than neutral guardians of the constitutional order.[6][7] A Verfassungsblog analysis argues that the collapse of cross?party constitutional loyalty in Congress signals a “breakdown of the system of checks and balances at the heart of the U.S. Constitution.”[7]
In practice, this means:
- Presidential decisions on war powers, sanctions and covert operations face fewer bipartisan constraints. Emergency justifications and broad national?security language shield them from effective oversight.[4][6]
- Election?law changes and politicized election administration tilt the playing field, reducing electoral accountability for aggressive foreign policies.[6][7]
The result is a de facto concentration of power in the executive branch unprecedented in modern US history outside of large wars. Formal institutions remain, but their restraining function is greatly diminished, which makes the constitutional promise of balanced power increasingly nominal.[4][5][6][7]
Historical patterns of expansion
US foreign policy has long contained imperial elements, ranging from the Mexican?American War and the Spanish?American War to Cold War coups and interventions in Latin America.[11][3] Compared with those episodes, Trump’s current course stands out in three ways.
First, it combines classical territorial and resource ambitions with explicit ideological confrontation against allied democracies. The drive to secure Venezuelan oil exports under US supervision and to turn Greenland into a heavily militarized outpost fits older resource?and?position logics.[1][2][3] However, the NSS simultaneously frames the European Union’s internal orientation as a strategic problem and proposes to “cultivate resistance” inside EU states by supporting far?right, nationalist forces.[11] This blurs the line between external policy and deliberate destabilization of partners.
Second, Trump’s approach is more personalized and transactional than the institutionalized imperialism of the Cold War era. Previous administrations often clothed hegemonic policies in multilateralism and alliance language, relying on NATO and international institutions as legitimizing scaffolding.[11][13] Under Trump, threats to withdraw troops, tear up treaties or reinterpret core commitments like NATO’s Article 5 are openly used as bargaining chips against allies.[10][11][9]
Third, the imperial course now coincides with internal democratic decay. Earlier US expansion phases took place while domestic institutions were comparatively strengthening, as during the post?1945 consolidation of liberal democracy, or at least not undergoing rapid backsliding.[6] Today, the same executive that dismantles internal checks controls unmatched military power and nuclear weapons, raising the risk that external action serves the personal and political survival of the president rather than long?term US or allied interests.[4][5][6]
Threat to Europe and NATO
For Europe, the primary shift is that US power no longer reliably underwrites collective security but becomes a potential source of coercion, fragmentation and abandonment. Several recent developments illustrate this.
- Trump has repeatedly questioned the binding nature of NATO’s mutual?defense clause, most recently presenting Article 5 as a “matter of interpretation” rather than a firm obligation during travel to a NATO summit.[10] Analysts at a Canadian policy center warn that such statements should alarm European frontline states, given Russia’s ongoing aggression and the deepening Moscow–Beijing partnership.[10]
- The 2025 NSS signals the end of NATO enlargement and hints at a reduced US willingness to defend Europe, while simultaneously encouraging nationalist, EU?sceptical parties that Moscow also seeks to empower.[11]
- European governments and think tanks now openly discuss a future in which NATO may no longer be a credible framework for deterrence because Washington could block or dilute the Alliance’s response in a crisis.[8][13][9]
This does not mean an immediate US military attack on Europe. The threat is more structural:
- A US president who views alliances as transactional tools is more likely to use defense commitments to extract political or economic concessions, including on energy, trade or alignment with US positions on China and Russia.[9][11][13]
- The same president can, by action or by passivity, encourage authoritarian adversaries to probe NATO’s borders, calculating that Washington may refuse to respond robustly to limited aggression.[10][13]
The BBC and policy analyses describe a growing recognition in Europe that the US may no longer be a fully reliable ally at a time when Russia’s threat is rising.[8][11][13] As a consequence, EU states are ramping up defense spending and exploring more autonomous command structures, not primarily because of Russia, but because US unpredictability itself has become a top?tier risk.[9][13]
Strategic danger for Canada
Canada’s exposure is even more direct, because it is simultaneously bound to the US through NORAD, NATO and dense economic interdependence, yet increasingly targeted by Trump’s world?view as a free?riding neighbor in a contested Arctic.
A detailed Canadian policy analysis emphasizes three interlocking dangers:
- Trump’s willingness to hollow out Article 5 undermines the credibility of NATO protection for Canada’s northern flank, particularly in scenarios involving Russian activity in the Arctic.[10]
- The United States is signaling that it may reduce troops in Europe and shift resources to the Western Hemisphere while also engaging in a more transactional approach to Arctic security, potentially pressing Canada to accept expanded US basing, infrastructure and rules of engagement on Canadian soil or in shared waters.[10][3]
- Washington’s confrontation with China and Russia, combined with the Donroe Doctrine rhetoric, raises the risk that Canada becomes a staging area or bargaining chip in great?power competition rather than a fully sovereign partner in strategy design.[3][10]
Canadian experts argue that Ottawa can no longer rely on “iron?clad” US guarantees and therefore must both raise defense spending significantly and build coalitions within NATO—especially with France and Germany—to defend a robust, treaty?based interpretation of Article 5 that includes clear obligations for military assistance upon request.[10] The implication is blunt: the country historically most important for Canada’s security has become a major strategic uncertainty that must be hedged against.
From unreliable ally to systemic risk
When an internally constrained democracy projects power abroad, its allies can assume a baseline of predictability and legalism in foreign policy. In Trump’s United States, that assumption no longer holds.
- Democratic backsliding weakens mechanisms that would traditionally correct reckless foreign?policy adventures, whether through congressional oversight, judicial review or electoral punishment.[4][5][6][7]
- A foreign?policy doctrine that combines hemispheric domination, resource extraction and ideological interference in allied democracies removes the normative barrier between managing threats and exploiting vulnerabilities.[12][11][3]
- Public questioning of NATO’s core commitments and active encouragement of nationalist forces inside Europe transform US power from a stabilizing to a destabilizing factor in the Euro?Atlantic area.[8][9][10][11]
Historically, great powers with imperial ambitions and eroding domestic constraints have often become sources of systemic instability, even when they did not seek outright conquest of allies. Late?imperial Britain’s interventions in the Middle East and Suez or the Soviet Union’s behavior in Eastern Europe are reminders of how external overreach and internal rigidity interact.[11][13] The contemporary US under Trump shows analogous warning signs: a leadership ready to rewrite rules unilaterally, institutions less able to check it, and allies increasingly forced into defensive adaptation.
For Europe and Canada, this means that security planning must treat Washington not only as a partner whose support can no longer be taken for granted, but as a potential origin of crises—through abandonment, coercion or escalatory moves taken for domestic political reasons.[8][9][10][13] In that sense, the comeback of imperial expansionism in Washington, combined with the hollowing out of US democracy, makes the United States under Trump one of the most consequential strategic threats to the stability of the North Atlantic world.
[1] Analysis: Trump wants to take Greenland because it’s there https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/07/politics/trump-greenland-takeover-empire-venezuela-analysis
[2] Why Trump wants to take Greenland https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/06/politics/trump-greenland-takeover-empire-venezuela-analysis
[3] Trump can already expand Greenland military presence … https://fortune.com/2026/01/08/trump-military-presence-1951-agreement-greenland-denmark/
[4] U.S. Democratic Backsliding in Comparative Perspective https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/08/us-democratic-backsliding-in-comparative-perspective?lang=en
[5] [PDF] U.S. Democratic Backsliding in Comparative Perspective https://carnegie-production-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/files/Carrier%20Carothers-Democratic%20Backsliding-1.pdf
[6] Understanding democratic decline in the United States | Brookings https://www.brookings.edu/articles/understanding-democratic-decline-in-the-united-states/
[7] US Democracy Under Threat – Verfassungsblog https://verfassungsblog.de/us-democracy-under-threat/
[8] What Trump’s vision of the new world order means for Europe – BBC https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c041n3ng03no
[9] Trump’s NSS: A Warning to the World, a Threat to Canada https://www.policymagazine.ca/trumps-nss-a-warning-to-the-world-a-threat-to-canada/
[10] How Trump Views NATO’s Core Obligations Should Deeply … https://www.cips-cepi.ca/2025/08/06/how-trump-views-natos-core-obligations-should-deeply-concern-canada-and-europe/
[11] Breaking down Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy | Brookings https://www.brookings.edu/articles/breaking-down-trumps-2025-national-security-strategy/
[12] [PDF] National Security Strategy | The White House https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf
[13] [PDF] NATO’s Uncertain Future – Bibliothek der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/international/22159.pdf
[14] Trump’s quest for Greenland could be NATO’s darkest hour https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/dispatches/trumps-quest-for-greenland-could-be-natos-darkest-hour/
[15] US intentions towards Greenland threaten NATO’s future. But … https://www.chathamhouse.org/2026/01/us-intentions-towards-greenland-threaten-natos-future-european-countries-are-not-helpless
