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Until recently, Donald Trump was consistent about this: The time for the United States to police the world, enforcing laws and norms, was over. \u201cWe are going to take care of this country first before we worry about everybody else in the world,\u201d he told The New York Times in 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe more and more are not wanting to be the policemen of the world,\u201d he said during a press conference with Nigeria\u2019s president in 2018. \u201cWe\u2019re spending tremendous amounts of money for decades policing the world, and that shouldn\u2019t be the priority.\u201d During the 2020 campaign, he often included a line in his stump speech complaining that American troops had spent 19 years serving as \u201cpolicemen\u201d in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Trump also rejected the idea that the United States had any kind of moral standing to criticize, much less regulate, the behavior of other nations. When Bill O\u2019Reilly objected to Trump\u2019s warmth toward Vladimir Putin in 2017, the president scoffed: \u201cThere are a lot of killers. You think our country\u2019s so innocent?\u201d<\/p>\n
If anyone gave the U.S. the benefit of the doubt then, Trump has squandered the possibility now. In his second term, Trump has returned the nation to its role as global policeman\u2014but this time, it\u2019s as the world\u2019s dirty cop, running rackets and thumbing its nose at the law even as it cracks down on alleged criminality by other countries\u2019 leaders. He launched air strikes on Christmas Day in Nigeria, the very country he held up eight years ago as one where the U.S. shouldn\u2019t be involved. Days later, U.S. troops snatched the Venezuelan autocrat Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and his wife in Caracas. Trump told the Times yesterday that the U.S. could spend years controlling Venezuela. This week, the Trump aide Stephen Miller all but announced plans to annex Greenland.<\/p>\n
Although the idea of a global policeman originated as a metaphor, the White House has made it literal. Take the boat strikes in the Caribbean, where U.S. law-enforcement agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration have long operated. But whereas previous administrations have used law-enforcement agencies to police drug trafficking, the Trump administration has chosen to rely on the armed forces. He has instructed them to conduct lethal, extrajudicial, and likely illegal drone strikes, even as the administration argues that it need not notify Congress of the actions under the War Powers Resolution because U.S. troops are not in danger. As for the raid in Venezuela, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also described Maduro\u2019s capture as \u201ca law-enforcement operation,\u201d telling George Stephanopoulos, \u201cWe didn\u2019t occupy a country. This was an arrest operation.\u201d<\/p>\n
This takes some intellectual contortions to accept. Although officials say that the Justice Department wrote a memo justifying the action legally, the administration has not publicly shared the rationale, and international-law experts have almost unanimously agreed that the U.S. violated international law to arrest Maduro this way. In domestic policing, Trump has long espoused what I call \u201clawless order\u201d\u2014the idea that those in power can break the law in order to achieve their idea of society\u2014and the president is now extending that to the rest of the world.<\/p>\n
This is only one of the inconsistencies that characterize Trump\u2019s approach to law and order. A justice system depends on the idea that laws and enforcement are reasonably consistent and predictable, but Trump offers none of that. On the one hand, he has arrested Maduro and brought him to the U.S., and plans to try him for drug trafficking. On the other, he last month pardoned Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez, the former president of Honduras who had been convicted and imprisoned in the United States on very similar charges. He has correctly labeled Maduro an \u201cillegitimate dictator,\u201d but he has made the self-described Salvadoran dictator Nayib Bukele a key ally and welcomed him to the White House. Trump isn\u2019t the best avatar of legal probity himself: He was convicted of 34 felonies in 2024, and escaped trial on several more serious ones only by virtue of being elected president.<\/p>\n
What Trump is doing in Venezuela and beyond isn\u2019t enforcing norms and ensuring security. It\u2019s finding a way to make a buck. If you listened to Trump closely when he was rejecting intervention in the past, he hinted at this possibility. Although he complained about American troops being dispatched around the world, he often added that the problem was that the U.S. didn\u2019t receive any direct, immediate monetary compensation for it. (The Iraq War was a mistake, he argued, not because it failed to achieve geopolitical change but because the U.S. didn\u2019t take Iraq\u2019s oil.)<\/p>\n
Now he\u2019s out to get his cut. He has openly acknowledged that the U.S. got involved in Venezuela because of oil, and the administration has declared its intent to control the country\u2019s petroleum industry \u201cindefinitely.\u201d In the Arctic Circle, he\u2019s attempting to establish a protection racket, arguing that Denmark doesn\u2019t have the means to defend Greenland. Nice island you got there. Be a shame if something happened to it. <\/p>\n
The U.S. has, in the past, made common cause with dictators when expedient, overthrown democratically elected leaders when nervous, and stayed out of righteous causes when doubtful of the upsides of getting involved; presidents have made moves to boost the U.S. economy or their own political prospects. The war hero Smedley Butler famously accused the U.S. government of racketeering in 1935. But even purported deference to a higher principle constrained and directed the shape of global involvement. Trump has abandoned that pretense, and no one dares to stop him. He is getting his way right now, but the long-term effects may be dangerous: When a dirty cop walks the beat, he encourages bad behavior in his precinct rather than suppressing it.<\/p>\n
Related:<\/p>\n
Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:<\/strong><\/p>\n Today\u2019s News<\/strong><\/p>\n Dispatches<\/strong><\/p>\n Explore all of our newsletters here.<\/em><\/p>\n Evening Read<\/strong><\/p>\n Illustration by The Atlantic<\/p>\n An Underappreciated Variable in Sports Success<\/p>\n By Alex Hutchinson<\/p>\n Chief among the burdens weighing upon the weary sports parent\u2014worse than the endless commutes, the exorbitant fees, the obnoxious parents on the other team\u2014is the sense that your every decision has the power to make or break your child\u2019s future. Should your 11-year-old show up to her elementary-school holiday concert, even if it means missing a practice with the elite soccer team to which you\u2019ve pledged 100 percent attendance? What if this turns out to be the fork in the road that consigns her to the athletic scrap heap? \u2026<\/p>\n Rationally, stressing out over missing a single practice is ridiculous. Believing that it matters, though, can be strangely reassuring, because of the suggestion that the future is under your control. Forecasting athletic careers is an imperfect science: Not every top draft pick pans out; not every star was a top draft pick. Unexpected injuries aside, the imprecision of our predictions is usually seen as a measurement problem. If we could only figure out which factors mattered most\u2014how to quantify talent, which types of practice best develop it\u2014we would be able to plot athletic trajectories with confidence.<\/p>\n Unless, of course, this tidy relationship between cause and effect is an illusion. What if the real prerequisite for athletic stardom is that you have to get lucky?<\/p>\n Read the full article.<\/p>\n More From The Atlantic<\/em><\/p>\n Culture Break<\/p>\n Harald Giersing \/ Heritage Images \/ Getty<\/p>\n Explore. A theme keeps popping up in relationship advice, Julie Beck writes: Don\u2019t vent so much.<\/p>\n Read. The philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein\u2019s latest book explores a new understanding of human beings\u2019 most basic desire, John Kaag writes.<\/p>\n Play our daily crossword.<\/p>\n PS<\/p>\n Over the past 15 or 20 years, I\u2019ve watched as the Grateful Dead has gone from casually dismissed sideshow to critical touchstone, cited by even the coolest bands as an influence. I\u2019d like to say that I was ahead of the curve, but I can\u2019t take much credit: My parents, longtime Deadheads, indoctrinated me from an early age. I recently filmed a video as part of The Atlantic\u2019s \u201cBehind the Byline\u201d series where I talk about the Dead\u2014and get quizzed on how fast I can name that tune and identify the era. To be honest, my colleague Matteo Wong\u2019s advice on pasta might be more useful.<\/p>\n \u2014 David<\/p>\n Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.<\/p>\n When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting <\/em>The Atlantic.<\/em><\/p>\n\n