Donald Trump’s proposal that the US take ownership of the Gaza Strip, expel and resettle the people there, and turn Gaza into a “Riviera of the Middle East” has outraged Palestinians, shocked the international community and even confused many of his own conservative voters.
Immerwahr added that he doubted many of Trump’s voters support these kinds of aggressive foreign policy moves, even when they concern what Trump might call the US’s backyard: “Even with Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal Zone, it is just far from clear to me how much autonomous support there has been from the Maga base.”.
Yet the announcement seems like yet another sign that the president, while sometimes distancing himself from the neoconservative foreign policies that entangled the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, is willing to pursue – or at least entertain pursuing – an undisguised US imperialism that has more in common with the expansionism of Teddy Roosevelt and Andrew Jackson, the 19th and early-20th century presidents associated with some of American’s most brazen and violent conquests.
While the Israeli right has been thrilled about Trump’s proposal, US conservatives seemed divided or unsure of how to react – perhaps reflective of wider ideological splits between traditional Republican hawks and Republican voters tired of US adventurism overseas.
Trump’s proposal – which administration officials attempted to walk back on Wednesday – comes on the heels of a tumultuous couple of weeks in which he also demanded that Denmark sell Greenland to the US, threatened to reclaim the Panama Canal, started abortive tariff wars with Mexico and Canada, and suggested that Canada should become “our 51st state”.
