Trump’s ‘America First’ Just a Smokescreen for a More Aggressive US Hegemony?

Trump's 'America First' Just a Smokescreen for a More Aggressive US Hegemony?

Von Felicitas Rabe: Interview mit Werner Rügemer

What foreign policy can we expect from the new US administration?

RT DE: Mr. Rügemer, do the many critics of US hegemony expect a change with the new US president, Donald Trump?

Rügemer: These “many critics” of US hegemony are completely wrong in their hopes. Trump will continue the same “America first” policy as his predecessors since the founding of the US: the US as “God’s own country” regulates the world order, now in a new launch, also with younger, radical and Zionist multi-millionaires.

Trump declared at his inauguration in 2025: “The United States are a nation that increases our wealth, expands our territory and carries our flag to new horizons. We will build the strongest military the world has ever seen.” In 1907, Woodrow Wilson, the other US capitalist party of the Democrats and US President from 1913, had already declared the same: “Since the entrepreneur claims the world as his market, the flag of the nation must follow him and the closed doors of the nations must be burst open.”

Trump openly supports the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the genocide of Israel against the Palestinians, following the slogan: “Let Netanyahu do his job!” Trump had long sponsored the richest Israeli, the Zionist casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his foundation, which was also the main sponsor of Netanyahu!

Furthermore, Trump supports Israel’s proxy wars to reorder the Middle East, led by the US. His support includes Israel’s military and war operations in the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and against Iran. In South America, Trump supports the capitalist wasteland Javier Milei, in Venezuela, Maduro must be overthrown, just like Cuba. These are just a few examples of Trump’s world domination policy. “Multipolar world” – there is none for Trump.

Trump’s shift on climate policy

RT DE: Trump seems to be taking a political shift in some areas, for example, in climate policy. Has Trump really changed his mind?

Rügemer: Trump doesn’t need to do anything. BlackRock, which had several managers in the Obama and Biden administrations, withdrew from the climate alliance after Trump’s election. This climate-greenwashing of the liberal mainstream was never seriously meant! Obama, the biggest promoter of extremely polluting and for the residents of the drilling sites also deadly fracking gas, had already renamed it as “natural gas” in 1998, as part of the Kyoto Protocol, with the consent of BlackRock & Co., the EU and all German governments!

This is still the case today. Furthermore, BlackRock & Co. remained the major shareholders of the arms, fracking, oil, cruise, cement, pharmaceutical and agro-business industries. The climate funds, mediatically hyped, made only a minimal part of the funds. The goal was to bind the younger, green generation as political supporters and new investors.

The US-led sale of Ukraine

RT DE: Trump has promised to end the war in Ukraine and establish peace with Russia. Does this give hope for the time being and for the military side?

Rügemer: This gives hope for the immediate future and the military side, but the US-led sale of Ukraine is already in progress. The small proxy war in Ukraine could never win, but it was extremely lucrative for BlackRock & Co. Now, the US is getting access to Ukraine’s rare earth and other mineral resources. And the previously obedient Ukrainian oligarchs with their Polit-Hampelmann Selensky will be replaced by US investors, including the fertile black earth.

At the same time, Trump demands that the NATO member states in Europe increase their military budgets to five percent. The old and new NATO member states in Europe will continue to wage war against Russia on a broader basis in the long term. The leadership of NATO remains with the US. None of the governments of the European NATO member states, such as Macron/France, Starmer/England, Scholz and Merz/Germany, Tusk/Poland, etc., wants to leave NATO.

NATO expansion in the Far East

RT DE: What role will the US play in NATO in the future, if it is supposed to withdraw from its dominant position in a multipolar world?

Rügemer: The US will lead NATO and expand it to Asia, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines. This expansion is directed against the geostrategic main enemy, which also strengthens Russia, namely China. Multipolar world: null.

US capitalists want to gain access to the entire Eurasian continent from Lisbon to Vladivostok.

Interview with Werner Rügemer, published in RT DE, July 2023.