The anti-imperialist movement that Twain joined was a motley gathering of both moral idealists and virulent racists who scorned even association with nonwhite people, much less their elevation. But insofar as Twain’s satire worked, it did so because it presumed that American ideals mattered—and that their violation did too. Even those who were less concerned about the violence or the fate of nonwhite people could note the disconnect between America as an anticolonial nation practicing colonialism. During the 1900 presidential election, Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan responded to Republican censure of his anti-imperial stance with the suggestion that they extend their censure to Patrick Henry, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln.
Neither Twain nor Jennings Bryan stopped the drift toward overseas intervention that had begun in 1898. Theodore Roosevelt, elevated to the vice presidency by the spectacle of his famous charge up San Juan Hill in Cuba, would tender an even more forceful expression of American power after he became president. Such expressions would only grow through the remainder of the century. But even the most strident interventionists felt compelled to temper their justifications with the language of anti-imperialism. “We don’t seek empires,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said a few months into the second Iraq War. “We’re not imperialistic. We never have been.”
President Trump and his administration have upended this American tradition of claiming, however hypocritically, that foreign intervention is not about power or profit. In the days since Maduro’s capture, the president has repeatedly bragged about being “in charge” of Venezuela, and suggested that the U.S. might run the country for years. He has openly explained that his priority is taking control of the country’s oil business to make the U.S. wealthier (a plan that’s not economically sound, as my colleague Jonathan Chait points out). Earlier this week, the State Department’s social-media account shared a post reading “THIS IS OUR HEMISPHERE,” while Representative Andy Ogles, a Tennessee Republican, repeated the boast in a television interview on Wednesday: “We are the dominant predator force in the Western hemisphere.”
The absence of urgency to empower the democratic opposition, or even to pay lip service to the goal of restoring liberal democracy within the country, marks a new form of American intervention abroad. To this administration, the show of force is a good in itself—no pandering to ideals required. With America’s goals so clearly laid out, it’s not clear what good satire might do, or how much use Mark Twain might be now. The administration’s posturing suggests that even the oil might be beside the point. The most valuable resource has perhaps already been extracted: the spectacle of power itself.