Trump is building an empire. He wants 55 states across three continents

Taking time off from the Iran war this week, Donald Trump posted a picture of Venezuela as the 51st state, the map of the country covered in the Stars and Stripes. This was the US President’s usual trolling, but as his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, once said to me, Trump jokes, but he never really jokes.

In characteristic fashion, Trump doubled down on his meme. He told Fox News he was “seriously considering a move to make Venezuela the 51st state”. Venezuela has almost 29 million people. It would be the third most populous state in the US, after California and Texas.

It does not seem to have occurred to Trump that Venezuelans might object to being annexed. He told a US journalist, Sharyl Attkisson, quite accurately, that the US was already helping to run the place. “Venezuela is a very happy country right now,” he said. “They were miserable. Now they’re happy. It’s being well run.”

In threatening to seize Venezuela, Trump is not merely being his usual transgressive self. There is a long tradition of US presidents looking beyond America’s borders and grabbing the nearest piece of territory. It is how the US came to assume its present shape. But he is reaching further than any US president before him: Venezuela is 1,400 miles from the continental United States.

In his first term, Trump was an ‘America First’ isolationist. Now, he is an ‘America First’ imperialist. This is Trump’s version of Manifest Destiny, the 19th-century belief that Americans were divinely ordained to expand west across the continent.

Trump’s Manifest Destiny would see the US take over the entire Western Hemisphere. His former consigliere Steve Bannon said: “How can you get more ‘America First’ than Manifest Destiny 2.0?”

As well as Venezuela, Trump has his eye on Cuba. Early in May, he said the US would be “taking over” Cuba “almost immediately”. The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln would head to Cuba from Iran and park a hundred yards offshore. “And they’ll say, Thank you very much. We give up.”

This may be more than just bloviation. You might think that Trump would have his hands full at the moment, but swiftly moving on to the next crisis has always been Trump’s method of getting out of the current crisis.

A CNN investigation found that the number of intelligence-gathering flights off the coast of Cuba has been increasing. There have been 25 such flights since February, by manned aircraft and drones. Before that, they were very rare.

There were similar – though more dramatic – increases in surveillance flights ahead of US military operations in Venezuela and Iran earlier this year. Taken together with Trump’s remarks, the Cuban regime should be worried.

If Trump does manage to seize Cuba, he would succeed where his hero Andrew Jackson – whose portrait he has placed on the Oval Office wall – failed.

Before he was president, Jackson was the general commanding the Southern Division of the US Army. According to Paul Johnson’s A History of the American People, Jackson promised President James Monroe he’d seize Cuba if given a frigate. “I will ensure you Cuba in a few days,” he said. Monroe turned him down.

Jackson had already invaded Florida, which was under Spanish control. He waged his own undeclared war, ignoring the Constitution, which – as today – says only Congress can declare war or make peace. The Congress of 1819 declined to censure him, backing Florida’s seizure after the fact.

This has been Trump’s playbook too, in Venezuela and in Iran: act first, dare Congress to object, bet they won’t. Could this be how he acquires Cuba?

Trump now has his own version of the Monroe Doctrine, which he calls the Donroe Doctrine. Monroe told European powers to stop colonising the Americas. The Western Hemisphere was a US sphere of influence, he said, stay out of our backyard.

The Donroe Doctrine is a more aggressive version of this – and America’s backyard apparently extends as far as Greenland.

Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s most trusted aides, set out this rationale in a now-notorious interview. He spoke to CNN just after Trump had ordered the abduction of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro. Miller dismissed national sovereignty and self-determination as “international niceties”.

“We live in a world, in the real world… that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world,” he said.

Greenland had caught Trump’s roving eye and was the crisis of the moment. In that same CNN interview, Miller said the Trump administration could easily strong-arm Denmark into handing it over: “Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.”

The Danish politician Rasmus Jarlov accused Miller of having the “mentality of a rapist” – but Miller was expressing nothing more nor less than the worldview of a 19th-century coloniser.

In the 19th century, the US added Florida, Texas, California, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and parts of Colorado and Wyoming – all taken by force. Hamilton dreamed of marching into all of Spanish America and – in the 20th century – Wilson invaded Mexico, twice. This, though, is the 21st century. Things have moved on. The UN Charter places self-determination at the heart of international law.

But Donald Trump knows little and cares less about international law. He made his fortune in New York real estate. He talks about buying Greenland or making it worth Canada’s while to join the Union. All nice and legal, with a signed “contract”, otherwise known as a treaty.

Negotiations go so much easier when you have the US military behind you. This is the “we’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse” school of diplomacy.

Trump once said it would be a “good idea” to put his face on Mount Rushmore. Adding another state or two to the Union might even accomplish this. And if Venezuela, Cuba, Greenland, Canada, Panama and others do not want to be new stars on the American flag, Trump’s gaze is lifted to yet more distant horizons.

For his second inaugural address, Trump’s speechwriters gave him a line about Manifest Destiny, coming right before a promise to plant the Stars and Stripes on Mars. “We will pursue our Manifest Destiny into the stars,” he said.

To infinity, and beyond… a lack of ambition has never been Trump’s problem.