There’s always a temptation to overanalyze President Donald Trump — to depict him as acting on some deep-seated ideological belief when there’s little evidence he’s actually thought things through. Trump is, at heart, a real estate developer who believes that owning more things is better. Earlier this month, he explained his improbable and fast-escalating push to annex Greenland by saying that owning the longtime Danish territory was “psychologically important” to him.
But whatever his personal motivations, Trump’s approach to foreign policy also fits into a long American tradition. The scholar Walter Russell Mead calls it “Jacksonian,” after President Andrew Jackson.
Jacksonians do not share the liberal or neoconservative belief that America has a special obligation to make the world a better place. But they also aren’t isolationists who want to keep America out of conflict at all costs. Instead, they’re driven by national pride — a deep belief that America is a great country that deserves respect and should secure itself by any means it sees fit.
Jacksonians are hostile to international agreements and global institutions, seeing them as restraints on America’s power. In war, Jacksonians believe Americans should pursue victory relentlessly, without much regard for the cost in civilian lives.
Jacksonians also believe that the United States has every right to seize territory, particularly in order to dominate the American continent — to expand its borders as a demonstration of American greatness.
If you visit the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, there is an exhibit on treaties that draws a sharp break between the pre- and post-Jackson eras. Prior to Jackson, the American government had a reasonable (albeit hardly perfect) record of bargaining with Native tribes in good faith. Under Jackson, however, the US government shifted toward a more outright colonial policy, aimed at displacing tribes and seizing their land for American settlers.
Jacksonian expansionism outlasted Andrew Jackson. It helped spark the Mexican-American War in 1846. It animated the desire, around the same time, to claim part of what’s now British Columbia, including the land on which Vancouver sits. It later pushed the US to annex Hawaii and seize control over many of Spain’s colonial possessions.
Overt expansionism fell out of favor after World War II, but it never entirely disappeared. In the 1970s, a man named L. Craig Schoonmaker founded an obscure political party dedicated to the American annexation of Canada. Less than 20 years later, Pat Buchanan — a Republican strategist and politician often seen as a Trump precursor — wrote a column celebrating Schoonmaker’s vision and proposing that the US annex both Canada and Greenland.
These proposals never gained traction in their day, but the values underlying them remained widespread. After all, Jacksonianism is less of an ideology than it is an attitude about honor, national pride, and America’s role in the world — an attitude that fits in pretty well with the impulses that drive the MAGA movement.
In that regard, Trump’s insistence on annexing Greenland isn’t entirely outside the historical norm. It’s the expression of a very old American ideal that simply went dormant for a few generations.
Trump, incidentally, keeps a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office and has described himself as “a big fan” of the “very great” president.
“We must work in our time to expand,” Trump said, during 2017 remarks commemorating Jackson. “We’re going to make America great again, folks…and when we do, watch us grow.”
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