As we watch the Trump administration’s foreign policy take shape, I am reminded of former President Barack Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech. That was the one where he promised that the US was seeking “a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect.” It was only six months into his presidency when we could still lie to ourselves that the Bush years were a just particularly abhorrent aberration.

There were shifts underway back in 2009 although they certainly didn’t have anything to do with mutual interest and respect. As Obama delivered his lies in Cairo, Obamaians were just gassing up the drones.

And the US shifted from invasion and occupation to more clandestine operations of destabilization, targeted killings, “leading from behind,” and humanitarian regime change operations. They helped craft the international liberal order often utilizing the human rights tools like LGTBQ+ rights, feminism and of course democracy to pursue the same goals as Bush the Younger. but in a more “woke” manner.

Yet this mode of empire had outlived its usefulness. A growing number of states are following Russia’s lead and cracking down on foreign funding of NGOs. There is the inability to bludgeon European voters upset over deteriorating living standards into submission using moralistic certitude. And the dam broke in the US where Trump — with the backing of the majority of plutocrats — is now dismantling this machinery. What will take its place?

Now there are actual shifts taking place under Trump (attempting to get out of Ukraine and dump it on the hapless Europeans, actualizing the long-planned pivot to Asia, a renewed emphasis on shipping lanes, cracking down on DEI and elements of the Blob that hounded him during first term and beyond), but all signs are that the underlying goals of empire remain: that US capital controls the world and can extract rent from every corner of the globe. This isn’t changing based on an election despite Obama’s repeated assurances that “the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice.”

A week ago I wrote about the repackaging of the empire sales pitch to the American working class. Here I’d like to focus on how the Trump rebrand is playing out across the world.