America’s Aggression Has Come Home to Roost
For the last 25 years, the United States has wielded its power across the globe with a mixture of arrogance, hubris and violence. From Iraq to Afghanistan, from drone strikes in Yemen to regime-change efforts in Libya and Syria, America’s military and political machinery have projected dominance with impunity. But today, as the second Trump administration consolidates power with an increasingly authoritarian bent, many Americans are discovering that the aggression their government so casually inflicted on others is now being turned inward.
This shift feels less like a sudden change than an inevitable consequence. For decades, the United States has treated aggression, both military and political, as a legitimate tool of statecraft. The so-called “War on Terror” normalised surveillance, indefinite detention and drone strikes without trials. Torture at black sites, secret CIA prisons and the erosion of habeas corpus became not just strategies but accepted practices in the name of national security. The assumption, of course, was that these measures were necessary evils directed at enemies abroad, that the United States could keep its imperial ambitions separate from its democratic ideals at home. That was a fantasy.
Exporting violence and domination overseas was always going to lead to these same tactics being deployed at home. The militarisation of American police forces over the last two decades is a direct consequence of wars fought abroad. Weapons and equipment designed for Fallujah and Kandahar now patrol American streets. SWAT teams armed with surplus military gear respond to domestic protests and drug raids with the same aggression that once targeted insurgents. The language of counterterrorism — surveillance, infiltration and pre-emptive strikes — is now being used against political activists, journalists and dissenters.
The second Trump administration appears determined to complete this transformation. Trump's first term laid the groundwork, fanning the flames of nationalist sentiment, demonising immigrants and political enemies, and encouraging violent responses to protest and civil unrest. Now, with the levers of power firmly in hand and a judiciary shaped to his liking, Trump and his allies seem poised to push America's post-9/11 playbook to its logical endpoint: domestic authoritarianism under the guise of law and order.
The Bipartisan Consensus on Aggression
What makes this moment especially damning is that the road to domestic authoritarianism was not paved by Trump alone. For all the liberal outrage about Trump’s rise and his brazenly anti-democratic tendencies, the core mechanisms of American aggression, and their gradual extension into domestic life, were built and maintained by both Republican and Democratic administrations alike.
Barack Obama, for example, campaigned on ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but instead expanded the use of drone warfare to unprecedented levels. He oversaw the extrajudicial assassination of American citizens overseas and dramatically increased the surveillance state’s capacity through the NSA's global monitoring programme. His administration prosecuted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all previous administrations combined, a clear signal that transparency and dissent were threats to the state.
Joe Biden, despite his more measured public persona, largely maintained continuity with Trump-era foreign policy. He conducted drone strikes in Syria and Afghanistan, supported Israel's brutal military actions in Gaza and authorised military aid to authoritarian regimes under the guise of strategic alliances. His handling of domestic protests mirrored the aggressive posture of foreign conflicts. During the George Floyd protests, Biden, much like Trump, endorsed militarised policing and the deployment of the National Guard to suppress unrest. The message was clear: force, whether used at home or abroad, remains the preferred tool of governance.
The continuity between Democratic and Republican administrations on matters of war, surveillance and policing exposes an uncomfortable truth. Trump is not the aberration that many liberals wish to believe. His rise is not a break from America's political trajectory but an acceleration of it. The American empire has always functioned through violence, intimidation and control. Trump merely stripped away the thin veneer of moral justification and exposed the underlying machinery.
Why Americans Are Finally Paying Attention
The irony, of course, is that much of the American public has only now begun to object, not because these tactics are new, but because they are finally being felt at home. When drone strikes annihilated wedding parties in Yemen, when Guantanamo prisoners were held for decades without trial and when police in Baghdad fired on protestors with American-made weapons, there was little mass outrage in the United States. After all, these actions were committed in the name of “national security.”
But now, the same militarised police forces are turning their guns on domestic protesters. Surveillance technologies once deployed against suspected foreign terrorists are now being used to monitor American citizens. Laws designed to combat extremism abroad are being rewritten to apply to domestic political dissidents. The strategies refined in Iraq and Afghanistan — counterinsurgency, psychological operations and the criminalisation of resistance — are now being deployed not in Kabul, but in Portland, Chicago and Washington, D.C.
The discomfort that many Americans now feel is not about the morality of these tactics; it is about proximity. When Black Lives Matter protesters were teargassed in Lafayette Square, it was not a new kind of violence. It was the same playbook that the United States military used in Fallujah. The difference was that this time, the violence was directed at Americans.
Public apathy towards America’s foreign aggression was built on the assumption that this violence could be contained, that it would remain directed at brown and black bodies in faraway places. Americans tolerated drone strikes, torture and extrajudicial killings because they were happening to “other people.” Now that the guns and surveillance systems have turned inward, the public is awakening to the reality that aggression, once normalised, cannot be confined to distant shores.
The Empire Turns Inward
The second Trump administration is not creating anything new; it is simply accelerating a long-standing imperial process. America has been an empire for decades. The consequence of empire is that eventually the methods of control used abroad must be applied at home. Surveillance, militarisation and suppression are not anomalies; they are the predictable outcome of a state that has relied on aggression as its primary mode of engagement with the world.
If Americans are finally awakening to this reality, it is not because the system has changed; it is because they are finally feeling the consequences themselves. The state’s violence has come home. The same justifications that allowed the United States to kill, imprison and monitor foreign nationals without consequence are now being deployed against Americans. The empire, in other words, is finally feeding on itself.
The question now is whether Americans, having ignored this violence for decades when it was inflicted on others, will resist it when it is directed at them. The signs are not encouraging. After all, the tools of empire — fear, division and militarised control — remain as potent as ever. Americans may now understand what it feels like to be on the receiving end of American power, but whether that understanding will lead to meaningful resistance or simply deeper submission remains to be seen.