Anyone naïve enough to believe that Donald Trump is an “antiwar” politician -- or, more fashionably, a foreign policy “realist” -- must have been startled when he threatened the security of Canada, Greenland, Mexico, and Panama at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday.

But for anyone who has paid the slightest attention to Trump’s utterances and actions over the past ten years, his latest outburst is no surprise at all. Notwithstanding the incessant efforts by his fans on the far right (and far left) to shine him up, the incoming president is an unrepentant imperialist, warmonger, and international bully.

Trump lied about his military and foreign policy record throughout the 2024 campaign -- and Democrats somehow failed to point out that he was emphatically not the cautious, peace-loving opponent of intervention being sold to voters. “I had no wars,” he told Iowans last summer, as if that were the end of any further discussion. “I’m the only president in 72 years…I didn’t have any wars.”

But when Trump proclaims his pugnacious intentions toward America’s neighbors and NATO allies, he is merely expressing the same dangerously aggressive schoolyard attitude that always marked his rhetoric and then his presidency.

Whenever the United States intervened in the Middle East, for instance, Trump has urged that our only objective should be seizing oil for ourselves, rather than seeking to stabilize the region or curtail brutal dictators. Although he lied about his own supposed opposition to the Iraq invasion, he has never tried to conceal the fact that all he wanted was Iraq’s oil. Several years later he repeated himself when the Obama administration moved against the Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. "I would take the oil — and stop this baby stuff," brayed Trump. "I’m only interested in Libya if we take the oil. If we don’t take the oil, I’m not interested."

What draws his malign attention now to Greenland, Canada, and Panama is that they have enormous resources and strategic locations, all of which he evidently aspires to acquire, perhaps by force. While he complains about the border and the drug cartels, the same may be true of Mexico, another oil exporter. No such military adventures would be possible without grave costs in human life and American honor, but they would surely serve the interest of Trump’s admired friend and principal sponsor Vladimir Putin, justifying Russian imperialism against its own neighbors.

Those who minimize and excuse Trump’s bellicose rants are forgetting (or want us to forget) how close he brought us to a nuclear exchange with North Korea. Within less than a year after he took office, the inexperienced but arrogant president drove us toward the brink not only with his taunts against Kim Jong Un, but by ordering the Pentagon to prepare for an attack. As Fred Kaplan wrote in his book The Bomb, Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. James Mattis oversaw planning that “assumed the United States would strike the first blow.”

In early 2018, Trump told his national security aides that he wanted to evacuate all US personnel from South Korea – an insane directive that would have sent an unmistakable signal to Kim of warlike intentions. Mercifully we never learned how far that might have escalated. His orders were ignored and he apparently forgot about the whole mess. It is still horrifying to think how a mindless, reckless president might have stumbled into a holocaust.

So as with everything else Trump, believe him when he displays ill intentions and bonehead ignorance. Don’t pretend that he’s just kidding or cleverly “negotiating.” We are entering an extremely perilous time for the United States and the world.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.--