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Back in 2016, just after the shock election of Donald Trump to the White House, one of the authors of this article suggested, rather hopefully we must admit, that someone would write a great book one day entitled The Education of Donald Trump. A book that would show how a large part of Trump’s sloganeering, racist, misogynistic and other coarse and offensive language would not affect the fundamentals of US global power: those fundamentals of an imperial power were locked in, they would not be moved by the populist bluster of Donald Trump.

We must admit, we did not foresee how long it might take to teach Trump a lesson in imperial power politics. Nor how much damage he would do at home to American democracy and the Constitution, and life as lived and experienced by millions. 

But educated he now surely is. His graduation is evidenced by his increasingly unhinged Truth Social posts.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.

Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025 brandishing the MAGA “America First” banner, vow to end “endless wars,” prioritise American workers, secure borders, and avoid foreign entanglements that drained US blood and treasure. Yet barely 15 months later, his administration has launched or expanded military operations across at least seven countries – including strikes in Somalia, Iraq, Yemen, Nigeria, Syria, a dramatic kidnapping of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, and coordinated US-Israeli strikes on Iran. 

This represents one aspect of the education of Donald Trump – a brutal tutorial in the iron logic of American armed supremacy and global primacy. As his imperial establishment programme collides with stiff resistance both abroad and at home (the second lesson) – including from within the MAGA base and traditional “America First” voices – Trump’s signature insulting language, inflammatory rhetoric, and personal disrespect have sharpened dramatically. His increasingly unhinged and incendiary language – never previously (at least publicly) used by an American president – signals his personal frustrations with the total failure of his art of the deal when it comes up against the immovable force of Iranian resolve. 

The blithely ignorant transactional nationalist who once mocked neoconservative adventures has morphed into a blunt-force warmonger whose public spewings  grow ever more profane, contemptuous, and unmoored.

What Trump took advantage of

Trump’s 2016 and 2024 campaigns masterfully exploited widespread war-weariness. He condemned the Iraq War as a catastrophic........

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