What Most Terrifies Me About Trump's Dreams Of Conquest

      On Sunday, January 3, at 6:59 am I was sitting in my favorite writing chair in front of a cozy fire writing in blissful ignorance a blog about leftover Christmas cookies.
​      At 7 am my spouse turned on the radio to listen to the news and my visions of sugarplums suddenly turned into visions of a shock attack, bombs, explosions, and squadrons of  helicopters from which hordes of foreign soldiers rappelled to the earth.​​ 
        I knew that it was the United States that had attacked Venezuela, American planes that had dropped the bombs on Caracas, American cyber units that had sabotaged Venezuela's electrical infrastructure and plunged its civilians into darkness, and that it was American troops that had rappelled from helicopters into their capitol and captured their president and their country, and for what reason.

            Still, for a moment in my mind it wasn't Venezuela but my country the planes were flying over, my country the bombs were falling on, my country that was without power, my country that the foreign soldiers were rappelling down from their helicopters to attack. And I was seized with a moment of fear.
            Because even before the attack on Venezuela Donald Trump had been threatening to  seize, acquire, or take military action against a number of countries, among them Greenland, Canada, Panama, Gaza, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, and Iran.  ​
      And when I heard that Trump, of his own volition, without so much as consulting Congress, had started a war with Venezuela, I thought, this is just the beginning. He won't stop with one country. He'll go right down the line, using  America's superior military strength to overpower  and vanquish country after country until the world finally unites to fight back back against us, and then the day will come when we Americans will look up and see helicopters in our skies with foreign soldiers rappelling down.
            I've thought that thought more and more often since January 3, as since then Donald Trump has doubled down on his determination to personally own Greenland, and to accomplish this goal either, in his his words, the easy way or the hard way.              Today's meeting in Washington D.C. among the Danish, Greenlandic and American (that is to say, JD Vance and Marco Rubio)  delegations resulted in no change in Trump's ultimatum that he will own Greenland, nor in any lessening in Greenland's resistance to his ultimatum. And Denmark's Defense Ministry today announced that its troops will fire on any enemy, including the American Army, that tries to take Greenland by force.
       In the meantime Donald Trump has cut off oil to Cuba, exacerbating the economic hardship of the Cuban people, and he's already talked about installing his Secretary of State Marco Rubio as that country's new president.  Trump continues to talk up taking military action against Colombia and Mexico, but front and center, right next to his threats to invade Greenland, are his threats of an imminent military strike against Iran. 
           I wonder if, when Adolph Hitler and his allies were raining down death and terror in Europe, Asia and Africa, they, as military superpowers, felt safe and impervious to conquest because oceans separated their territories from the United States, which was, in any case, a mid-level military power at best in the late 1930's and early 1940's.  According to the 12/11/2014 post on the U.S. Army website:
       "'The U.S. Army went into World War II with an end-strength of just 189,000, ranked about seventeenth in effectiveness among the armies of the world, just behind Romania,' wrote Cristopher R. Gable in the U.S. Army Center of Military History publication: 'The U.S. Army GHQ Maneuvers of 1941.'" (https://www.army.mil/article/139620/americas_entry_into_world_war_ii_remembered_73_years_later).
         But that was before Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor propelled the United States into a massive  and unprecedented ​ production of military equipment, a well-answered call for military enlistment, and the will to once again fight to make the world safe for democracy.
         I wonder how many countries Donald Trump's armies will have to invade before the day comes when an alliance of world powers decides to make the world safe for democracy by crossing the oceans and landing on our shores. 

 
​References:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Which+countries+had+Donald+Trump+talked+a+out+conquering%3F&rlz=1C1OPNX_enUS1166US1166&oq=Which+countries+had+Donald+Trump+talked+a+out+conquering%3F&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRiPAjIHCAIQIRiPAtIBCjE4ODkzajBqMTWoAgywAgHxBZL1JTZ-Fmmv8QWS9SU2fhZprw&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/article/poll-62-of-americans-would-oppose-us-military-action-in-greenland-215222605.html

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/03/trump-venezela-mexico-00710063

https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/10/politics/us-will-take-greenland-the-hard-way-if-it-cant-do-it-the-easy-way-trump-says

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/01/14/us/trump-news?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20260114&instance_id=169279&nl=breaking-news&regi_id=57152138&segment_id=213658&user_id=bd7dcba13f30625c4d8a54f9f4eaa28e

https://www.chathamhouse.org/2026/01/what-would-trumps-threatened-strikes-colombia-mexico-or-cuba-achieve

https://www.army.mil/article/139620/americas_entry_into_world_war_ii_remembered_73_years_later
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