With Territory Comes Torment

With Territory Comes Torment

History offers painful lessons for Trump’s expansionist desires.

An American flag is raised on Leyet in the Philippines on Oct. 20, 1944. August 8, 2025, 2:40 PM Comment icon View Comments ( )

In December 1899, John Barrett, a former minister to Siam (today Thailand) who had spent months accompanying the U.S. Navy squadron that defeated the Spanish fleet in the Philippines, wrote in the New York Times: “[W]e are now in a position to have our legitimate say in the commerce and politics of the entire Pacific.” Barrett argued that the territorial acquisition of the Philippines in part “should make us not only the paramount power of the Pacific, but of all the world.”

Over a century since Barrett’s invocation of global greatness, Donald Trump has