Trump's imperial foreign policy and its moral and historical background

Sara Katib of TMJ News Network interviewed Matthew Hoh of Matt’s Thoughts on War and Peace TMJ was interested in the Trumpian attacks on Venezuela but Hoh put it into a larger context. Here's a sample of this wide-ranging interview:

Sara: One other point that is actually growing among the public as well: many analysts, and now if you were to ask the American public, they would tell you that we know this is really not about drugs. It’s about power. It’s about oil. It’s about politics. And it’s interesting because now if you were to talk to most people because of what they have seen previously with U.S. interference in other countries, most people know that when the U.S. fixates on something like this, there’s definitely more than what meets the eye. The public narrative in this case differs significantly from the real motives behind U.S. policy here. The storyline that the United States is doing this to protect its citizens from nefarious and evil drug traffickers—you hear this from the president, from Donald Trump, who every time the United States destroys a boat, without any evidence, without any type of information or details as to who was on that boat, let alone what that boat was actually doing, let alone the whole counter to the narrative that these boats if they actually were coming to the United States, would have to be refueled 10 or 12 times because they’re so small, right? I mean, all these different things that belie the narrative. Well, the storyline, though, the explanation is that we’re protecting American citizens. Each of these boats has enough fentanyl on it to kill 25,000 Americans. That’s what you’ll hear the White House say repeatedly. And these types of stories, these types of narratives are used by governments, you know, around the world and throughout history to justify their actions. And all they want is just for their base, their core supporters to have a rationale, to have an explanation, right? It’s something that people who are outside of that core dismiss. No one believes it. I think anyone watching, most Americans don’t believe it and certainly those around the world, you know, don’t believe it. But that’s not what the government cares about. The government cares about ensuring that its people have some type of moral construct on which to base their actions. Because, if they don’t have that moral construct, right, they don’t have their rationale, their explanation. If you don’t tell U.S. Marines and soldiers that you’re invading Iraq to protect the United States from another 9-11, your invasion is not going to succeed. Your occupation is going to fall apart very quickly. And the same thing has to occur here in Venezuela. So while most of the United States don’t believe this is the case, and almost no one around the world believes this story of Venezuela trafficking drugs, killing tens and tens of thousands of Americans because of it, it doesn’t matter to the White House. It doesn’t matter to the Pentagon or the State Department. What matters is that the people who are carrying out these policies have some type of moral construct, have some type of narrative on which to fall back on so they won’t doubt what they’re doing. That’s essentially what’s occurring here.