These days, Americans are hearing something that should stop us cold: talk of seizing and occupying territory belonging to sovereign nations. The rhetoric of the Trump administration increasingly frames intrusions on other countries as necessary for security, stability, or strategic U.S. interests. Such deceptively rationalized framing is precisely the danger.
In the 1930s, Nazi Germany justified its earliest expansions in much the same way: defensive action, limited aims, unavoidable circumstances. Each move was described as exceptional. Each made the next easier. By the time the world fully recognized what was unfolding, the norms that might have restrained it were already weakened.
This is not a claim of equivalence between the U.S. now and Germany of the 1930s, but it is an urgent warning about eerily similar patterns that could result in catastrophic consequences to world order and peace.
What deserves far more attention is how this rhetoric is heard beyond our borders. Our allies and partners rely on shared rules, mutual restraint and respect for sovereignty. To them, language that treats borders as flexible and law as optional does not sound like strength; it sounds like instability and dangerously unbridled aggression. It points to an unsettling reality: the United States is obviously drifting away from the principles we once championed, while beginning to more strongly resemble nations leaning into autocracy.
When leaders normalize the idea that power alone guarantees safety, democratic guardrails begin to erode and fail. The danger is not one decision. Rather, it is the acceptance of a mindset that “might makes right,” and that norms exist only until they become inconvenient.
Not long ago, even asking whether America could be veering toward patterns seen in 1930s Germany would have seemed absurd. Today, the fact that our allies are asking similar questions should give us pause. It should be our wake-up call.
I am no longer confident that we are the good guys. Are you?
Dale Palmer, Sandy