UNITED States President Donald Trump has been hogging international media coverage on a daily basis. Switch on any news channel any time of the day, and there is Trump either speaking himself, or his actions and future designs being discussed. After Venezuela, it is Greenland on his radar, with the message being ‘sell or surrender’. Columbia and Iran are also under threat. Is it not history repeating itself?

We have been reading in our history classes about Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Ashoka, Richard the Lionheart, Napoleon Bonaparte, Genghis Khan and the czars of Russia. They are never despised for their invasions and for capturing the land of weak neighbours. Instead, in a way, we envy them. The Great Empires we have read about include the French Empire, the Spanish Empire, the Roman Empire, the Mughal Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, the Abbasids and the Umayyads, and the Persian Empire — or, more accurately, the Achaemenid Empire established under Cyrus the Great.

Pardon me if I have missed some un-intentionally or otherwise. The character-istic common to all these empires, and, indeed, others, was the invasion of land. Will the historian of tomorrow write about the Trumpian Empire?

The thing to remember here, however, is that the empires of yesterday are nowhere except in the history books. The desire to rule the world is still embedded in the hearts of adventurers, like Trump. Will it not be better for the US president to concentrate on removing grievances at home related to the brutality of his immigration and customs enforcement that has already killed at least two Americans?

Malik ul Quddoos
Karachi

Published in Dawn, February 23rd, 2026