\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t Speaking at a press conference on Saturday, United States President Donald Trump outlined the reasoning for why his military had captured Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro: he claimed the country had \u201cunilaterally seized and sold American oil,\u201d that its criminals were coming to the U.S., and that it was \u201chosting foreign adversaries.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of these actions were in gross violation of the core principles of American foreign policy dating back more than two centuries [\u2026] it dated to the Monroe Doctrine,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd the Monroe Doctrine is a big deal, but we\u2019ve superseded it by a lot. They now call it the Donroe Doctrine.\u201d<\/p>\n
But what is the Monroe Doctrine \u2014 and why does Trump want to rename it after himself?<\/p>\n
What is the Monroe Doctrine? The Monroe Doctrine is the U.S. foreign policy position that foreign powers should not seek to expand their influence in, or colonize, the Americas \u2014 and that the U.S. can intervene to stop them if they do.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s named after former U.S. President James Monroe. In an 1823 speech, he said that the U.S. would not interfere with European countries\u2019 internal conflicts or their remaining colonies, but that any attempt to expand into the Americas or retake the newly independent nations would be treated as \u201cdangerous to our peace and safety\u201d and a \u201cmanifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Monroe\u2019s comments established spheres of influence and a passive approach. President Theodore Roosevelt, however, adapted those ideas into a more aggressive \u201cregional policeman\u201d stance, saying that the U.S. would intervene in the region if its Western Hemisphere neighbors seemed to be courting a crisis that could destabilize the Americas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Poignantly, his 1904 stance \u2014 known as the Roosevelt Corollary \u2014 were triggered by concerns over Venezuela\u2019s debts to Europe.<\/p>\n
Since then, the U.S. has used the Monroe Doctrine as a basis for pursuing interventionism in Latin America. This includes supporting bloody civil wars, coups, and dictatorships, with a view to consolidating Washington\u2019s power in the Western Hemisphere.<\/p>\n
Inter-American relations, however, were \u201crebooted under more of a logic of cooperation and horizontality\u201d following the end of the Cold War, said Alejandro Frenkel, international relations professor at the National University of San Martin.<\/p>\n
In 2013, then-President Barack Obama\u2019s Secretary of State John Kerry said that the Monroe Doctrine was over. But that didn\u2019t last.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Is the Monroe Doctrine back? Yes, explicitly so. In November, the Trump administration published a 33-page National Security Strategy stating that it would adopt a \u201cTrump Corollary\u201d to the Monroe Doctrine.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region,\u201d the document reads.<\/p>\n
This is not surprising. Frenkel noted that, during Trump\u2019s first term, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson proposed reviving the Monroe Doctrine to counteract the influence of Russia and China in the Americas.<\/p>\n
According to Esteban Actis, professor of international relations at Argentina\u2019s National University of Rosario, the return of the Monroe Doctrine and Trump\u2019s bragging about reinstating it respond to his logic of \u201cabandoning political correctness.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cHe has a logic of showing his political strength, always showing that he has the power, and not hiding it.\u201d<\/p>\n
How is Trump\u2019s \u2018Donroe Doctrine\u2019 different? It\u2019s unusual for a U.S. president to back the Monroe Doctrine so explicitly, according to Actis.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile the U.S. always held the Monroe Doctrine at certain moments in the 20th century, especially during the Cold War, it was never explicit, and that\u2019s what\u2019s changed with Trump. He explicitly vindicates it.\u201d<\/p>\n
A significant faction of Trump\u2019s senior officials and advisors who are linked to the MAGA movement, including Vice President JD Vance and Steve Bannon, are pushing for the U.S. to \u201cabandon that idea of ideological wars and exporting democracy to the world and orient itself around its strategic national interests,\u201d Frenkel said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Instead, they want the U.S. to prioritize its strategic interests. These figures are known as the \u201crestrainers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
This explains why the Trump administration has wanted to reduce its involvement in the Ukraine war, for example.<\/p>\n
For those in the Vance and Bannon camp, looking out for U.S. interests means focusing on counteracting Chinese influence by consolidating control closer to home \u2014 in other words, over the Americas. Mass migration from Latin America to the United States, drug trafficking, and natural resources also play a role.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe world isn\u2019t short of food, minerals, or oil,\u201d Actis said. \u201cThe problem is accessing them versus supply being interrupted, for example, by controls on rare earth exports from China. The U.S. has a vision that it needs absolute control over its hemisphere as a matter of national security.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
This means it no longer wants to rely on long supply chains from Asia or Europe \u2014 a decision that has brought Latin America roaring back to the geopolitical center stage.<\/p>\n
Frenkel identified the two major differences between the old-school Monroe Doctrine and Trump\u2019s iteration of the policy. The first is that the United States is in a moment of retraction, rather than expansion, and second, that the main opponent whose influence they seek to avoid is now China, not Europe.<\/p>\n
Could the U.S. intervene in Greenland, Colombia, or Cuba? Since the strike on Maduro, Trump has made threatening statements about Colombia, Cuba, and Greenland.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In comments to reporters on board Air Force One on Sunday, he called Colombia\u2019s leftist President Gustavo Petro \u201ca sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States,\u201d adding, \u201cHe\u2019s not going to be doing it for very long.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The remark was taken by many as a threat of intervention, although Petro\u2019s presidential term ends this year, and he cannot stand for re-election in May\u2019s elections.<\/p>\n
Trump also said that \u201cCuba looks like it is ready to fall.\u201d Cuba, run by a one-party state that has been at loggerheads with the United States for decades, had a close relationship with Venezuela. Many of those killed in Saturday\u2019s strike were Cuban nationals guarding Maduro.<\/p>\n
The U.S. president has also reiterated that he wants the Danish territory of Greenland. Frenkel says that this would be the test case, as there is \u201cno villain or scenario of legitimacy\u201d when it comes to Denmark, a democratic European country that is also a NATO member.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no drug trafficking, no threat that the U.S. can construe, and Trump is still saying, \u2018We need it.\u2019 For Trump, democracy and human rights don\u2019t lead him to action. It\u2019s just that they sometimes strengthen the rationale.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Speaking at a press conference on Saturday, United States President Donald Trump outlined the reasoning for why his military had captured Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro: he claimed the country had \u201cunilaterally seized and sold American oil,\u201d that its criminals were coming to the U.S., and that it was \u201chosting foreign adversaries.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cAll of these actions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":23445,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,54,330,256,332,306],"tags":[88,183,6965,902,3298,904],"class_list":["post-23444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-donald-trump","category-latin-america","category-nicolas-maduro","category-united-states","category-venezuela","category-world","tag-donald-trump","tag-latin-america","tag-nicolas-maduro","tag-united-states","tag-venezuela","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}