The Monroe Doctrine

The concept of the Monroe Doctrine goes back over 200 years to 1823, and then President James Monroe. It evolved over time and became a principal under which the U.S. claimed that the western hemisphere (New World) was off-limits to European (Old World) influence. It was an affirmation of isolation where America stayed out of Europe, and they must stay out of the Americas. Essentially it was to stop additional European colonization of the American continents.

Oddly enough one of the first challenges to the Monroe Doctrine in the Americas involved Venezuela in an 1895 dispute with Great Britain over an island off the Venezuelan coast. In this case the disputed territory had gold mines and Great Britain won a decision to control 90% of the disputed territory.

Donald Trump in August of 2017, first mentioned possible intervention in Venezuela when his CIA director, Mike Pompeo, declared that the decline of that nation could be blamed on Russin and Iranian backed groups. The doctrine was again mentioned in 2019, when his National Security Advisor John Bolton used it to reassert American dominance in the Western Hemisphere. He called this new interpretation the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, where spheres of influence would be divided between America, Russia, and China. Trump has tried to rename the corollary, the “Donroe Doctrine”

It seems contradictory that an American authoritarian cult leader would associate himself with a policy that sought to protect democracy from the monarchs of Europe. This doctrine has been reinterpreted so many times in the past that allowing spin-doctor-Donny a turn of the wheel is perhaps fitting. He sees things with a polysemic vision where definitions and interpretations can change based on mood, weather, phases of the moon, or what he had for lunch. With Trump at the helm, it’s more like the “Dumbroe Doctrine.”

Footnote: In Theodore Roosevelt’s December 1904 Annual Address to Congress, he added the Roosevelt Corollary:

“In the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.”