Jeremy Boweninternational editor
Just hours after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was expelled from his palace, workplace and homeland by U.S. special forces, Donald Trump was still wondering what it felt like to monitor the raid in real time from his Mar-a-Lago mansion.
He shared his feelings on Fox News.
“If you can see the speed and the violence… it was amazing work by these guys. No one else could have done this.”
The President of the United States wants and needs a quick victory. Before his second inauguration, he boasted that he could end the Russian-Ukrainian war in one day.
As Trump’s statement shows, Venezuela achieved the quick and decisive victory he craved.
Maduro is in jail in Brooklyn, and the United States will “run” Venezuela. And he announced that the Chavista regime, which now has a new president, will hand over millions of barrels of oil and that he will control how the profits are spent. After all, no American life has been lost or a prolonged occupation with such disastrous results since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
For now, at least, Trump and his aides are ignoring the complexities of Venezuela, at least publicly. Venezuela is a country larger than Germany, whose politics are still ruled by a factional regime that has ingrained corruption and oppression.
Instead, Trump is enjoying a geopolitical sugar rush. Judging by their statements next to him at Mar-a-Lago, so did U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
Afterwards, they repeatedly emphasized that Trump was a president who did what he said he would do.
He has made it clear to Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, Greenland and Denmark that they need to be on their toes about where their appetites will take them next.
Trump likes nicknames. He still calls his predecessor Sleepy Joe Biden.
Now he is testing a new name for the Monroe Doctrine, which has been the foundation of U.S. policy toward Latin America for 200 years.
Trump naturally renamed it the Donroe Doctrine after himself.
James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States, unveiled the original in December 1823. The document declared the Western Hemisphere a sphere of interest for the United States and warned European powers not to interfere or establish new colonies.
The Donroe Doctrine puts Monroe’s 200-year-old message on steroids.
“The Monroe Doctrine is a big problem, but we’ve replaced a lot of it,” Trump said at Mar-a-Lago as Maduro was taken to prison, blindfolded and shackled.
“Under our new national security strategy, America’s dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never again be questioned.”
Competitors and potential threats, especially China, must be kept out of Latin America. It is unclear where the large investments China has already made in the region will go.
Donroe also extends the vast area that the United States calls its “backyard” as far north as Greenland.
The equivalent of Monroe’s copperplate handwriting in 2026 is a photo of a frowning, grim-looking Trump posted on social media by the U.S. State Department. It reads, “This is our hemisphere. President Trump will not allow our security to be threatened.”
This means using America’s military and economic power to coerce countries and leaders who step out of line and, when necessary, to strip them of their resources. They better watch their asses, as Trump warned another possible target: the president of Colombia.
Greenland is of interest to the United States not only because of its strategic importance in the Arctic, but also because of its rich mineral resources that could become accessible as ice sheets melt due to climate change. Greenland’s rare earths and Venezuela’s heavy oil are both considered strategic assets for the United States.
Unlike other interventionist American presidents, Trump does not disguise his actions as the legitimacy of international law or the pursuit of democracy. The only justification he needs comes from his belief in the power of his own will, backed by the power of America.
From Monroe to Donroe, foreign policy principles have mattered to American presidents. They shape their actions and legacies.
In July, the United States will celebrate its 250th anniversary. In 1796, our first president, George Washington, announced in a farewell speech that still resonates today that he would not seek a third term.
Washington issued a series of warnings to the United States and the world.
Temporary alliances may be necessary in times of war, but otherwise the United States should avoid permanent alliances with foreign countries. This began the isolationist tradition.
At home, he warned citizens to beware of extreme partisanship. He said division was dangerous for the young American republic.
The Senate publicly rereads Washington’s farewell address every year, a ritual that does not penetrate America’s highly partisan and polarized politics.
Washington’s warnings about the dangers of locking down alliances lasted 150 years. After World War I, the United States left Europe and returned to isolationism.
But World War II made the United States a global power. And this is where another doctrine emerges, one that is even more important to the way Europeans lived until Trump.
By 1947, the Cold War with the Soviet Union had intensified. Britain, bankrupted by the war, told the United States that it could no longer fund the Greek government’s fight against communists.
Then-President Harry Truman’s pledge was that the United States would support “free peoples resisting attempts at subjugation by armed minorities or external pressures.” He meant the threat from the Soviet Union or domestic communists.
That was the Truman Doctrine. This led to the Marshall Plan, which reconstructed Europe, and the creation of NATO in 1949. American Atlanticists, such as Harry Truman and George Kennan, the diplomat who came up with the idea of containing the Soviet Union, believed that such a commitment was in America’s interests.
There is a direct path from the Truman Doctrine to Joe Biden’s decision to fund Ukraine’s war effort.
In many ways, the Truman Doctrine created the relationship with Europe that Trump has been dismantling. It was a sharp break with the past. Truman ignored Washington’s warnings about a permanently entangled alliance.
Now Trump is breaking Truman’s legacy. If he continues his threat to somehow seize Greenland, a sovereign Danish territory, he could destroy what is left of the Atlantic Alliance.
Stephen Miller, a Maga ideologue and powerful adviser to Trump, summed it up on CNN earlier this week: He said the United States operates in a real world where “it is ruled by force, it is ruled by force, it is ruled by force… This is the iron law of the world from the beginning of time.”
No American president would deny the need for strength and power. But from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Truman and Trump, through all his successors, those in the Oval Office have believed that the best way to be powerful is to lead allies. This means giving and receiving.
They supported efforts to create a new United Nations and rules to regulate the behavior of states. Of course, the United States has done much to undermine the concept of a rules-based international order by repeatedly ignoring and violating international law.
But Trump’s predecessors did not seek to dispel the idea that the international system, however flawed and imperfect, needs regulation.
That is because of the disastrous consequences of the rule of the most powerful in the first half of the 20th century, including two world wars and millions of deaths.
But Trump’s “America First” ideology, combined with his businessman’s rapacious bargaining instincts, has led him to believe that America’s allies must pay for his favors. The word friendship seems too strong. According to the narrow definition offered by the President, American interests require that the United States maintain its supremacy by acting alone.
Trump changes his mind often. But one abiding belief seems to be his belief that America can use its power with impunity. He said it was the way to make America great again.
The risk is that if Trump sticks to his course, he will return the world to the era of empires a century ago, a world in which powerful powers sought to impose their will and powerful authoritarian nationalists wreaked havoc on their populations.
