President Trump details US raid that captured Maduro in Venezuela
At a press conference, President Donald Trump detailed the U.S. military operation that detained President Nicolas Maduro and his wife overnight in Caracas.
In an hour-long press conference following the early morning arrest of the Venezuelan leader and his wife, President Donald Trump justified the operation as being in line with the Monroe Doctrine, a foreign policy agenda for more than 200 years.
The doctrine, which the president calls the “Don Roe Doctrine,” has long been relegated to foreign policy history, and recent administrations have sought to distance themselves from it. But more than a decade after then-Secretary of State John Kerry announced under former President Barack Obama that the era of the Monroe Doctrine was over, President Trump has now accepted it.
In his remarks on January 3, the president made this principle a continuing tenet of U.S. foreign policy and said the operation that ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro not only adheres to this principle, but takes it a step further. President Trump has accused Venezuela of seizing and selling U.S. oil assets, claiming that Venezuela is “hosting a foreign enemy” and “obtaining offensive weapons.”
“All of these actions flagrantly violate the core principles of American foreign policy that date back more than two centuries,” Trump said. “It goes all the way back to the Monroe Doctrine. And the Monroe Doctrine is a big deal, but we’ve largely replaced it. Now they call it the Donroe Doctrine.”
What is the Monroe Doctrine? Or is it the “Donro principle”?
The Monroe Doctrine, named after its architect, former President James Monroe, in 1823, was one of the most important agenda items in U.S. foreign policy in the 19th century. The document began as a largely symbolic document expressing American opposition to new or expanding European involvement in the Americas, after centuries of colonial activity in the region. It will be a key element of U.S. foreign policy in the region for decades to come, but it has come under increasing criticism from academics and policymakers for being used to justify intervention in Latin America.
This principle outlined how the U.S. government viewed South and Central America as its strategic “backyard,” an area that should be under U.S. influence rather than Europe.
The spirit of this doctrine continued to evolve through subsequent administrations. In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt added the so-called Roosevelt Corollary, which states that the United States has the right to intervene in the Americas under certain circumstances. President Roosevelt declared that the U.S. government could “exercise international police powers” to end what he called “chronic insecurity and malfeasance” in the Western Hemisphere.
According to the State Department’s Historical Bureau, this provided the basis for justifying U.S. intervention in Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. According to the National Archives, U.S. Marines were sent to Santo Domingo in 1904, Nicaragua in 1911, and Haiti in 1915, “ostensibly to keep Europeans out.”
In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt abandoned interventionism and established a “good neighbor” policy within the Western Hemisphere. This was seen as the end of the height of Monroe Doctrine foreign policy.
Although U.S. intervention in Latin America occurred long before the Monroe Doctrine, interpretations of this document underpinned several important U.S. projects and actions in the region, from the construction of the Panama Canal to the Cold War era. The document also significantly strained relations with various Latin American countries for decades and remains an important document for understanding historical and contemporary U.S. foreign policy in the region.
President Trump embraces the Monroe Doctrine in second administration
The January 3 remarks were not the first time President Trump expressed a desire to return to foreign policy positions inspired by centuries-old principles. The administration released a new national security strategy in November that explicitly models its stance toward the Western Hemisphere after the Monroe Doctrine, and says it will “reassert and strengthen” that doctrine to “restore American primacy.”
He called it “Trump’s corollary.”
President Trump said of the Monroe Doctrine, “I think we forgot about it.” “It was very important, but we forgot it. We’re not forgetting it anymore. Under our new national security strategy, America’s primacy in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.”
Kathryn Palmer is USA TODAY’s political reporter. She can be reached at the following address: kapalmer@usatoday.com And to X@Kathryn Purml. Sign up for her daily politics newsletter here.
