Trump's 'Donroe Doctrine' hands Putin go-ahead he wants

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

By M. Gessen / The New York Times

In the initial rush of news Saturday morning, many commentators speculated that the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela was also a blow to President Vladimir Putin of Russia, since Venezuela and Russia are allies. To the contrary, it is a victory for Putin, because it is a blow — quite likely fatal — to the new world order of law, justice and human rights that was heralded in the wake of World War II.

That order was never as robust as its champions made it out to be. Many of the multilateral institutions created to foster cooperation and enforce international law have been dysfunctional, often because they were sabotaged by their most powerful members. And yet, some mechanisms worked; some laws were enforced; some crimes were punished and many more were probably prevented; millions of people had their freedom and dignity affirmed; and a reasonable hope persisted that a law-based, humanistic world order would be built. No longer.

When he addressed the public in a news conference Saturday, President Donald Trump announced that U.S. forces had abducted the president of Venezuela and his wife in the name of democracy, justice, freedom for the Venezuelan people and the safety of Americans. It was a mockery: Despite what the hoodlums running our country may actually believe, abduction — whether on a street in Boston, in an apartment building in New York or Chicago, or in Maduro’s compound in Caracas — never serves the cause of justice.

Illegality does not uphold the law. Starting wars of aggression does not make anyone safer. Colonization does not bring freedom. And colonization is what Trump promised when he dismissed María Corina Machado, a Nobel laureate with a credible claim of a popular mandate and international recognition, as lacking leadership qualities and said, in various ways, no fewer than four times, “We are going to run the country.”

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/gessen-trumps-donroe-doctrine-hands-putin-go-ahead-he-wants/

[snot]

1. I've been imagining

Trump and Putin/Xi dividing the world between them like kids cheating at Monopoly: I'll let you have the eastern hemisphere if you let me have the west.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. MaddowBlog-Trump, fixated on the Monroe Doctrine, pushes 'Donroe Doctrine' twist

Trump is now leaning on the Monroe Doctrine — or at least his own version of it — to justify imperialistic ambitions from Greenland to South America.

Link to tweet

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-fixated-on-the-monroe-doctrine-pushes-donroe-doctrine-twist

Soon after, Donald Trump tapped Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry to serve as the administration’s special envoy to Greenland, which was weird for all sorts of reasons. Asked about his unexpected side gig, the Republican governor said, in reference to Greenland, “They’re in the Western Hemisphere, fits inside the Monroe Doctrine, and we’re gonna bring them some great Cajun food.”

But after Trump deployed U.S. forces to bomb Venezuela and capture Nicolás Maduro, the relevance of the doctrine took a massive leap.

Trump: "All the way back it dated to the Monroe Doctrines. And the Monroe Doctrine is a big deal. But we've superseded it by a lot. By a real lot. They now call it the Donroe Document. I don't know. It's Monroe Doctrine. We sort of forgot about it."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-01-03T16:59:50.843Z

....Trump went on to say of the Monroe Doctrine, “We sort of forgot about it. It was very important, but we forgot about it. We don’t forget about it anymore. Under our new national security strategy, American dominance in the Western hemisphere will never be questioned again.”

A day later, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, the president said Venezuela is “in our area,” which seemed to imply that it falls under his vision of the “Donroe Doctrine.”

He concluded, “The Monroe Doctrine was very important when it was done and other presidents, a lot of them, they lost sight of it. I didn’t. I didn’t lose sight.”

I won’t pretend to know who put these thoughts in his head, but it’s worth pausing to understand what the centuries-old policy was all about. The Associated Press summarized:

Articulated in Monroe’s 1823 address to Congress, it was intended to ward off European colonization or other interference in independent nations of the Western Hemisphere. In return, the U.S. also agreed to stay out of European wars and internal affairs.

At the time, many Latin American countries had just gained independence from European empires. Monroe wanted both to prevent Europe from reclaiming control and to assert U.S. influence in the hemisphere.

....Trump is now leaning on the Monroe Doctrine — or rather, his own particular interpretation of the policy — to justify imperialistic ambitions from Greenland to South America.

“The effort carries significant risks,” a Washington Post analysis explained. “Washington could get pulled into the nation-building invasions that Trump has long sworn to avoid if the Venezuelan military or people are unwilling to go along with his plans. It also makes it harder for the United States to argue to Russia and China that they should steer clear of their neighbors. And it may reshape global affairs more broadly, as smaller nations that were long dependent on Washington’s guarantees for global trade and stability hedge their bets by building ties elsewhere.”....

But as relevant as these angles are, it’s equally important for the political world to appreciate the fact that the world bears little resemblance to the one Americans saw in 1823. For Trump to try to shoehorn his misguided ambitions into a centuries-old model isn’t just absurd — it’s also a recipe for failure.