After Venezuela attack, Pres. Trump says new era of “Donroe Doctrine” is beginning

WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - After the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump said over the weekend that the operation is ushering in a revival of a 19th century foreign policy.

“Monroe Doctrine. We sort of forgot about it. It was very important, but we forgot about it. We don’t forget about it anymore,” he said at a news conference on Saturday.

The president was referring to the Monroe Doctrine, a policy that was created by President James Monroe back in 1823 to oppose European interference in the Western Hemisphere.

“President Monroe said, essentially, the Western Hemisphere is closed for business. We, the United States, will continue to recognize, any colonies you, the European countries have, but we will not tolerate new colonies being established,” said Joshua Shifrinson, associate professor with the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland and non-resident senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

But the president announced a new name for his version of the policy at the press conference, the “Donroe Doctrine.”

“Under our new national security strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again,” he said.

Shifrinson said other presidents have invoked this policy to assert U.S. dominance, but not as explicitly as President Trump. And he believes that the president may have requested the capture of Maduro to put other countries on notice.

“The Trump administration simply put the Venezuelan government up against the wall and decapitated it, essentially,” he’s said. “Not out of anything specific, but to remind the other countries of the Western Hemisphere that we are the United States and we will assert our dominance as we see fit.”