Tag: Monroe Doctrine

The “Donroe” Doctrine

I have written about the antiquated document, the Monroe Doctrine, and Donny cannot even get that piece of history right even when he tries to justify it’s use.

Was it a flob up or is he trying to claim ownership of the region?

In his triumphant post-operation remarks, President Donald Trump openly invoked what he termed a “Donroe Doctrine”—a vision of US hemispheric dominance backed by military power. For Europe, this moment marks not only a rupture in norms surrounding sovereignty, but also a warning sign of how America may behave across multiple theatres.

If you still do not think that Donny is trying to build an empire then some of his comments recently should erase any doubt.

The State Department on Monday echoed President Trump’s rhetoric on U.S. authority in the Western Hemisphere.

“This is OUR Hemisphere, and President Trump will not allow our security to be threatened,” the department wrote on the social platform X.

…

The Trump administration has cited stopping the flow of drugs, gangs and sanctioned oil from Venezuela in justifying the removal of Maduro. Trump said Saturday that the U.S. will “run” the South American country until a proper transition can occur, with American oil companies taking control of the nation’s petroleum reserves, the largest in the world.

“We’re in the business of having countries around us that are viable and successful and where the oil is allowed to freely come out, because that’s good, it gets the prices down,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday.

Also Sunday, the president threatened Colombian President Gustavo Petro and warned that Mexico “has to get their act together” regarding the flow of drugs.

Trump also said that Cuba’s communist regime, heavily dependent on Venezuelan oil imports, is “ready to fall.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio also said Saturday that the Cuban government should “be concerned” in the wake of Maduro’s capture.

“It’s very similar [to Venezuela] in the sense that we want to help the people in Cuba, but we want to also help the people who are forced out of Cuba and living in this country,” said Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants.

(thehill.com)

The US has always used the ‘people’ as an excuse for military action…..they are doing whats best for the people….my happy ass!

Donny is on the move to establish an American Empire with his ‘Donroe Doctrine’….

In discussing the US seizure of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, President Trump has resurrected talk about the Monroe Doctrine—the idea espoused by the nation’s fifth president in 1823 that Europe should butt out of Latin America. Trump, however, is pushing a more aggressive version, which he referred to as the “Donroe doctrine” while speaking to reporters on Sunday.

  • “The Monroe Doctrine is a big deal,” said Trump. “But we’ve superseded it by a lot, a real lot.”
  • As an analysis at the New York Times explains, his administration did, in fact, beef up the doctrine in the National Security Strategy document released two months ago. It speaks of a need to “restore American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere,” and to prevent “non-Hemispheric competitors” such as China from staking a claim to assets such as oil. “In other words, we will assert and enforce a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine,” the document states.
  • At the Wall Street Journal, Greg Ip wonders about the precedent involved. “In re-establishing the Western Hemisphere as the U.S.’s sole sphere of influence, is Trump OK with China doing the same in Taiwan and, more broadly, Asia; or Russia in Ukraine and its other neighbors? Officially, no; yet Trump’s tone toward both is notably friendlier now than in his first term.”
  • When Monroe voiced his doctrine, it was mostly over a worry about European powers interfering in the affairs of their former colonies in Latin America. President Teddy Roosevelt later expanded it to justify military interventions, notes the Hill. Trump is further expanding it by asserting that he “can claim resources (oil) that, in his view, America cannot live without,” according to the Times analysis.
  • Trump’s actions mark quite a turnaround from the Obama administration. Back in 2013, then-Secretary of State John Kerry declared, “The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over,” as this Wall Street Journal story from the time reports. The story includes this context: “By giving more leeway to big regional players such as Colombia and Brazil, and not getting too worked up about the anti-American antics of strongmen in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, the administration has tried to put U.S.-Latin American relations on a new footing.”

Yeah, like Chile in the 70s, Iraq in the 00s, Iran in the 50s….none of that was ‘for the people’…..matters not who is president the US will act with force to preserve the assets in countries.

None of this sounds like an act of empire?

Drugs will continue to flow…..that is for certain.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Things Do Not Always Go As Planned

The newest stupid act of attacking Venezuela is just an extension of the US ill-conceived plans for Latin America and the Caribbean….

You guys know I cannot let this go without offering a historical perspective, right?

America has a long history of intervening in Latin America and the Caribbean….all the way back to 1823 and the Monroe Doctrine…..

The Monroe Doctrine is the best known U.S. policy toward the Western Hemisphere. Buried in a routine annual message delivered to Congress by President James Monroe in December 1823, the doctrine warns European nations that the United States would not tolerate further colonization or puppet monarchs.

All well and good….but how has it all worked out over 200+ years?

…

U.S. policy, underpinned by the Monroe Doctrine, has shaped the region in the decades since World War II, leading to overt and covert interventions that have often — but not always — resulted in bad outcomes and unintended consequences.

Here are five examples:

The overthrow of Guatemala’s government

By 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was concerned about a Guatemalan land-reform program that nationalized property owned by the U.S.-based United Fruit Company (now Chiquita Brands International). The initiative was carried out under Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz, the nation’s second democratically elected leader, whose term began in 1951. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles accused Árbenz of establishing what he described as a “communist-type reign of terror.”

…

Then there is the US biggest disaster….Bay of Pigs….

Shortly after taking office in 1961, President John F. Kennedy approved a covert plan to overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who had grown increasingly aligned with the Soviet Union since seizing power two years earlier. The secret operation, originally developed under the Eisenhower administration, relied on a force of about 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles who were expected to seize the Bay of Pigs on Cuba’s southern coast and spark a popular uprising against Castro.

Instead, the Bay of Pigs invasion ended in disaster. Castro ordered some 20,000 troops to the beach, forcing most of the U.S.-backed invasion force to surrender. More than 100 were killed. The incident became a major embarrassment for the United States.

(There is so much more)

https://www.npr.org/2026/01/02/nx-s1-5652133/us-venezuela-interventionism-caribbean-latin-america-history-trump

Basically it is all must do as the US demands or face annihilation….the old ‘do as I say not as I do’ sort of thing.

This pathetic little man needs to whither away….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Testing The Monroe Doctrine

Venezuela is all the foreign service people can talk about these days…..analyst like myself see a different scope to this situation than the Trump administration…..

I see this situation as a test for the 200 year old Monroe Doctrine……is there a history buff handy to explain it to you?

No?

Well let me fill that position with a couple of short videos that can made it simple and easily understandable…..

https://youtu.be/8TdpX7gF5GI

Another look……

https://youtu.be/BDQWHfM17S8

If there are those that appreciate the hard work it takes to keep a blog up to date….I have a few post that also talks about this “Doctrine”……

https://lobotero.com/2010/04/21/the-monroe-doctrine-again/

https://lobotero.com/2018/09/12/theres-always-the-monroe-doctrine/

The US has used this document to do a lot of things in the Western hemisphere……mostly they were about regime change…..and most were assaults of duly elected leaders….leaders that corporate America did not want to continue……

The situation and the rhetoric in DC about Venezuela is testing the Monroe Doctrine yet again……

The threats that failing governments and foreign influence pose to the United States have not been the norm in the Western hemisphere. Since the institution of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, the United States has opposed efforts by European and other powers to meddle in the United States’ backyard, keeping a watchful eye on its neighbors. There has been much turmoil the last fifty years — Pinochet’s reign in Chile, the civil war in El Salvador, drug-fueled gang violence in Colombia, and others, are all conflicts that divided nations, destabilized the region, and engrossed the world.

Despite the violence and attention, Latin American conflicts have generated, the United States was largely successful in limiting influence from foreign nations and overseas organizations seeking to exploit these conflicts and undermine the integrity and influence of the United States. Now, the Monroe Doctrine faces perhaps its most challenging test yet: recent unrest in Venezuela. The growing discontent in the country has reached a boiling point, with the specter of civil war looming and national security concerns that threaten the safety of the United States.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2019/05/01/venezuela_testing_the_monroe_doctrine_114382.html
 
Once again the US is using an aging document to justify their interference into the internal affairs of a sovereign nation…this is regime change for the sake of regime change….nothing more.
 
To illustrate this pointy…..
After a failed US-backed coup on Wednesday, the Trump Administration is visibly losing patience on its determination to impose regime change in Venezuela. While still giving lip-service to the idea that the US can force a “peaceful” exchange of power through sheer force of will, they are also talking up direct military intervention.

The always hawkish John Bolton was of course the most open about this possible US attack, saying that he’s been told by Admiral Faller that US troops are “on the balls of our feet ready to go” into Venezuela.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others only suggested that invading Venezuela was “possible,” but talking up the intervention in such a way as to suggest that a lot more possible after that failed coup.

Adding to speculation that such a war could be imminent, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has cancelled his planned trip to Europe at the last minute, with officials saying he needs to stay to coordinate policy on Venezuela.

Gen. Joe Dunford, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says that the focus right now is on collecting intelligence on Venezuela. How successful they are being is unclear, as officials seemed to assume that coup was going to be successful.
 
(antiwar.com)
Will we or won’t we?

Monroe Doctrine Turns 195

Closing Thought–07Dec18

I regret that I missed the day but December is the 195th anniversary of the issuing of the Monroe Doctrine…..this is important because it has been used on various occasions to go to war for this country….

In his December 2, 1823, address to Congress, President James Monroe articulated United States’ policy on the new political order developing in the rest of the Americas and the role of Europe in the Western Hemisphere.

The statement, known as the Monroe Doctrine, was little noted by the Great Powers of Europe, but eventually became a longstanding tenet of U.S. foreign policy. Monroe and his Secretary of State John Quincy Adams drew upon a foundation of American diplomatic ideals such as disentanglement from European affairs and defense of neutral rights as expressed in Washington’s Farewell Address and Madison’s stated rationale for waging the War of 1812. The three main concepts of the doctrine—separate spheres of influence for the Americas and Europe, non-colonization, and non-intervention—were designed to signify a clear break between the New World and the autocratic realm of Europe. Monroe’s administration forewarned the imperial European powers against interfering in the affairs of the newly independent Latin American states or potential United States territories. While Americans generally objected to European colonies in the New World, they also desired to increase United States influence and trading ties throughout the region to their south. European mercantilism posed the greatest obstacle to economic expansion. In particular, Americans feared that Spain and France might reassert colonialism over the Latin American peoples who had just overthrown European rule. Signs that Russia was expanding its presence southward from Alaska toward the Oregon Territory were also disconcerting.

We celebrate the Monroe Doctrine here on IST……https://www.lawfareblog.com/anniversary-monroe-doctrine

Read!  Learn Stuff!

Class Dismissed!

There’s Always The Monroe Doctrine

Nowadays we do not hear the Monroe Doctrine being used as it had been in the past.  It was referenced when the US invade Grenada, it was quoted when the USSR put missiles in Cuba, and it was used to start a war known as the Spanish-American War.

The document is not quoted much these days so most Americans have little idea what it is and what it is suppose to do.

Monroe Doctrine, (December 2, 1823), cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy enunciated by Pres. James Monroe in his annual message to Congress. Declaring that the Old World and New World had different systems and must remain distinct spheres, Monroe made four basic points: (1) the United States would not interfere in the internal affairs of or the wars between European powers; (2) the United States recognized and would not interfere with existing colonies and dependencies in the Western Hemisphere; (3) the Western Hemisphere was closed to future colonization; and (4) any attempt by a European power to oppress or control any nation in the Western Hemisphere would be viewed as a hostile act against the United States.

The doctrine was an outgrowth of concern in both Britain and the United States that the continental powers would attempt to restore Spain’s former colonies, in Latin America, many of which had become newly independent nations. The United States was also concerned about Russia’s territorial ambitions in the northwest coast of North America. As a consequence, George Canning, the British foreign minister, suggested a joint U.S.-British declaration forbidding future colonization in Latin America. Monroe was initially favourable to the idea, and former presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison concurred. But Secretary of State John Quincy Adams argued that the United States should issue a statement of American policy exclusively, and his view ultimately prevailed.

What are the basic tenets of the Doctrine?

…the Monroe Doctrine laid out four basic tenets that would define American foreign policy for decades. The first two promised that the U.S. would not interfere in the affairs of European states, be they wars or internal politics, and that the U.S. would not interfere with European states’ extant colonial enterprises. In exchange, it stipulated that the Western Hemisphere was no longer open to further colonization and that an attempt on the part of a European power to colonize territory in the Western Hemisphere would be understood by the U.S. as an act of aggression.

https://www.history.com/topics/westward-expansion/monroe-doctrine

But if you are a more visual person I offer this vid as an explanation……

I bring up this bit of history is because of the situation in Venezuela…..of which I have written posts…..https://lobotero.com/2018/08/06/death-from-above-in-venezuela/

The US attempted to influence the internal conditions of a sovereign country……

The Trump administration dabbled in aiding a military overthrow of Venezuela’s president but ultimately just met with coup plotters—a development that could still anger Latin American leaders wary of any possible US intervention, the New York Times reports. Seems American officials met with Venezuelan military officers at least three times abroad and listened to their plans, however vague, to kick out President Nicolás Maduro and install a transitional government. But according to those involved, the US never gave them the encrypted radios they requested and backed away when roughly 150 plotters were arrested in a crackdown. Apparently the whole thing began with an off-hand remark by President Trump.

“We have many options for Venezuela and by the way, I’m not going to rule out a military option,” the president said at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club last year, the Guardian reported. Those words inspired rebellious Venezuelan officers to reach out during the nation’s economic collapse, but US officials say the Venezuelans lacked specific ideas and hoped the Americans would offer a plan. According to an ex-military commander in Venezuela, the US dallied while coup plotters waited: “We were frustrated,” he said. No coup attempt happened, but the meetings could remind Latin Americans of past interventions like the US-backed Chilean coup in 1973 and support for right-wing Nicaraguan rebels in the 1980s. “This is going to land like a bomb” in the region, says a former US diplomat.

Maybe it is time for a new “Monroe Doctrine”…..Our Dear Leader seems Hell bent on intervening in the situations in the Western hemisphere….maybe it is time for something new……

After the collapse of Chavism, which way will Latin America turn?

It wasn’t long ago that Venezuela, led by a fiery caudillo and dedicated to spreading its brand of populist super-socialism, boosted allies’ economies near and far with petrodollars. Hugo Chavez was spreading his Bolivarian revolution all over and times were good.

No más.

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/trump-needs-new-monroe-doctrine/90365/

The original document has been used to intervene in the affairs of countries in the Western hemisphere…..time to set a new set of rules for intervention…..avoid at all costs.