Trump risks pushing world back to age of empires

Just hours after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was removed from his palace, his job and his country by US special forces, Donald Trump was still marveling at what it felt like to watch live coverage of the raid from his Mar-a-Lago mansion.

He shared his feelings with Fox News.

“If you could see the speed, the violence, that’s what they called it… It was an incredible, amazing job done by these people. No one else could have done anything like this.”

The US president wants and needs quick victories. Before taking office for the second time, he boasted that ending the Russia-Ukraine war was a day’s work.

As seen in Trump’s statements, Venezuela is the quick and decisive victory he desires.

The United States will “run” Venezuela — and now with a new president, the Chavista regime will turn over millions of barrels of oil and control how the profits are spent, Maduro announced from a jail cell in Brooklyn. Anyway, so far, without the loss of American lives and the long occupation that led to such disastrous consequences after the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

At least for now, Trump and his advisers are ignoring Venezuela’s complexities, at least publicly. A country larger than Germany, it is still ruled by a regime of factions that has ingrained corruption and oppression in Venezuelan politics.

Instead, Trump is enjoying a geopolitical sugar rush. So did U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, judging by their statements while flanking him at Mar-a-Lago.

They have since repeated that Trump is a president who does what he says he will do.

He made it clear to Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, Greenland and Denmark that they should be uneasy about where his appetites would take him.

Trump loves nicknames. He still calls his predecessor, Sleepy Joe Biden.

Now a new name is being tried for the Monroe Doctrine, which has been the basis of the US’s Latin American policy for two centuries.

Trump naturally renamed this doctrine after himself, the Donroe doctrine.

James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States, unveiled the original document in December 1823. The document declared the Western hemisphere to be America’s sphere of interest and warned European powers not to establish new colonies or intervene.

The Donroe Doctrine puts Monroe’s 200-year-old message on steroids.

“The Monroe Doctrine is a big deal, but we’re way past it,” Trump said as Maduro, blindfolded and shackled, headed to jail at Mar-a-Lago.

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

Any rival or potential threat, especially China, should stay away from Latin America. It is unclear where this will lead to the massive investments China has already made in the region.

Donroe also expands the huge area he calls the US’s “backyard” north to Greenland.

The 2026 equivalent of Monroe’s copperplate handwriting is the photo of a frowning, grumpy-looking Trump shared on social media by the US State Department. The words on it read, “This is OUR hemisphere and President Trump will not allow our security to be threatened.”

This means using US military and economic might to pressure countries and leaders who cross the line and, if necessary, take their resources. As Trump warned the president of Colombia, another possible target, they need to watch their asses.

Greenland is in the spotlight of America not only because of its strategic importance in the Arctic, but also because it has rich mineral resources that have become accessible as climate change melts ice sheets. Rare earths from Greenland and heavy crude oil from Venezuela are considered strategic assets of the United States.

Unlike other interventionist US presidents, Trump does not cloak his actions with the legitimacy of international law or the pursuit of democracy, no matter how false. The only legitimacy he needs comes from his belief in the strength of his own will, backed by raw US power.

Foreign policy doctrines are important for US presidents from Monroe to Donroe. They shape their actions and their legacies.

In July, the United States will celebrate its 250th birthday. In 1796, the first president, George Washington, announced that he would not seek a third term in a farewell speech that still resonates today.

Washington issued a series of warnings to the USA and the world.

Temporary alliances may be necessary in wartime, but otherwise the United States should avoid permanent alliances with foreign countries. This started the tradition of isolationism.

He warned citizens at home to be wary of hyper-partisanship. He said division was a danger to the young American republic.

The Senate rereads Washington’s farewell address publicly each year; it’s a ritual that doesn’t cut it in the hyper-partisan and polarized politics of the United States.

Washington’s warning about the dangers of entangling alliances was followed for 150 years. After World War I, the United States abandoned Europe and returned to isolationism.

However, World War II made the United States a global power. At this point, another doctrine that is much more important for the lifestyle of Europeans comes into play; until Trump.

By 1947, the Cold War with the Soviet Union had turned cold. Britain, bankrupt due to the war, told the United States that it could no longer finance the Greek government’s fight against the communists.

Then-President Harry Truman’s response was to pledge that the United States would support, in his words, “free peoples resisting attempts at subjugation by armed minorities or foreign pressures.” He was referring to threats from the Soviet Union or homegrown communists.

That was the Truman Doctrine. This led to the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe and the subsequent establishment of NATO in 1949. Atlanticists in the United States, such as Harry Truman and George Kennan, the diplomat who came up with the idea of ​​containing the Soviet Union, believed that these commitments were in America’s best interest.

There is a direct line 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 is tearing apart. This was a sharp break with the past. Truman ignored Washington’s warning about enduring complex alliances.

Now Trump is breaking with Truman’s legacy. If he follows through on his threat to somehow seize Greenland, Denmark’s sovereign territory, he could destroy what’s left of the transatlantic alliance.

Maga ideologue and powerful Trump advisor Stephen Miller outlined this on CNN earlier this week. He said the United States operates in the real world “ruled by force, ruled by force, ruled by force…these are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

No US president can deny the need for power and might. But the men in the Oval Office, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Truman and their successors to Trump, believed that the best way to be powerful was to lead an alliance; which meant giving and receiving.

They supported the new United Nations and its effort to establish rules to regulate the behavior of states. Of course, the United States has ignored and violated international law many times; has done much to eviscerate the idea of ​​a rules-based international order.

But Trump’s predecessors did not try to dispel the idea that the international system, no matter how flawed and incomplete, needed regulation.

This is due to the disastrous consequences of the rule of the strongest in the first half of the 20th century: two world wars and millions of dead.

But the combination of Trump’s “America First” ideology and the businessman’s greedy, transactional instincts has led him to believe that America’s allies should pay for the privilege of his favor. Friendship seems like such a strong word. In the narrow definition put forward by the president, America’s interests require him to remain at the top by acting alone.

Trump changes his mind frequently. But the only constant seems to be the US’s belief that it can use its power with impunity. He says this is the way to make America great again.

The risk is that if Trump sticks to his course, he will push the world back to the age of empires a century or more ago, a world where great powers with spheres of influence sought to impose their will and mighty authoritarian nationalists led their people to disaster.