The revival of the Monroe Doctrine | In Focus

Published 11:00 am Wednesday, January 14, 2026

The Monroe Doctrine was “enacted” in 1823.

President James Monroe notified the Europeans that further colonization of the western hemisphere was no longer permitted. The United States didn’t have a navy to back up the threat and had to rely on the British Navy to enforce it. It wasn’t because Great Britain was trying to help the United States. It was because the Doctrine benefited the British who wanted free trade in the Americas.

At that time most of Latin America was controlled either by the Spanish Empire or the Portuguese Empire.

Eventually the Spanish and Portugese empires were defeated by independence movements and the remainder of Spanish territories were conquered during and after the Spanish-American War of 1898. During that time the United States took possession of Puerto Rico, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii, and Midway under President McKinley. America had become an empire.

The Monroe Doctrine “holds that any intervention in the political affairs of the Americas by foreign powers is a potentially hostile act against the United States” (wikipedia.org).

The attitudes expressed in the Monroe Doctrine led to the Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961, and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. President Trump’s recent attack on boats in the Caribbean Sea and the kidnapping of Venezuela’s president Maduro and his wife is only a recent incarnation of the Monroe Doctrine.

Eighty years have passed since the end of World War II. During that time the United States has guaranteed the security of Western Europe from Soviet and then Russian intervention. Congress under President Truman and Secretary of State George Marshall bailed out war-torn western Europe with the Marshall Plan and the creation of the North American Treaty Organization.

President Trump has recognized that times have changed. The Cold War has been over since 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia has shown itself to be militarily weak. It cannot even defeat Ukraine, even though Ukraine is less than a quarter of Russia’s population. Europe no longer needs the U.S. to defend it. The Europeans are in denial and must wake up to defend themselves.

If you count all the twenty-seven nations that are part of the European Union, you will find that their combined GDP makes the E.U. the second largest economy in the world, slightly ahead of China.

The United States wants a stable and secure backyard. Cuba and Columbia are next on our President’s list. Cuba is geographically placed to threaten shipping along the Gulf Coast. Columbia is where much of the cocaine comes from. Most of the ingredients for fentanyl are shipped from China to Mexico where it is turned into the drug and then smuggled into the United States. That must end and the drug cartels must be corralled.

Trump’s moves in Latin America reflect the understanding that the Monroe Doctrine is staging a comeback. The United States can and will no longer defend the world while letting other nations bask in American protection.

The world is dividing into three major power centers: Russia, China, and the United States. What Trump is doing is reshaping the world in his own transactional image. The president is pushing the Japanese to act as a block to China. Japan is rearming and threatening China. Trump is encouraging Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia to contain Iran while the U.S. reduces its presence in the region.

Trump’s talk of taking Greenland is actually a wakeup call to the Europeans that it’s time for the Europeans to quit expecting America to defend them and their interests. America has its own interests to defend. It’s forecaster George Friedman’s view in his recent “George Friedman on Why the U.S. Won’t Invade Greenland” YouTube broadcast that Trump’s threats about taking Greenland are outlandish and unrealistic, but it’s Trump’s effort to get the Europeans to be less self-obsessed and passive. The world is changing and Europe needs to understand that they need to change too.

There’s much to dislike about Trump and his actions domestically. Trump’s foreign affairs policies will change what has existed for the past 80 years. Trump’s vision will likely create far more instability and become far more dangerous than what we have seen since the collapse of the U.S.S.R. and the Rise of China. George Friedman thinks the U.S. and China will work out their major economic differences in 2026 because they need each other.

Revival of the Monroe Doctrine and the reshuffling of the world order is a logical outcome of that changing world. We will not like many of the changes but all we can do is adapt.

Decisions have consequences.