How the Monroe Doctrine affects the US arrest of Venezuelan President Maduro

In detailing the US military action that led to the arrest of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, President Donald Trump referred to the Monroe Doctrine, a principle that has shaped American foreign policy for two centuries.

The doctrine formulated by President James Monroe was originally intended to oppose European interference in the Western Hemisphere. It has since been repeatedly invoked by subsequent presidents trying to justify American intervention in the region.

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On Saturday, the 47th president cited the doctrine of the fifth president of the United States as partial justification for arresting a foreign leader to face criminal charges in the United States. Trump even joked that some are now calling it the “Don Roe Doctrine.”

Political scientists are now looking back at the use of the Monroe Doctrine throughout history and making connections to how the Trump administration has sought to apply it to current foreign policy, including the Republican president’s assertion that Washington will “manage” Venezuela until a suitable replacement for Maduro is found.

Here’s a look at the Monroe Doctrine, how it has been invoked over time, and how it has influenced Trump’s decision-making.

What is the Monroe Doctrine?

This was spelled out in Monroe’s speech to Congress in 1823, and was intended to ward off European colonization or other interference in the independent nations of the Western Hemisphere. In return, the United States also agreed to stay out of European wars and internal affairs.

At that time, many Latin American countries had just gained their independence from European empires. Monroe wanted to prevent Europe from regaining control and assert US influence in the hemisphere.

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Over the centuries, much of that has included Venezuela, according to Jay Sexton, a history professor at the University of Missouri.

“Historically, Venezuela has been the pretext or catalyst for many of the corollaries of the Monroe Doctrine,” said Sexton, author of “The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America,” citing examples from the late 19th century, throughout the first Trump administration.

“Going back to the 19th century, this was a divided and divided country that had difficult relations with foreign powers, and it also had relations with rivals of the United States.”

Roosevelt’s corollary and “big stick” diplomacy.

European leaders initially paid little attention to this declaration, but the Monroe Doctrine has been invoked in the two centuries since to justify US military interventions in Latin America.

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The first direct challenge came after France installed Emperor Maximilian in Mexico in the 1860s. After the end of the civil war, France yielded to American pressure and withdrew.

In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt’s argument that the United States should be allowed to intervene in unstable Latin American countries became known as the Roosevelt Corollary, a justification that was cited in a number of places, including support for Panama’s secession from Colombia, which helped secure the Panama Canal Zone for the United States.

The Cold War era saw the Monroe Doctrine used as a defense against communism, such as the 1962 US demand to withdraw Soviet missiles from Cuba, as well as the Reagan administration’s opposition to the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

Gretchen Murphy, a professor at the University of Texas, described Trump’s reference to the doctrine as being in line with how it had been used by his predecessors, including Roosevelt, who she said “claimed that the Monroe Doctrine could be expanded to justify interventions that, instead of defending Latin American countries from European interference, monitored them to ensure that their governments were acting in American commercial and strategic interests.”

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“I think Trump is jumping on this familiar pattern — invoking the Monroe Doctrine on legitimate interventions that undermine true democracy, and ones in which different kinds of interests are served, including commercial interests,” said Murphy, author of Hemispheric Perceptions: The Monroe Doctrine and Narratives of American Empire.

What did Trump say about the Monroe Doctrine?

Trump said Venezuela, under Maduro, was “increasingly hosting foreign adversaries in our region and acquiring dangerous offensive weapons that could threaten American interests.” Trump described these actions as a “flagrant violation of the basic principles of American foreign policy dating back more than two centuries.”

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

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“We want to surround ourselves with good neighbors, we want to surround ourselves with stability, and we want to surround ourselves with energy,” Trump said. “We have tremendous energy in this country. It’s very important that we protect it. We need it for ourselves. We need it for the world.”

The corollary for Trump?

When asked on Saturday how the US running a country represented an “America First” mentality, Trump defended the move as one aimed, similar to the origin story of the Monroe Doctrine, at strengthening America itself.

The administration’s National Security Strategy refers to a “Trump corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, aiming to “restore American primacy in the Western Hemisphere.”

“Under our new National Security Strategy, American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again,” Trump said. “For decades, other administrations have neglected or even contributed to these growing security threats in the Western Hemisphere. Under the Trump administration, we are reasserting American power in a very powerful way in our region.”

“What presidents have a habit of doing is hiding whatever their agenda is in the Monroe Doctrine by issuing corollaries,” Sexton said.

After World War II, instead of creating corollaries of the Monroe Doctrine, presidents began issuing their own doctrine, Sexton said, citing Harry S. Truman and Richard Nixon. Sexton said he assumed Trump might take similar action.

“When you talk about a corollary to Trump, I knew Trump didn’t want it to be a corollary to another president’s doctrine, and that this would somehow evolve into a Trump doctrine,” he said.

The National Security Strategy released by the White House in December portrayed European allies as weak and aimed to reassert American dominance in the Western Hemisphere.

Positioning a series of military strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific as a “corollary to Trump’s Monroe Doctrine” to “restore American supremacy in the Western Hemisphere,” the document said they were intended to combat the flow of drugs and control migration. The strategy represents a reimagining of the US military footprint in the region even after building the largest military presence there in generations.

Sexton said a military operation to capture Maduro — and a potential prolonged U.S. intervention in Venezuela — could cause another division among supporters of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement, similar to what happened after the administration’s strikes last year on Iranian nuclear facilities.

“This is not just a hit-and-run mission where we shoot down missiles, like we did in Iran a couple of months ago, and then you can move on as normal,” Sexton said. “This is potentially a huge mess and contradicts the administration’s policies about withdrawing from wars forever — and there are a lot of isolationists within the MAGA coalition.”