Please Follow us on Gab, Minds, Telegram, Rumble, Truth Social, Gettr, Twitter, Youtube
Doral, Florida — President Trump was elected and re-elected to Make America Great Again. To do so, however, Americans must understand what made America great in the first place. Part of that task requires an appreciation of the Monroe Doctrine and its role in U.S. foreign policy—from the early days of the Republic in 1823, when it was grounded in sober thinking by serious statesmen, until it was disavowed by unserious politicians beginning in 1961.
Origins and Development of the Monroe Doctrine
The story of the Monroe Doctrine begins on the evening of Christmas Day, 1776, when 18-year-old Lieutenant James Monroe accompanied General George Washington in crossing the Delaware River to attack the Hessian forces camped at Trenton the following day. General Washington led the main column of American troops, while Monroe served as second-in-command of a 50-man infantry company protecting Washington’s right flank. That company was led by Captain William Washington, a cousin of George Washington, and was tasked with attacking two enemy cannons blocking the road.
During the engagement, Captain Washington was wounded and put out of action. Lieutenant Monroe then assumed command, cleared the enemy position, and was himself shot in the chest. He would have bled to death had an American physician accompanying the troops not stanched the bleeding. The bullet remained lodged in Monroe’s body for the rest of his life.
The password for the American troops that night was “Victory or Death!” Americans are a people who will make good use of a holiday—even crossing a frozen river—to kill those who would deprive us of liberty.
After the adoption of the Constitution, James Monroe entered public life. He witnessed President Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase in 1803, which dramatically expanded America westward. When Monroe himself was elected president in 1816, he proceeded to acquire Florida from Spain in 1819. Re-elected without opposition in 1820, Monroe delivered to Congress in 1823 the doctrine proposed by his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams.
Adams, having accompanied his father, John Adams, during his service as U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, was deeply steeped in diplomatic affairs. By 1823, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, and nearly all of Spain’s former colonies in the Americas had gained independence. Monroe and Adams understood the vital importance of keeping the great European powers out of the Western Hemisphere. That concern lay at the heart of the Monroe Doctrine.
During the Civil War, President Lincoln and his Secretary of State, William Seward—former senator and governor of New York—were particularly focused on preventing Great Britain, France and Spain from intervening on behalf of the Confederacy. After the war, Seward purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, and the United States even explored the possibility of acquiring Greenland.
Nonetheless, in 1862 France took advantage of America’s internal conflict to invade Mexico and install its puppet ruler, Emperor Maximilian of Austria. After the Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg made clear that the Confederacy would lose, the French withdrew. President Benito Juárez, with support from the United States, defeated the remaining imperial forces and restored the Mexican Republic.
In 1898, the United States fought a war against Spain, resulting in Spain’s loss of its last remaining possessions in the Americas.
The next major application of the Monroe Doctrine came in 1904, when President Theodore Roosevelt supported a secessionist movement in Colombia’s Panama province and helped establish the Republic of Panama. This action became known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. The United States subsequently acquired the Canal Zone and built the Panama Canal over the next decade. Since its opening in 1914, the canal has been a major strategic asset, dramatically reducing transit time between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
During World War II, the Panama Canal proved indispensable to America’s ability to fight a two-ocean war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan.
Decline of the Monroe Doctrine
The first major failure to uphold the Monroe Doctrine occurred in 1961, when President Kennedy failed to provide promised air support to the Cuban freedom fighters during the Bay of Pigs invasion. Perceiving Kennedy’s lack of resolve, the Soviet Union placed nuclear missiles in Cuba, triggering the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The resolution of that crisis allowed Russia to retain a permanent foothold in the Americas—an ongoing source of instability for the United States. Kennedy was a serial betrayer of more than just American interests.
In 1977, President Carter agreed to transfer control of the Panama Canal to the Republic of Panama, effective in 1999. This giveaway ran counter to American interests and transferred a world-class strategic asset to a peripheral third-rate country incapable of safeguarding it.
There were, however, exceptions. In 1983, President Reagan intervened in Grenada to prevent a Cuban-backed communist takeover. In 1989, President George H. W. Bush intervened in Panama to remove narco-trafficking dictator Manuel Noriega. Noriega was tried and convicted in a U.S. court and spent the remainder of his life in prison.
Since America’s Victory in the Cold War
In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, and in 1991 the Soviet Union dissolved, pushing Russia back to its core territory. Communist economies do not function, and Cuba had long depended on subsidies from the Soviet bloc. With their disappearance, Cuba entered the 1990s “Special Period” of severe hunger and deprivation. The Clinton State Department failed to exploit this opportunity to topple the Cuban regime, unwilling to undermine fellow leftists.
Cuba found a new sponsor in December 1998, when Venezuela elected democratic socialist Hugo Chávez as president. An Uber driver in Miami admitted to this columnist that he voted for Chávez because the mainstream Christian Democrat and Christian Socialist parties were corrupt and incompetent. Upon taking office in January 1999, Chávez opened Venezuela to Cuban penetration and supplied the Castro regime with oil and other necessities at nominal prices.
The 1998 election was the last free and fair election held in Venezuela. Beginning with the 2004 recall referendum—where Carter Center observers shamefully failed to denounce obvious fraud—every subsequent Venezuelan election has been stolen, including the July 2024 presidential contest.
In effect, the Cuban regime conquered Venezuela. When Chávez died in 2013, Havana installed his associate Nicolás Maduro as successor. Cuban military and intelligence officers infiltrated the Venezuelan state, and Maduro’s praetorian guard consisted of 32 Cuban officers who both protected and imprisoned him.
Under communist rule, Venezuela collapsed. Once boasting the world’s highest per-capita consumption of pasta and Scotch whisky, the country descended into such deprivation that people began eating pets and zoo animals. From a population of roughly 32 million at the turn of the millennium, nearly eight million Venezuelans have fled. Oil production fell from nearly four million barrels per day to under one million. Socialism and communism are hate crimes inflicted on entire countries, replacing the private sector with a criminal oligarchy.
Meanwhile, in 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry explicitly announced that the Monroe Doctrine was obsolete. That same year, China launched its Belt and Road Initiative, and by 2017 had secured concessions from Panama’s corrupt government to operate facilities at both ends of the Panama Canal. A global strategic asset thus fell under the control of an external great power.
The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine
Since President Trump’s re-election, his commitment to Making America Great Again has included restoring the Monroe Doctrine. This effort began with the appointment of Senator Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. Defending America starts with controlling our “near abroad,” as the Russians describe it. The United States must secure its borders and ensure that neighboring countries are not used as platforms for illegal migration, drug trafficking or military penetration by powers such as China, Russia or Iran.
The Trump Corollary is being applied according to conditions in each country:
1. Venezuela: Nicolás Maduro was already an indicted criminal. A military operation to bring him to justice follows the precedent set by President George H. W. Bush in Panama. President Trump is allowing the existing government to continue on an interim basis to avoid the chaos seen in Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s removal.
2. Cuba: Cut off from its sponsor, the regime is withering and likely to collapse, despite emergency oil shipments from Mexico.
3. Colombia: Presidential elections are scheduled for May, and a conservative victory is likely.
4. Regional Allies: Several countries—most notably Argentina and El Salvador—already have conservative governments cooperating with the United States.
5. Mexico: Mexico is governed by a communist president aligned with the cartels. The state controls only about a quarter of national territory; cartels control roughly half, with the remainder contested. Mexico has begun supplying free oil to Cuba. A U.S. ground operation against cartel infrastructure may become unavoidable.
6. Canada: Canada erred by electing another globalist, socialist prime minister and aligning against the Trump administration.
7. Greenland: Greenland must align with the United States. Denmark and NATO display strategic blindness in opposing Trump, as none can defend their territories without American power.
8. Brazil: Brazil is under judicial tyranny, and its last presidential election was rigged. New elections are scheduled for October, but the country remains perpetually “the country of the future.” Its flag’s motto, “Order and Progress,” is no formula for liberty and prosperity.
The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine reflects an America First strategy. Securing borders and controlling the hemisphere are prerequisites for national security—long before distant conflicts in Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine or Gaza. If defending the Gulf of America, the Monroe Sea and the American Hemisphere requires gunboat diplomacy, there is no better place to employ it.
