The Donroe Doctrine Is a Sadistic Fantasy, and Nothing New
David Swanson / World BEYOND War
(December 6, 2025) — Donald Trump has declared his support for the Monroe Doctrine in a document called “National Security Strategy of the United States of America – November 2025,” and labeled that expression of support his “corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. This amounts basically to slapping the Trump name on what has long been understood as the (Theodore) Roosevelt Corollary of the Monroe Doctrine. In a popular but misleadingly oversimplified view of history, it was Roosevelt who turned the Monroe Doctrine into a tool of imperialism. (A more accurate view is here.)
Trump’s new document — call it the Donroe Doctrine — makes a lot of gestures in the direction of refraining from warmaking, and lots of false claims of peacemaking. But the hypocrisy is not even beneath the surface. In the following passage, whoever wrote this thing for Trump forswears dominating the globe by proclaiming the right to determine how dominant any given nation is, and the right to run the globe through a balance of powers rather than complying with international law:
“The United States cannot allow any nation to become so dominant that it could threaten our interests. We will work with allies and partners to maintain global and regional balances of power to prevent the emergence of dominant adversaries. As the United States rejects the ill-fated concept of global domination for itself, we must prevent the global, and in some cases even regional, domination of others.
“This does not mean wasting blood and treasure to curtail the influence of all the world’s great and middle powers. The outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations. This reality sometimes entails working with partners to thwart ambitions that threaten our joint interests.”
In case you might otherwise miss the point, Trump’s writers begin their statement with these words:
“To ensure that America remains the world’s strongest, richest, most powerful, and most successful country for decades to come.” America is a pair of continents, and the United States is not any of those things right now, but setting those concerns aside, how could this hopeless goal not conflict with peace and justice?
In fact, team Trump includes a disturbing list of potential excuses for wars:
“We want to protect this country, its people, its territory, its economy, and its way of life from military attack and hostile foreign influence, whether espionage, predatory trade practices, drug and human trafficking, destructive propaganda and influence operations, cultural subversion, or any other threat to our nation.”
It’s not crystal clear how bombing people protects one from “cultural subversion,” but Trump does suggest using the additional tool of “strong, traditional families.”
In the end, the most impactful bit of Trump’s strategy is likely to be the gargantuan increase in global military spending that he is principally bringing about:
“President Trump has set a new global standard with the Hague Commitment, which pledges NATO countries to spend 5 percent of GDP on defense and which our NATO allies have endorsed and must now meet.”
But here is what Trump’s Strategy says about the Corollary he is snatching from Roosevelt:
“After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies [oil] throughout the region. We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.”
Whose hemisphere?
