Is Trump Doctrine a Resurrection or Updating of the Monroe Doctrine?

New foreign policy documents of President Donald Trump have resurrected talk about the Monroe Doctrine. According to this site, President James Monroe announced the Monroe Doctrine on December 2, 1823, in an annual message to Congress.. It was “a cornerstone“ of Monroe’s foreign policy, and it declared that “the Old World and New World had different systems,” and should, therefore, “remain distinct spheres.” 

The Monroe Doctrine made four basic points: (1) the United States would not interfere in the internal affairs of or the wars between European powers; (2) the United States recognized and would not interfere with existing colonies and dependencies in the Western Hemisphere; (3) the Western Hemisphere was closed to future colonization; and (4) any attempt by a European power to oppress or control any nation in the Western Hemisphere would be viewed as a hostile act against the United States….

The doctrine was an outgrowth of concern in both Britain and the United States that the Continental powers would attempt to restore Spain’s former colonies, in Latin America, many of which had become newly independent nations. The United States was also concerned about Russia’s territorial ambitions in the northwest coast of North America. As a consequence, George Canning, the British foreign minister, suggested a joint U.S.-British declaration forbidding future colonization in Latin America. Monroe was initially favorable to the idea, and former presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison concurred. But Secretary of State John Quincy Adams argued that the United States should issue a statement of American policy exclusively, and his view ultimately prevailed.

In his article dated December 5, 2025, and updated on December 8, 2025, William Hartung reported the following on Trump’s new security/defense strategy. 

The Trump Administration released its National Security Strategy (NSS) last night. The NSS is a precursor to the National Defense Strategy (NDS) – a document that goes into greater specifics about U.S. military priorities and strategy. The NDS could be released as early as this weekend.

In some respects the new security document could have been written 200 years ago, given its highly favorable endorsement of the Monroe Doctrine, which warns adversaries against seeking a military foothold in the Western Hemisphere. Some pundits have taken to calling this renewed commitment to policing the hemisphere the “Donroe Doctrine” in honor of President Trump. The challenge posed by China, and the state of security relations in the Middle East and Europe also receive attention, but the Western Hemisphere is prioritized in the document.

The Hartung article, published at Forbes, states that the “most dangerous application of the administration’s hemispheric focus is the prospect of a full-scale military intervention in Venezuela,” calling such a move “an extremely risky move that could impose severe economic and human costs.”

Hartung obviously thinks such action would be “misguided,” and thoughts of regime change not worth the cost with such weak rationale as the current war on drugs going on with narco-terrorists. He is supported by a bipartisan group from Congress who introduced a War Powers Resolution to block a war with Venezuela. Several Democrat senators and Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) lead the effort.

Hartung’s article calls for “a national security strategy grounded in the realities of the 21^st century, not a throwback to failed policies of the past.”

On the other hand, conservatives like it. According to an article by George Caldwell at The Daily Signal, Trump’s “new National Security Strategy is garnering support across the conservative movement.” In fact, some conservatives consider it to be “a 33-page crystallization of just how the Trump movement wants to rethink America’s role in the world.” 

The paper advocates a new idea of America’s regional priorities: domination of the Western Hemisphere, shifting away from foreign aid and ideological influence campaigns in Africa, restoring peace and socio-economic vitality to Europe, and ending the policies that have made America cower before China on the world stage.

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told The Daily Signal it is a welcome pivot away from misguided strategies of the past.

“This strategy gets the priorities right. It reasserts American leadership in our own Hemisphere where border security, cartel violence, and foreign encroachment threaten our people, and it meets the China challenge with the strength and clarity we’ve lacked for decades,” Schmitt wrote in a statement to The Daily Signal….

Dan Caldwell, a former senior adviser in the Pentagon, appears to agree with Schmitt’s assessment that the Trump administration is seeking to abandon the failed foreign policy of prior administrations. The strategy “is a true break from the failed bipartisan post-Cold War foreign policy consensus – a consensus that drove us headlong into endless wars and enabled free-riding by our allies,” Caldwell told The Daily Signal in a statement.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, also praised the paper’s emphasis on hemispheric hegemony in a statement to The Daily Signal.

“The Biden administration neglected our hemisphere to America’s detriment. Now we must contend with narco-terrorists, cartels, and Chinese influence. The NSS is an important first step in reasserting U.S. hegemony in our hemisphere and to make Americans safe and prosperous,” the Utah senator said.

In many ways, the paper proposes a resurrection of the nineteenth-century idea of America having a duty to dominate its neighborhood.

It explicitly calls for a “Trump corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine,” wherein neighboring governments would cooperate with the United States to combat criminals, “hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets,” and “ensure our continued access to key strategic locations.”

Rob Greenway, director of the national security center at The Heritage Foundation and a former deputy assistant to Trump, told The Daily Signal in a statement that he believes the document provides “timely context to what has been a successful tenure, and the thinking that will guide the nation going forward.” …

What is clear is that the administration does not believe it can be everywhere at once – that some regions are simply more important than others when it comes to American national security.

 

Is Eliminating Root Causes Part of the Trump Causes?

During the Biden administration, Americans heard a lot about the need to fix the “root causes” of the problems at our border. Yet, we saw no fix take place – until the Trump administration.

Under the direction of President Donald Trump, the U.S. Navy has blasted at least five vessels out of the water off the Venezuelan coast, and a sixth strike took place in the Caribbean Sea against a vessel suspected of carrying drugs. The last strike had surviving crew members, which were taken aboard the naval carrier. 

Jarrett Stepman at The Daily Signal wrote of cracking down on “root causes” from another nation. Trump is “cracking down on the crime and criminal organizations that send waves of people and illicit drugs into our country.” He announced on Sunday that “he would be cutting off all aid to the nation of Colombia” and said that President Gustavo Petro was an “illegal drug leader.” Stepman continued: 

The State Department revoked Petro’s visa in September when he joined a protest in New York City and allegedly called for U.S. troops to disobey orders.

Trump continued to rhetorically hammer the Colombian government just as the U.S. military continues to hammer drug traffickers off their coastline.

“They make drugs, they refine drugs, they make cocaine, they have cocaine factories,” Trump said on Sunday. “They have no fight against drugs, and I’m stopping all payments to Colombia because they don’t have anything to do with their fight against drugs.”

It isn’t just Colombia that Trump has tussled with. He’s used military strikes to annihilate drug traffickers off the Venezuelan coastline while putting pressure on the regime of leftist Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. Maduro’s government almost certainly helped the vicious Tren de Aragua gang infiltrate the United States.

The president’s moves in Central and South America and the Caribbean mark a central and somewhat overlooked cornerstone of his national security policy. As I and others have noted, Trump appears to be reviving a sort of new Monroe Doctrine, where the U.S. is more focused on dealing with issues in the Western Hemisphere. Trump’s early moves regarding Greenland, the Panama Canal, and trade with Mexico and Canada suggested as much.

The fact that Trump has devoted much time and attention on securing peace deals in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere doesn’t preclude this. In fact, I’d say it’s a part of this administration’s shifting focus. Peace far abroad, containment of China in Asia, and stability at our national doorstep. These all seem to be very much a part of the “Trump doctrine.”

What’s interesting to me is that Trump is actually addressing the “root causes” that created the border and immigration crisis that the Biden administration allowed to burn out of control….

Clearly, enforcing border laws and deporting those who broke them is having a huge impact on the border crisis, which has seemingly disappeared. But the president is willing to go a step further to ensure that the long-term problem is further mitigated by focusing on stopping crime, halting the flow of drugs, and putting the screws on hostile leftist governments.

It seems to be working.

 

What Is the Trump Doctrine?

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday concerns the Trump Doctrine. What is the Trump Doctrine and what does it mean? Many, if not most, presidents have a “doctrine” concerning foreign policy. Some of them are more well known than others. Martin Kelly, a history teacher and curriculum developer, wrote the following in an article. 

Foreign policy can be defined as the strategy a government uses to deal with other nations. James Monroe pronounced the first major presidential foreign policy doctrine for the newly created United States on December 2, 1823. In 1904, Theodore Roosevelt made a significant amendment to the Monroe Doctrine. While many other presidents announced overarching foreign policy goals, the term “presidential doctrine” refers to a more consistently applied foreign policy ideology….

Kelly’s three key takeaways from the article are as follows:

·         The Monroe Doctrine stopped European colonization in the Americas as a key American foreign policy.

·         The Truman Doctrine promised support to countries fighting against communism and began America’s policy of containment.

·         The Reagan Doctrine provided support to anti-communist forces, influencing the fall of the Soviet Union.

In a perspective piece in The Deseret News, Valerie Hudson, a university distinguished professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, states that the “Trump doctrine is coming into focus.” 

The Trump Doctrine proceeds from the premise that the United States has lost hard power and must regain it despite interim sacrifice. Tariffs, a new emphasis on shipbuilding, the resurrection of American manufacturing – all are designed to increase the hard power of the United States. The Trump Doctrine also implies that involving ourselves in many geographic regions has helped sap US power, and contends that our allies are simply not doing enough to help.

More broadly, the Trump Doctrine asserts that the “rule-based order” of the post-World War II world no longer works for the United States. This was most recently articulated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who, during his Senate confirmation hearings, said, “The postwar global order is not just obsolete, it is now a weapon being used against us.” Interestingly, that is the same position being taken by both Russia and China, as well.

Thus, the Trump Doctrine is a reversion back to what is apparently believed to be a surer foundation for peace: great power spheres of influence, that is, a true multipolar world that relies on regional policemen, not one global policeman, to keep the peace internationally. According to the Trump Doctrine, the U.S. will be uninvolved in sub-Saharan Africa until and unless there is a threat to homeland security that emanates from that continent. The Western Hemisphere, of course, will be the suzerainty of the United States….

The idea behind “spheres of influence” is that each great power respects the others’ spheres, dampening the potential for great power conflict. Until and unless the Trump Doctrine’s inconsistencies regarding the Middle East and Asia are sorted out, then, it is unclear whether the United States will not still wind up in conflicts that will prove very unpopular with the American people, and which are unlikely to end with resounding U.S. victories. These inconsistencies bear continued scrutiny.

In sum, the Trump Doctrine is a return to the traditional Realpolitik view that great power spheres of influence are the foundation of international security, with the corollary that the rebuilding of American hard power, especially its manufacturing base, will be necessary to maintain the American sphere. Without American support, the rule-based international order is truly over, though it is possible to assert that it’s been over for a while but no one wanted to acknowledge that reality. Now that it’s been acknowledged in Washington, D.C., it’s time to hold the funeral. Mourning may be justified, but it won’t resurrect the dead.

The Trump Doctrine puts America and Americans first. Taxpayer money will be used to benefit Americans, not other countries or foreigners who sneak into America. He is bringing manufacturing back to  America and using tariffs to bring about fairer trade. However, Trump will not hesitate to use America’s influence and power to stop aggression and to bring about peace.