THE DONROE DOCTRINE: Trump calls Monroe Doctrine the ‘Donroe Doctrine’ after Venezuela raid.
In his hourlong press conference following the early morning capture of Venezuela’s leader and his wife, President Donald Trump justified the operation as one in line with a more than 200-year-old foreign policy agenda, the Monroe Doctrine.
The doctrine, which the president has called the “Donroe Doctrine,” has for years been relegated to foreign policy history, from which recent administrations have sought to distance themselves. But more than a decade after then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, under former President Barack Obama, announced the “era of Monroe Doctrine is over,” Trump is now embracing it.
In his remarks on Jan. 3, the president cast the doctrine as a continuing tenet of U.S. foreign policy, and said the operation that ousted Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro not only abides by it, but goes a step further. Trump alleged the country was “hosting foreign adversaries” and “acquiring offensive weapons” and accused Venezuela of seizing and selling American oil assets.
“All of these actions were in gross violation of the core principles of American foreign policy, dating back more than two centuries,” Trump said. “All the way back, dated to the Monroe doctrines. And the Monroe Doctrine is a big deal, but we’ve superseded it by a lot, by a real lot. They now call it the Donroe doctrine.”
At the Washington Free Beacon, Adam Kredo adds: Donroe Doctrine: Trump Nabs Maduro in Daring, Middle-of-the-Night Operation.
Caracas went dark in the early morning hours of January 3 as Operation Absolute Resolve began with “discreet, precise” strikes that marked “the culmination of months of planning and rehearsal,” according to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine. It was an operation “that only the United States could do” through a combination of on-the-ground assets and intelligence capabilities, according to Caine, who said more than 150 aircraft launched from positions across the Western Hemisphere. Within a short amount of time, the United States dropped “an interdiction force” in downtown Caracas to intercept Maduro and his wife at their home.
“We watched, we waited, we prepared, we remained patient and professional,” Caine said. “This mission was meticulously planned, drawing lessons from decades of missions over the last many years, decades, many missions over these last many years. This was an audacious operation that only the United States could do.”
Trump compared Saturday’s successful military operation to those he had overseen in the past, including last year’s strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the 2020 assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, and the 2019 raid that killed ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. As with these operations, not a single U.S. service member was killed during the raid on Maduro’s compound.
Maduro had a $50 million bounty on his head at the time he was captured, prompting Trump to joke, “Don’t let anybody claim it. Nobody deserves it but us.”
Heh, indeed.
At the Spectator, Carlos Flores asks: Can the ‘Donroe doctrine’ really change Venezuela?
Until last night, the daily life of a Venezuelan largely consisted of trying to find food for the day and being careful not to get stopped by police and/or military personnel, or people in plain-clothes who work for the government and operate with impunity. They’ll take your phone and search to see if you’re criticizing the government, and if so, that’s it, you’ll disappear. This has happened to many fellow journalists. They simply vanished. The regime even created an app called Venapp, so you can become a snitch and send information on anyone who supposedly threatens the government. You can’t trust anyone, not even your family. That’s why, for Venezuelans, it was better to get drunk, buy things with money sent by relatives abroad and, for some, hold onto the hope that the regime would end someday.
That day seems to have finally arrived in the early hours of this morning, in a way few could have imagined. Not even Maduro himself, who just a couple of days ago was dancing and cracking jokes on national television.
And just like that, Oceania has never been at war with Venezuela:
