Trump’s ‘Donroe Doctrine’ for Venezuela Makes No Sense

If you’re confused about the strategic justifications for the Trump administration’s policies toward Venezuela — including the recent kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro — I don’t blame you because most of the justifications offered so far don’t pass the laugh test.

First of all, this is not about protecting the United States from “narcoterrorism.” Not only has Venezuela been a significant source of illicit drugs coming into the United States (certainly not fentanyl), but US President Donald Trump’s recent decision to grant a full pardon to former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez – previously convicted by a US jury on drug trafficking charges – shows how much he really cares about this problem. Moreover, the US Department of Justice has now admitted that the “Cartel de los Soles” – the supposedly dangerous drug cartel that the Trump administration has been talking about for the past year – never actually existed. In other words, this was just a piece of administration propaganda that was completely fictitious, and just as real as those Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that we warned about over and over again and were never found.

If you’re confused about the strategic justifications for the Trump administration’s policies toward Venezuela — including the recent kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro — I don’t blame you because most of the justifications offered so far don’t pass the laugh test.

First of all, this is not about protecting the United States from “narcoterrorism.” Not only has Venezuela been a significant source of illicit drugs coming into the United States (certainly not fentanyl), but US President Donald Trump’s recent decision to grant a full pardon to former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez – previously convicted by a US jury on drug trafficking charges – shows how much he really cares about this problem. Moreover, the US Department of Justice has now admitted that the “Cartel de los Soles” – the supposedly dangerous drug cartel that the Trump administration has been talking about for the past year – never actually existed. In other words, this was just a piece of administration propaganda that was completely fictitious, and just as real as those Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that we warned about over and over again and were never found.

Nor was seizing Maduro intended to make the United States safer. Venezuela is a very weak state – as the ease with which Maduro was captured shows – and is not a close strategic ally of any strong competitor to the United States. China was not building a military base there, and Iran was not providing it with missiles with which it could attack the United States. It did not have significant naval power to influence American trade routes. No one has been awake at night worrying about the grave threat the United States faces from Caracas, and none of us are sleeping more soundly now that Maduro is imprisoned in Brooklyn.

It wasn’t about promoting democracy, because Trump has already ruled out trying to put opposition leader Maria Corina Machado in power, and instead intends to deal with Maduro’s vice president, who leads a regime that remains undeniably authoritarian.

If it’s not about stopping dangerous drugs, or the need to confront a serious security threat, or the desire to restore democracy, then oil has to be the goal, right? Trump keeps saying that this is the real reason and that American companies are going to go out there and take the oil and make America greater. Wrong again. Trump can believe what he wants (and he often does), but there won’t be a big oil fortune waiting for Uncle Sam any time soon. On Tuesday, he boasted that Venezuela had agreed to deliver up to 50 million barrels of oil to the United States, which sounds impressive until you realize that that amount is, at most, equivalent to less than four days of American oil production. Trump said he would control the proceeds from the sale and use them to help Venezuela’s economy. If you think so, you haven’t noticed Trump’s predatory instincts. Even if the revenues from this oil are eventually available, they barely scratch the surface of what Venezuela needs to rebuild its economy.

It is true that Venezuela has the largest proven reserves in the world, but heavy crude oil is difficult to extract and expensive to refine. To be frank, it’s just about the last oil any sane producer would want to try to develop, and even more so given the parlous state of Venezuela’s crumbling infrastructure and the low prices of crude oil these days. If by some miracle a significant amount of this oil reaches global markets, it will push prices down even further and put a host of marginal US shale drillers out of business.

And let’s not forget that regardless of what Trump and Big Oil think, the world is gradually weaning itself off hydrocarbons and turning to other sources of energy, further diminishing the value of all those Venezuelan reserves. In fact, given the reality of climate change, the smartest thing one can do is leave as much of this oil in the ground as possible. So, while China is laser-focused on dominating green industries in the future – and gaining influence as a result – Trump and the strategic geniuses around him are doubling down on the planet-threatening energy policies of the last century.

So your confusion about the strategic rationale for this process is understandable. The only “strategic” goal I can see here is the general idea of ​​re-establishing American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. Because Trump likes to mark his territory by putting his name on everything, this idea is now marketed as the “Donroe Doctrine,” and was explicitly stated in the recent National Security Strategy. This may seem like a reasonable idea that foreign policy realists can get behind, but it does not stand up to close examination either.

The original purpose of the Monroe Doctrine was to ensure that the United States did not have to worry about rival great powers interfering militarily in the Western Hemisphere. It took President James Monroe’s vision nearly a century to realize it, but the United States was eventually able to push all the other great powers out of the hemisphere and enjoy the benefits of what historian C. Van Woodward, “Free Security.”

But that’s not what Trump and company are talking about because no superpower has or is trying to establish a significant military role in the Western Hemisphere at present. Instead, as the National Security Strategy made clear, the Trump administration wants to force as many of its neighbors as possible to do what it asks them to do on any issue that may arise. This is what they are now saying to Maduro’s successors: Give us what we want, or we will continue to blockade you and perhaps do something worse. They hope the rest of the region will get the message and obediently comply.

In particular, the administration now insists on its right to control the economic policies of neighboring countries, and to veto those policies that may be economically beneficial to these countries and countries such as China. As the National Security Strategy put it, “We want a hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets,” adding that outsiders should not “own or control strategically vital assets” and the United States should make it “difficult for non-hemispheric competitors to increase their influence in the region.” Because Trump and company realize that some Latin American countries have been “attracted to doing business” with other countries because of “lower costs and fewer regulatory hurdles,” they claim they will “work to induce countries to reject such aid.” Because the Trump administration is a predatory administration that is generally opposed to foreign aid and wants the lion’s share of the benefits in all its bilateral relations, it must rely on threats to get what it wants, not generosity.

But the problem is that if the United States insists on interfering in the economies of its neighbors in this way, it becomes responsible for the economic conditions there. If you tell Latin American countries that they cannot buy Chinese products that are cheaper than American products (and in some cases – such as electric cars – much better), consumers there will not be happy. If they ask those same governments to reject Chinese or other foreign investments that would improve infrastructure or create other opportunities, Washington will have to provide, or it will be blamed for keeping Latin America poor. Add to this the administration’s tendency to blame America’s problems on immigrants and refugees from the region, and its strong commitment to deporting as many of them as possible, and you have a recipe not for stable hegemony, but for growing anti-American sentiment and regional instability.

The contrast is clear with the most successful American policies. After World War II, for example, the United States established highly successful partnerships in Europe and Asia (including with former enemies in Germany and Japan) partly because these countries recognized a common threat from the Soviet Union—but also because the United States acted benevolently in order to help its new partners recover as quickly as possible from World War II. But Trump does not know the meaning of the “good” world; His approach to life is “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable.”

Trying to run the Western Hemisphere at gunpoint will not work any better in the future than it did in the past. Trump advisor Stephen Miller believes that one of the “iron laws of history” is that the world is ruled by force; The “iron law” he ruled out was that leaders who believe that power is all that matters inevitably do a lot of stupid things.