The comparison between the Monroe Doctrine and what some commentators have loosely dubbed the “Donroe Doctrine” draws inspiration from President Donald Trump’s rhetoric and policies toward Latin America.
The neologism “Donroe” is used by critics to suggest a revival -- or distortion -- of President James Monroe’s 1823 doctrine, which declared the Western Hemisphere off-limits to further European colonization.
While rhetorically tempting, this comparison obscures more than it reveals.
The two doctrines emerged in radically different historical contexts and were prompted by very different assumptions about power, legitimacy, and international order.
The original Monroe Doctrine was primarily a doctrine of non-colonization. At the time, much of Latin America was emerging from Spanish and Portuguese imperial rule, and the United States -- still a young republic -- sought to prevent European powers from reasserting control in the region.
Contrary to later interpretations, the Monroe Doctrine was not initially a policy of US military intervention or hemispheric domination.
In fact, the United States in 1823 lacked both the naval capacity and military reach to enforce it independently.
Its effectiveness rested largely on the tacit support of Great Britain, then the world’s dominant naval power, which shared an interest in keeping rival European empires out of Latin America.
Only later, particularly under President Theodore Roosevelt in the early twentieth century, did the Monroe Doctrine acquire its interventionist character.
Roosevelt’s “Corollary” asserted the right of the United States to intervene unilaterally in Latin American countries in cases of “chronic wrongdoing.” This marked a decisive shift from anti-colonialism to what became known as “gunboat diplomacy.”
Roosevelt himself had fought in the Spanish-American War of 1898, a conflict that demonstrated America’s emerging naval power. While the war helped liberate Cuba from Spanish rule, it also resulted in the US acquisition of overseas territories such as the Philippines, signaling America’s arrival as an imperial power.
Throughout the twentieth century, US interventions in Latin America became more frequent and more overt. In 1954, the Eisenhower administration orchestrated a covert operation to overthrow Guatemala’s democratically-elected president, Jacobo Árbenz.
The pretext was Árbenz’s land reform program, which threatened the interests of the US-based United Fruit Company. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles portrayed Árbenz as a communist threat, despite scant evidence, setting a precedent for Cold War-era interventions justified in the name of anti-communism rather than democracy.
Similarly, in 1983, the United States invaded the Caribbean island of Grenada following internal turmoil after the assassination of socialist leader Maurice Bishop. President Ronald Reagan justified the invasion -- Operation Urgent Fury -- by citing regional security concerns and the safety of American medical students on the island.
It was the first major US combat operation since the Vietnam War and reflected Washington’s continuing willingness to use force in its perceived sphere of influence.
The 1989 US invasion of Panama further illustrated this pattern. General Manuel Noriega, once a valuable US ally and CIA asset, had become a liability due to his involvement in drug trafficking and political repression. After being indicted by US courts on charges of racketeering and narcotics smuggling, Noriega was removed from power through military intervention and taken to the United States for trial.
What connects these episodes is not the Monroe Doctrine itself, but the enduring notion of spheres of influence.
The Western Hemisphere came to be viewed as America’s strategic backyard, while European powers maintained their own imperial and post-imperial zones elsewhere.
That informal understanding, however, has increasingly frayed in the twenty-first century. President Trump’s repeated expressions of interest in acquiring Greenland signal a transactional and unilateral view of international relations threaten long-standing alliances.
Trump’s approach to Latin America, particularly toward Venezuela, reflected a similar posture. His administration pursued “maximum pressure” policies against Nicolás Maduro’s regime through sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and recognition of an opposition leader as interim president. In Venezuela the half-hearted regime change underscored a sharp departure from the original Monroe Doctrine’s defensive logic.
The contrast with the early nineteenth century could not be starker.
In Monroe’s time, the United States was a minor military power. Britain dominated the seas, while France and Spain remained formidable forces. By the end of the nineteenth century, the US had demonstrated its naval strength against Spain.
By the twenty-first century, it had become the world’s preeminent military power. As of the mid-2020s, the United States operated eleven active aircraft carriers -- more than all its major rivals combined -- and spent close to a trillion dollars annually on defense, dwarfing not only adversaries such as Russia and China but also its NATO allies.
Yet the persistent question remains: Does a “might makes right” approach produce peace and stability? History suggests otherwise.
Military adventurism may shape events in the short term, but it rarely delivers lasting peace or prosperity.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with combined costs running into the trillions of dollars, illustrate how interventions justified by “national security” can leave behind shattered institutions and regional instability.
Today, the global legal and moral architecture designed to restrain the use of force appears increasingly fragile.
When power substitutes for principle, insecurity spreads rather than recedes.
The lesson of history -- from Monroe to Roosevelt, from Cold War interventions to contemporary power politics -- is that dominance may command obedience, but it does not command legitimacy. Without legitimacy, peace remains elusive.
Habibul Haque Khondker is a sociologist and columnist.
