The 'Donroe Doctrine' in Action

From Venezuela to Greenland, there’s a through-line to Trump’s foreign policy.

President Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy proclaimed that the United States would restore its “preeminence in the Western Hemisphere,” and the Trump administration has wasted no time implementing that vision. In toppling Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, the Trump administration underlined that goal less than two months after the document’s release. The strike not only illustrated the prowess of the U.S. military but exposed deeper changes in U.S. foreign policy going forward.

During the Cold War, the United States became the leader of a bloc (the “free world”) in a global struggle with communism. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Washington policymakers recast the United States as the handmaiden to a “rules-based international order” administered by experts. However, regime-change debacles in the Middle East, the aftermath of the China shock, and the rise of populism have all contributed to the breakdown of the posthistorical global technocracy we were promised.

The new NSS provides a lens for one possible path forward: a geopolitics of resilience, in which policymakers leverage both domestic and foreign policy to reinforce the economic, technological, social, and defense foundations of the American republic. In addition to providing a critical context for the Venezuela strike, the NSS shows the evolution of U.S. geopolitical imperatives. While it may disappoint both neoliberal nostalgists and anti-interventionists, resilience demands a global rebalancing without a global withdrawal.

Early on, the National Security Strategy distills the imperatives of resilience in its explanation of U.S. policy: “we want the continued survival and safety of the United States as an independent, sovereign republic whose government secures the God-given natural rights of its citizens and prioritizes their well-being and interests.” This reveals that the NSS is not a document of amoral realpolitik. Instead, it puts ethical claims front and center and commits to preserving the United States. The NSS further proclaims that “no adversary or danger should be able to hold America at risk.”

Echoing one of the guiding impulses of the Trump presidency, the NSS sneers at past elites for miscalculating “American willingness to shoulder forever global burdens to which the American people saw no connection to the national interest.” Instead, this document lays out a “correction” that would reorient foreign policy around U.S. national interests. Rather than committing the United States to projecting some global ideology, it endorses a “flexible realism” that seeks to “maintain good relations with countries whose governing systems and societies differ from ours.”

Yet a realignment of foreign policy for the national interest faces a curious tension. If a shift in global burdens comes to mean either a hasty retrenchment or the haphazard exertion of force across the world, that might actually undermine the national interest. A resilience realignment will instead demand using global leverage, simultaneously disrupting sclerotic institutions while also building new networks for the future of national greatness.

Though this paradigm is still evolving, there are several prongs to the resilience approach.

One of the signature mottos of both the first and second Trump administrations is that “economic security is national security,” a policy that traces its origins to America’s founding generation. Dating back to George Washington’s presidency, U.S. policymakers have recognized the centrality of industrial development for preserving American sovereignty. Beltway doyens may cherish the “postwar international order,” but the truth is that the industrial might of the United States was essential for our victory in World War II and for allowing us to act as a bulwark for that order.

Economic security is not the same thing as economic growth. Offshoring critical U.S. industries such as components for essential defense materiel or cutting-edge computer chips might create the appearance of economic growth, but that sugar rush can threaten economic security over the long term by making the United States dependent upon hostile regimes.

If a rival power achieved a dramatic lead in artificial intelligence, for example, it could gain critical leverage over American life. To ensure that doesn’t happen, the NSS foregrounds “reindustrialization” and “securing access to critical supply chains and materials” as essential components of an “economic security” agenda, and foreign policy has a role to play in our efforts to renew domestic manufacturing as well as friendshore essential global supply chains.

For instance, escalating tariffs on China have helped accomplish at least a partial decoupling. According to U.S. trade data, the raw dollar value of Chinese imports was lower in 2024 than it was in 2015, even though the American economy is now much bigger. But the vision goes far beyond tariffs. Making manufacturing great again is a full-spectrum project—requiring regulatory changes, investments in technology, education reforms, expanded mining for critical minerals, and more. Since the first Trump administration, American policymakers have become much more aware of the centrality of this industrial infrastructure, and there have been incipient policies meant to address it, from the CHIPS program to defense-industrial provisions of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act. However, it will take a sustained execution and continued legislative support in order to realize the potential of those efforts.

The National Security Strategy calls for special attention to our own hemisphere, announcing a “Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.” The “Donroe Doctrine,” as the president calls it, aims to deny rival powers “the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.” This “Americas First” position makes sense as a matter of coalitional politics, and both hawks and restrainers should applaud efforts to insulate the Americas from the interference of hostile great powers.

While Trump’s actions in Venezuela have stirred controversy, there are clear advantages to a global rebalancing that begins with the Americas. The double-decker continental landmass that stretches from Chile and Argentina to Canada and Greenland includes a vast range of natural resources as well as economic capacity. The United States’s position on the global stage stems from security among its neighbors, beginning with Canada and Mexico and expanding outward. As such, an emergency in the Americas can lead to a migration crisis across the whole landmass.

In a time of multipolarity, ensuring minimal interventions by foreign rivals into the American hemisphere is a natural first-order priority. For instance, gallium is a critical component of many high-tech products, including semiconductors and radar systems that could be instrumental components of a U.S. missile shield. As a strategic flex, China has imposed intermittent export restrictions on it and other minerals. According to a recent Center for Strategic and International Studies report, Canada hosts the only gallium producer in North America, and another plant is currently under development in Quebec that, if it is able to reach commercial scale, could “see production reach 40 tonnes annually, representing between 5 and 10% of current world gallium production.” Such a ready supply of gallium in the Americas could help emancipate the United States’s defense-supply chains from the dictates of the Chinese Communist Party. Building up North American supply chains for critical minerals, raw materials, and manufacturing inputs gives the United States more strategic flexibility.

Seen in that light, both the motivation for and the risks of removing Maduro grow clearer. Venezuela’s ample oil reserves make it attractive to U.S. rivals, and Maduro often made overtures to Russia and China. In fact, a delegation from Beijing met with Maduro just hours before an American strike force took him into custody. The Venezuela strike sends a clear message to strategic competitors hoping to intervene in the Americas: keep out. Maduro’s catastrophic misrule has mired Venezuela in poverty and caused millions to flee that country, precipitating a refugee crisis that ripples throughout the hemisphere. Bolivarian socialism has become an engine for local misery and hemispheric instability, so American policymakers might hope that a change in leadership could improve outcomes for everyday Venezuelans and the stability of the Americas more generally.

Yet the stability imperative cuts both ways. One of the greatest strategic risks from the Venezuelan strike is the possibility of that country descending into chaos, which explains why the Trump administration has tried to avoid a power vacuum there. The U.S. has so far tried to execute a “regime tweak” rather than total regime change by working with Maduro’s former vice president. If Venezuela can transition to a more stable and prosperous regime, that would obviously be a win for that country as well as the U.S. as whole.

The Venezuela strike has raised the prospect of U.S. interventions across the Americas. Here, too, the demands of stability might suggest the value of prudence. Greenland’s geographical position as well as its vast supply of minerals and rare earths makes it an important strategic prize, and keeping it insulated from incursions from U.S. rivals thus seems an important strategic priority. That said, Denmark, which currently controls Greenland, is not an American rival but a close ally. The United States already has a military base on the island, and Greenland is already to some extent integrated into the bigger hemispheric defense infrastructure.

For Greenland, the art of the deal might be far better than the point of a bayonet. Attempting to annex the island through military force would risk splintering NATO and blowing up the alliances that the United States needs for a bigger program of geopolitical resilience. That is a high-cost proposition, especially when other arrangements could deliver the same results for much less. The administration could negotiate the purchase of Greenland, though polls suggest that the people of Greenland do not want to be put up for sale. But buying Greenland is not necessary for the United States to achieve its geopolitical aims. The U.S. could partner with the country in an “arctic greatness” alliance that would secure U.S. access to Greenland’s natural resources, block its rivals from that territory, and build up the American defense position in exchange for investment in the island.

In rebooting the Monroe Doctrine, American policymakers need to beware the risk of adding to hemispheric instability, and they also need to keep in mind the way that a diplomacy of mutual interest can sometimes accomplish more than hard power alone.

Resilience Is Global

Order, security, and economic vitality in the Americas are a foundation for a resilience paradigm. But the Americas are only the starting point of a bigger program. The original Monroe Doctrine arose in tandem with trade negotiations, pirate wars, and military investments to ensure the protection of American interests abroad. While the United States has long been insulated by oceans from Europe and Asia, it is also a nation forged in global commerce. Even during the high tide of protectionism, American manufacturers relied on procurement across the globe. The United States consumed over 70% of global natural rubber imports in the early 1920s.

The National Security Strategy outlines similar global imperatives for our era. Many of the “assets” the document attributes to the United States—from economic magnitude to “the world’s most powerful and capable military” to the dollar’s reserve-currency status—are themselves dependent on the United States remaining at the heart of global economic, political, and security agreements. Maintaining the world’s most powerful and capable military demands increasing—not cutting—defense spending. The American economic edge derives in no small part from the global reach of American companies. Shutting the United States off into a narrow sphere of influence would mean losing major economic ground to geopolitical competitors, which might in part explain why the NSS continually invokes broader global partnerships in order to confront national-security challenges. It insists on the need to maintain ties with European partners and boost cooperation with allies in the Pacific, including Australia, Japan, and India.

The dollar’s reserve-currency status is in part a consequence of the United States being a backstop to much of the international order. While the “exorbitant privilege” of reserve-currency status has certain geopolitical benefits, it also affords important domestic opportunities, too. Reserve currency status makes current U.S. fiscal deficits much more manageable; ending that status would mean a dramatic increase in borrowing costs, leading likely to entitlement cuts and tax hikes. The political party that presides over such a fiscal shock would likely be exiled to the wilderness for years.

There are reasons beyond economics for the United States to keep an eye on the global stage. Great-power conflicts have a mighty gravitational pull. For example, the Napoleonic Wars in the European continent provided a setting for the War of 1812; the British desire to maintain its blockade against Napoleonic France caused consistent trade frictions with the U.S., setting the stage for the war. The British Empire then presided over the post-Waterloo balance of powers, keeping the United States out of European-connected wars. But the breakdown of that arrangement led to the global conflagrations of the world wars—and to American interventions. Ensuring continued stability abroad can help keep the United States out of all-consuming foreign wars.

Jacksonian Recalibration

The global trend in a more multipolar direction has been a boon for the Jacksonian tradition of American foreign policy, which prioritizes the muscular use of force to protect national honor and the national interest. President Trump—a huge fan of Andrew Jackson—is a clear inheritor of that tradition. For all his criticisms of the war in Iraq and other nation-building efforts, both of his presidential administrations have been marked by the targeted use of military force—from the killing of Qassam Soleimani to the bombing of the Iran nuclear facilities to the elite strike force that captured Nicolas Maduro.

The Jacksonian preference for quick exertions of force can ironically have a stabilizing effect. During his first term, Trump’s maverick foreign policy kept American rivals off balance, and his maximum-pressure approach to Iran might have helped implement the first phase of the Israel-Hamas peace plan. Conversely, it was during the McGovernite idealism of the Biden years that Russia invaded Ukraine and that Hamas plunged the Middle East into chaos with its Oct. 7 massacre.

Stability is also essential for our major allies. The NSS’s claim that Europe risks “civilizational erasure” turned heads in Brussels, but the continent could benefit from a resilience correction. The EU’s “green” agenda has imperiled our European allies, empowering Russia and accelerating deindustrialization. Its high-migration policy paradigm (as crystallized by Angela Merkel’s “wir schaffen das”) has eviscerated the credibility of governing elites while fueling cultural conflict. For too long, Europeans have under-invested in their militaries. The Trump administration has been successful in encouraging Europeans to boost their defense spending; only three NATO members hit the target of spending 2% of their GDP on defense when he first entered office, but now 31 NATO members cross that threshold. Staying in the alliance will help continue to ensure American leverage within it. If, as the NSS says, preventing “any adversary from dominating Europe” is an important goal, the United States still has major strategic reasons for defense and economic commitments to that continent.

Europe needs other structural reforms, too. Put simply, the central bureaucracy in Brussels needs to be tamed in order to make European politics more responsive to ordinary voters. Paying heed to national, democratic sovereignty is an important component of securing the continent’s stability and security. Moreover, the EU’s elite must recognize that dismissing conservatives and populists is not a cost-free indulgence. Maintaining the transatlantic alliance means accepting the populist right as a legitimate governing partner.

Over the past five years, China’s trade surplus has doubled to top $1 trillion, presenting a threat both to the U.S. and the EU. As the NSS says, “Europe, Japan, Korea, Australia” and other countries should be encouraged to adopt “trade policies that help rebalance China’s economy toward household consumption” rather than simply exports to other nations. This export overcapacity risks drowning domestic industries across the globe in a flood of PRC-subsidized imports. American allies must ensure that their domestic industries are not electrocuted through successive China shocks.

Reindustrializing the United States while also ensuring access to global markets will mean finding common trade and industrial policy ground with allies. Those global alliances are essential for strategic competition with China. For instance, if PRC is able to conquer Taiwan, it would enjoy a chokehold on advanced semiconductor production, which is essential for everything from cars to video games. The PRC already dominates in many of the critical minerals that are essential for the digital economy.

Last year, the Trump administration announced the Pax Silica, an ambitious new program that the State Department describes as “build[ing] a secure, prosperous, and innovation-driven silicon supply chain—from critical minerals and energy inputs to advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, AI infrastructure, and logistics.” That strategy is an essential element of a resilience program. Tellingly, the list of stakeholders at the first Pax Silica summit consisted mostly of longstanding military allies from outside the Americas: Japan, Singapore, South Korea, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and Australia. Rather than retreating to the American landmass, the Pax Silica uses long-standing American alliances as a launchpad to compete in the digital frontier.

Taking seriously the challenges of the twenty-first century requires a fundamental reorientation of our thinking about foreign policy. Instead of seeking to impose a top-down ideological vision on the world, American policymakers need to rebuild the infrastructure that supports republican self-government in the United States. In a white paper penned shortly before he became head of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, Stephen Miran emphasized the importance of a global trade rebalance that preserves the global order while making international commitments more sustainable for the United States. Rightly understood, geopolitical resilience can complement that reboot.