The Journal. - Trump's 'Donroe Doctrine' on Foreign Policy

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

​​Since World War II, U.S. geopolitical strategy prioritized global trade and building alliances, especially with democracies. Now, after his action in Venezuela, President Trump is ushering in a new era of American foreign policy that is focused primarily on territory and resources. WSJ’s chief economics commentator Greg Ip breaks down the moment, its historical context, and what’s next. Ryan Knutson hosts. Further Listening: - Was Maduro's Capture About Oil? - Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners? Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our colleague Greg Ip, chief economics commentator, is a bit of a history buff. And over the weekend, as President Donald Trump talked about why the U.S. captured Venezuela's president, Nicholas Maduro, something in particular stood out to him. For as long as you and I can remember, when presidents went into another country, they always had high-minded reasons, you know. Oh, we need to restore democracy. He's threatening his neighbors. No one, friend or foe, should doubt our desire for peace. When George H.W. Bush freed Kuwait from Iraq in 1991. And no one should underestimate our determination to confront aggression.

When George W. Bush went into Iraq in 2003, they explicitly disavowed any interest in taking Iraq's oil. We have no ambition in Iraq except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people. In contrast, Trump has made it clear that a big motivation for carrying out his operation in Venezuela is because of a desire for a highly prized commodity, oil. The oil companies are going to go in, they're going to spend money, we're going to take back the oil that, frankly, we should have taken back a long time ago. The Trump administration says its primary reason for arresting Maduro was his involvement in drug trafficking. In court earlier this week, Maduro pleaded not guilty.

But Greg says the U.S. in Venezuela and the way Trump has been talking about it represent a generational shift in the way American presidents think about foreign policy. In his view, American greatness does not flow so much from values such as the promotion of democracy and freedom. It flows from more tangible things like military power, economic strength, and territory.

And he is making it clear that when you are deciding whether to invade another country, those sorts of economic interests, including your control of their precious resources, those aren't some tertiary factor. They are front and center. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knitzen. It's Tuesday, January 6th.

Coming up on the show, Trump's new foreign policy. Doctrine. All right, so Trump is charting this new course for American foreign policy that's very different from his predecessors. Before we talk exactly about what that is and what it means, I want to start with the status quo. It seemed like the primary force that drove American foreign policy since World War II was the spreading of democracy, exercising soft power.

Can you describe what that looked like? You have to sort of divide U.S. foreign policy in the post-war period into two phases, the Cold War and the post-Cold War period. So during the Cold War period, the North Star was push-back communism. And the United States did a lot of, you know, unsavory things in the pursuit of pushing back communism. We fomented coup d'etat in Iran. To three days of bloody rioting, culminating in a military coup from which the one-time dictator of Iran fled for his life.

In Guatemala. The tiny Caribbean Coffee Republic of Guatemala suffers its 60th political upheaval in 20 years. We pushed out duly elected people like the president of Chile because they were too close to the communists and the Russians.

And then, after the Cold War ended, and the U.S. emerged as the global superpower, its foreign policy began to evolve. It was less about containing the Soviet Union, which no longer existed, it was more about spreading democracy and also keeping the world stable and free of the influence of rogue states like Iran and North Korea. It was primarily an ideologically driven approach to foreign policy, where the goal was to make the world, as America sought, safer for the things that Americans valued like democracy and freedom.

So now, as you said, President Trump seems to be pivoting the strategy to more actively pursuing resources. So starting with the beginning of his second term, can you sort of walk us through where we've seen that play out? Sure. Well, a very good example would be in the original peace negotiations with Ukraine, right? So the president made it clear upon taking office that he wanted to end that war, stop the killing. But he also wanted to end it on terms that were very favorable to the United States. He stopped giving weapons and so on to Ukraine. He arranged for European partners to pay for those weapons. And he also essentially pressured Ukraine into signing an agreement that would give the United States

a piece of its mineral wealth in the event of a peace settlement. Now, was that settlement actually worth much to the United States? I guess you could have a debate about that. But the point was that for Trump, this kind of like financial accounting of international transactions was core to his approach. Economics and money have been central to much of Trump's approach to foreign policy. In his first year back in office, Trump just talked about establishing more American control in several unexpected places. We have to have Greenland. It's not a question of, do you think we can do without it? We can't. Frankly, Canada should be the 51st state, okay? It really should.

To further enhance our national security, my administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal. Greg says these seemingly disparate issues have a common thread. A, they're in the Western Hemisphere, and B, they all represent potentially very significant economic assets. The Panama Canal, for example, Trump has said over and over again, he thought it was a mistake to give the canal back to Panama, and so he has said he wants it back. With respect to Greenland, it's in the Western Hemisphere, and it has a lot of resources, and Trump also has a fixation with adding to the territorial area of the United States, as President James Polk did, for example, back in the 1840s.

Greenland is one of the few opportunities to do so. But what about Canada, which is such a close ally? Why does the U.S. need to control it? It's in some sense not surprising that Trump wouldn't logically say, why shouldn't he covet Canada? And whether he actually follows through with that, who knows? But in some sense, it fits the broader template that he's already demonstrated to us.

All of these countries, by the way, say they're not interested in any kind of U.S. takeover. Greg says that Trump's view of foreign policy is actually taking a page out of an old playbook. Trump has made it clear. We are going back to the great power system of before World War II, where we have spheres of influence. And for the U.S., the Western Hemisphere is its sphere of influence. And it is the prerogative of the United States to essentially establish its influence through military or economic means to ensure that its own security and economic means. to ensure that its own security and economic needs are taken care of. So the Trump administration put out this policy paper last year

in which it describes Trump's view on forum policy and explains it as a Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Now, I remember learning about the Monroe Doctrine from my high school social studies teacher, Mr. Wilson. Shout out, Mr. Wilson. But can you remind us what that is the Monroe Doctrine? Sure. Well, President James Monroe, and his eye,

addressed to Congress in 1823, he said that the Western Hemisphere would no longer be a place for colonization by the European powers. And that was interpreted to mean that the Americas were to be an exclusive sphere of American influence. Now, as it happened, at the time, the United States was a pretty weak country. We barely had a Navy. And so it's not like this gave us license to go around intervening in other countries. And for most of the 1800s, the United States preoccupied itself with expanding its own footprint within the territory of North America. Still, the Monroe Doctrine was effective at exerting U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere and keeping other world powers out. The doctrine dominated U.S. foreign policy for

generations. But during the Cold War, and especially after the fall of the Soviet Union, its logic didn't make as much sense anymore. It seemed unnecessary. The Soviet Union was gone. The Europeans were allies. And it also seemed kind of unseemly. Those were all now, for the most part, fairly healthy democracies, and they were all friendly towards the United States. What kind of neighbor would America be to be going around threatening to meddle in their affairs? In fact, Obama's Secretary of State in 2013 said the Monroe Doctrine is dead. Today, however, we have made a different choice. The error of the Monroe Doctrine is over.

Instead, Greg says that U.S. leaders realize that capitalism actually gave the U.S. the power it was looking for. And so in some sense, you could argue that globalization became a superior way for the United States to project its economic influence than imperialism did, because we could trade with these countries, we could invest in them, we could get all the benefits of their resources without having to send gunboats into their harbors. But we can just invest in manufacturing plants and buy goods at cheaper labor prices than we could get in the U.S.

Exactly. Why invade a country in pursuit of its resources when, for the most part, throughout the Western Hemisphere, they're available to any American investor at the right price? Trump doesn't see it that way, and is promoting his own interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine, or what some are calling the Don Roe Doctrine. That's next. So, Greg, in what ways is the Don Roe doctrine the same and different from the Monroe doctrine? I think the most important way it's different is that the Donro doctrine, as the name suggests, is very specific to Donald Trump. Remember how he talked on and on and on during the election campaign about invading Venezuela?

No. Yeah, no, I don't remember that either. What I think that tells you is that there's a lot about Trump's foreign policy that is very idiosyncratic to Trump himself. I don't know that anybody else in the broader foreign policy sphere or the Republican Party thinks is that important to acquire Greenland. That kind of started with Trump. So I think that's how it differs from the Monroe Doctrine,

because for better or for worse, the Monroe Doctrine from one president to the next was broadly accepted as the logical expression of America's foreign policy interests. That was true whether you were James Monroe, whether you were John Tyler, whether you were Willie McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt. I'm impressed that you can rattle off all those presidents in that time period. Or Franklin Roosevelt, for that matter. Or Dwight D. Eisenhower, right, who certainly carried out his fair share of interventions during the 1950s.

So now that Donald Trump has established this Don Roe doctrine and is focusing on commercialism in the Western Hemisphere, what are just the potential pros of this strategy? So what are the pros? First of all, to the extent that increased attention from the United States also extends to increased aid, whether economic, military, security, or otherwise, then it could be a very mutually beneficial relationship

for all countries in the Western Hemisphere, to the extent that it enables the United States to secure important resources, whether it's oil or rare earths, if not necessarily for itself, put to at least keep them out of the hands of adversarial countries, that too is a good thing.

So I could think of a number of ways why there is an underlying positive logic for the United States in the Don Road Doctrine. But it's also possible to think of lots of ways that the Monroe Doctrine could go wrong and not end up being beneficial for the United States. One of the reasons the Monroe Doctrine and imperialism in general went out of style is that a lot of countries didn't want to be pushed around by great powers and they sometimes had revolutions or rebellions or caused a lot of trouble as a result.

We don't know yet how Venezuela is going to react to being run by the United States. It might turn out really well or it might really turn out bad. and it might be very costly in terms of blood and treasure. We just don't know. To be clear, there's some uncertainty around whether the U.S. is running Venezuela. Nicholas Maduro's vice president is now in charge there, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the U.S. is just running policy. But when asked in an interview with NBC about who was ultimately in charge,

Trump said, me. Another risk is that these actions evoke a strong response from other countries. For instance, if the U.S. were to ask, actually go after Greenland, which is a protectorate of Denmark, a NATO ally. It could open up a totally different can of worms. I think that the United States going after Greenland risks a serious rupture with all of Europe, which could be very negative for transatlantic security in general and economic relations in the long run. I think that you're likely to see much more resistance to that domestically in the

United States and from abroad. Denmark's prime minister is called on Trump to stop threatening Greenland. Springland is today a part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It's a part of our territory. And it's not for sale. I do wonder, though, if resources and territory are the things that actually give a country power in this century. I mean, when you look at Venezuela and it's oil, sure, there's a lot there, but the U.S. is already the world's largest oil producer, and there are a lot of other places in the world that have oil. Exactly. The drivers of wealth today are not natural resources. Countries and economies that depend on natural resources on the whole are not doing that well. Where is American wealth coming from? Just look at the stock market in the last year. It's technology, technology, technology. Where is our competition for preeminence and technology coming from? Not from Venezuela. It's coming from China. And so I think to the extent that this doctrine shifts the locus of American attention.

away from some of our really, really big challenges and our bigger adversaries and potentially invites conflict with our allies and people that we should not be in conflict with, then it has the potential, and I underline the word potential, to be detrimental in the long run. What does this doctrine say to other countries like Russia and China, though? And the US's ability to argue that those countries shouldn't invade their neighbors in the way Russia's doing in Ukraine and China is threatening to do in Taiwan. Yes, there is certainly a legal and moral case that the United States, by going to Venezuela, weakens its ability to argue against what Russia is doing in Ukraine. But I think you need to ask, does that matter? The sweep of history

and today, it's not obvious that they actually define or determine how other countries behave. So now we are living in the world of the Don Row Doctrine, and we've seen this action in Venezuela. Where do you think Trump might turn his attention to next? Well, you know, you've heard Marco Rubio say that Cuba needs to watch its back. Me, I'm a fan of listening to what Trump actually says. He's talked about Panama. He's talked a lot about Greenland, including talking about it more and more over the last few days. Just last month, he appointed an envoy to Greenland for the first time ever.

And then Denmark certainly saw that as a hostile act. So that's where I would watch most closely. Cuba has said the U.S. is trying to, quote, intimidate and subjugate the governments of Latin America. It seems like we are truly entering a very pivotal moment in American history, in American foreign policy. It does feel like a pivotal moment, and here we are just a few days after the Venezuela operation. And I think that we do not yet have clarity on what it all means. But I think that we should take Trump at his word, that, hemispheric economic interests will now be front and center

and how the United States runs foreign policy, at least as long as he's president. And that has profound, profound implications for Americans, but even more so for America's allies and neighbors. That's all for today. Tuesday, January 6th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. If you like our show,

follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're out every weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.