For more than two centuries, the Monroe Doctrine shaped the United States’ relationship with the Western Hemisphere. Framed in 1823 as a warning against European colonial interference in the Americas, it evolved into a justification for U.S. dominance, intervention and regime change across Latin America. What we are witnessing today under Donald Trump is not a break from that tradition, but its mutation into something more volatile, personalised, and divisive: ‘The Donroe Doctrine’ 2026.
Trump did not invent American unilateralism, but he has stripped it of its diplomatic restraint, institutional mediation, and moral pretence. Where the Monroe Doctrine cloaked power in strategic calculation, the Donroe Doctrine operates through impulse, performance, and threat. It is nationalism without strategy, power without patience and dominance without legitimacy.
Trump’s second term has made this unmistakably clear. Exiting the Paris Agreement and the World Health Organization now appears almost tame compared to the speed and scope of his latest actions. On 7 January 2026, the White House published a memorandum ordering the withdrawal of the United States from 66 international organisations and initiatives, “as soon as possible”, following a State Department review mandated by an earlier executive action (referenced as Executive Order 14199, dated 4 February 2025). Within 24 hours, the United Nations and multiple international outlets reported diplomatic pushback, legal uncertainty and budgetary shock particularly around assessed contributions the UN considers legally binding.
This was not merely administrative housekeeping. It was ideological demolition, courtesy of Donald J Trump aka Donroe
The list itself is revealing. It includes not fringe bodies, but core pillars of global governance: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Renewable Energy Agency, the International Solar Alliance, International IDEA (which supports democratic institutions and elections), the Venice Commission (the world’s leading constitutional advisory body), alongside migration, biodiversity, cyber governance, and regional cooperation forums. In one stroke, the United States signalled that climate science, democratic norms, constitutional law and multilateral coordination are no longer assets, but constraints; or maybe call them national security threats as Trump would!!!
This is transactional nationalism in its purest form. Under the Donroe Doctrine, alliances exist only if they pay, comply, or deliver immediate returns. Multilateralism is treated as an infringement on sovereignty. Economic tools including tariffs, sanctions, trade pressure become instruments of coercion rather than coordination. Hard power eclipses norms. Unpredictability is elevated from risk to strategy.
Trump’s defenders call this realism. It is not. It is impulse elevated to doctrine.
The Venezuela episode exposed this most starkly. The abduction of Venezuela’s president and first lady framed through allegations of criminality and national security’ was less about narco-terrorism than about signalling dominance. It communicated a simple message: sovereignty is conditional, leadership is expendable and international law is optional. From there, the threats expanded toward Greenland, Cuba, Colombia and one is left asking: who, exactly, is safe under the Donroe Doctrine?
Even China, despite its economic scale and military capacity, is not immune. Trump’s fixation on a G2 world comprised only of the United States and China has curdled into something more cynical: a G1 imagination, where the United States stands alone, unconstrained and supreme. The desire to “acquire” Greenland, dominate Venezuela, pressure Cuba, and intimidate Colombia reflects not confidence, but imperial anxiety. Empire expands when it fears decline.
it is material interest dressed in national security language.
Oil sits at the centre of this obsession. The United States largely produces light crude, while its refineries are designed for heavy and sour crude, which yield more valuable outputs. Venezuela’s reserves, among the largest of heavy crude in the world, are therefore not incidental. This is not ideology alone; it is material interest dressed in national security language.
What makes the Donroe Doctrine uniquely dangerous is not only what it does abroad, but what it erodes at home. Congress is increasingly informed after the fact. Courts are sidelined. Intelligence agencies are politicised. Expertise is dismissed. Institutions are hollowed out and replaced with executive decree. Had Trump governed anywhere outside the West particularly in Africa, Latin America, or Asia his behaviour would already be labelled what it is: authoritarian rule driven by impulse rather than strategy.
Yet global asymmetry protects him. Nationalism is celebrated when it is American; elsewhere it is treated as a threat. When African leaders assert sovereignty, they are branded dictators. When Trump does so, it is framed as strength. This double standard is not accidental, it is structural.
The most troubling question, then, is whether regime change has now become explicit U.S. policy again, not as Cold War doctrine, but as personal presidential prerogative. Trump’s lack of experience in public office once dismissed as irrelevant now appears central. There is no governing philosophy here, only instinct, grievance, and spectacle. Multilateralism is not reformed; it is purged. NATO allies are humiliated. Institutions built by the United States itself are dismantled with theatrical contempt.
NATO allies are humiliated.
From the Monroe Doctrine to the Donroe Doctrine, we are witnessing not the end of history, but the return of its darkest instincts. A world order once shaped by law, however imperfectly, is being dragged back toward brute hierarchy. In a nuclear-armed, climate-stressed, deeply unequal world, this is not merely reckless, it is existentially dangerous.
The greatest tragedy is that all of this is done in the name of “America First”. In reality, it may leave America last: isolated, distrusted, and feared rather than respected. The Donroe Doctrine does not make the world safer. It makes it brittle.
And brittle systems do not break gently.
