The "Dondroe Doctrine"

With little prospect for normalcy to reassert itself in our deranged political culture, the new year unfolds upon us with three dominating stories: the intrusion into Venezuela, the killing by ICE of Renee Good in Minnesota, and the reigniting of Trump’s obsession to control Greenland. This letter addresses the interrelated foreign policy issues.

 The move to take out Maduro cannot be viewed in isolation. It must be understood within a broader context that included the previous several month bombings of small vessel ships in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, the broader objective of exerting U.S. power in Latin and South America, and the intrusion into the wider western hemisphere, particularly Canada and Greenland. Whatever other reasons underlying the Trump administration’s push to remove Madruro, the least credible was that of preserving democracy in Venezuela. Equally dubious was the accusation that Venezuela was a primary source of fentanyl importation into the U.S., given that most fentanyl imports originate in Mexico.

 A somewhat stronger case could be made for Venezuela’s role in facilitating cocaine shipments to the U.S., but here the country served as largely a transit corridor for drug smuggling from Columbia, which is a major producer. Trump’s pardon of former president of Honduras, Juan Hernández, who was serving a 45-year jail sentence for conspiring to import cocaine into the U.S., undermines any claim that the administration’s Venezuelan’s policy was primarily based on concerns over drug trafficking.

 Access to Venezuelan oil reserves may have been a more plausible motive. The issue for the U.S. oil companies, however, is whether the years needed to repair and effectively operationalize the oil fields would be worth the investment, especially if oil decreases as the primary source of energy in succeeding decades. If oil was a primary driver, one wonders if it was based on anything more than Trump’s “drill baby drill” obsession and repudiation of global warming as a problem of the first order. Perhaps the underlying factor was the opportunity the corrupt Maduro regime presented to assert U.S. power as a show of force to signal U.S. dominance in the western Hemisphere. Enter the “Dondroe” Doctrine.

 In a geographical area which spans from the southern tip of Argentina to the mid-Atlantic Ocean, the “Dondroe” Doctrine—Trump’s rebranding of the Monroe Doctrine of 1824—is based on the aim of making the U.S. the overriding power in the region through direct military force, coercive pressure, financial power, and the ever-present specter of raising tariffs. This has played out in pressure campaigns against Panama’s sovereignty over the Panama Canal, the rebranding of the Gulf of Mexico, and the goading ploy to make Canada the 51^st U.S. state. It has also been displayed in intimidating pressures against Cuba, Costa Rico, and Mexico, and raising tariffs on Brazil for the temerity of jailing its former president, and Trump supporter, Jair Bolsonaro, for attempting to undermine the 2022 election. In the more immediate context of Trump’s, in the moment highlighting of conflict intensity, the push toward geographic dominance has gained center stage in the U.S. insistence of gaining direct control over Greenland.

 The Greenland policy, in fact, stands as the most naked expression of the Trump administration’s drive to exercise its primacy in the western hemisphere. As asserted by policy advisor, Stephen Miller, Greenland will become the possession of the United States by might and entitlement for no other reasons than “we need it”—whether attained by force, intimidation, or purchase. In mob boss like rhetoric, Trump declared, “we can do it the easy way or the hard way,” but in whatever way, the U.S. is going to attain Greenland.

 The ratcheting up of tensions occurred when Trump imposed sets of tariffs against eight NATO countries because they had the temerity to oppose the U.S government’s right to take control of Greenland, a self‑governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark. The administration’s rationale in support of their need to control the island is thin. There is little prospect of Chinese or Russian dominance in Greenland now or in the foreseeable future. Still, Trump insists, it is only the U.S. which has the military might to protect the island from foreign intrusion. In making this case, the Trump administration has dismissed the significance of NATO, whose collective defense capabilities would possess more than sufficient military power to secure Greenland from any such danger. That outcome, however, would require the U.S. to coordinate its NATO policy constructively with Europe. Although this has been established U.S. policy for decades, Trump’s supercharged confrontational orientation has left him disinclined to move in this direction.

 In the current context, the U.S. already enjoys substantial military, economic, and strategic influence in Greenland through long-standing agreements and its historical position as the preeminent power within NATO. By taking an unnecessary confrontational stance, the Trump administration has threatened the viability of NATO. It has also played right into Putin’s hand, which would make Russia’s dominance over Ukraine a logical corollary of any forced control over Greenland. It would also provide Beijing with an additional rationale to take direct military action against Taiwan.

 Such Trumpian belligerency reflected a pre-Davos stance. With the European NATO partners hanging tough, Trump—while exhibiting the bigotry of The Ugly American through the rhetorical register of Triumph the Insult Dog in his Davos speech—significantly modified the administration’s stance. The announced change takes direct military force off the table. It cancels the impending tariffs against the affected nations. In agreeing to negotiations with NATO members in linking U.S. policy to an Arctic joint security framework, the administration removes the ownership of Greenland as an irrevocable red line. The critical issue is the extent to which the emerging framework would provide a viable resolution for the U.S., Western Europe, Canada, and Greenland. On that, Trump remains the ever-mercurial wild card. One hopes that the change in policy is not simply a tactical retreat. Time will tell.