Faisal Hussain
“Look there, Sancho Panza, where thirty or forty hulking giants appear, whom I intend to do battle with and slay.” – (Don Quixote) Part 1, Chapter VIII
There appears to be no method to the madness pertaining the pronouncements of the Trump administration in ostensibly likening its policy ideation and decision-making concerning the Western Hemisphere to the near-sacrosanct Monroe Doctrine; a lasting vision of hemispheric order, non-intervention and historical diplomatic thought, often invoked as a legitimizing precedent for later strategic doctrines of U.S. foreign policy. “America goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy”, proclaimed John Quincy Adams, the intellectual architect of the Monroe Doctrine, encapsulating the United States’ foundational philosophy of measured engagement in world affairs.
There is little ambiguity regarding the rationality of the Monroe Doctrine both as an instrument of strategic policymaking and diplomatic conduct at a time when nearly all the Spanish colonies in the Americas had either achieved or were close to independence. The end of Napoleonic Wars and the rise of the Holy Alliance between the monarchies of Prussia, Austria and Russia had already alarmed the U.S. of an impending revival of further territorial inquisition, imperial coercion and colonization in the Americas. John Quincy Adams, who served as US Secretary of State throughout James Monroe’s presidency, was not motivated by ideological crusading but meticulous and realist statecraft. Having served, in substantive federal capacities (mostly as a diplomat), under every U.S. president from George Washington through James Monroe, his breadth of service explained both his deep institutional knowledge and decisive influence on early American foreign policy. Through the edicts of the Monroe Doctrine, he sought to bring a conflation of strategic restraint, diplomatic clarity and avoidance of permanent alliances, especially at a critical juncture in the American history.
The American historian, Dexter Perkins (1894-1984), whose work on the Monroe Doctrine is considered canonical, argued against the Monroe Doctrine being interpreted as a rigid, expansionist manifesto, nor an early declaration of American imperial dominance. Instead, he strongly believed that the original intent of the declaration in 1823 was reactive and preventative against the backdrop of possible European intervention in the Western Hemisphere. The U.S. military and economy at the time, were relatively weak and dependent so it lacked the means of enforcement. In fact, it was the British naval power through tacit acquiescence, not American strength, that was the real deterrent to European colonization of the Americas.
In his treatise, the Monroe Doctrine (1823-1826), originally published in 1927, Perkins analyzed cabinet meetings, private correspondence of John Quincy Adams, diplomatic exchanges with Britain, Russia, Spain and France, and strategic constraints of the post-Napoleonic international system. His most fundamental claim is that the Monroe Doctrine cannot and should not be read or interpreted teleologically-that is, it should not be interpreted backward from America’s later rise to power. He categorically resists what he views as a common fallacy in diplomatic history: assuming that early statements of policy must contain the “ingredients” of later imperial behavior. Instead, he used this evidentiary base to conclude what he terms as ‘contextual reconstruction’ that this doctrine was a contingent response to an immediate diplomatic crisis and not a general theory of hemispheric dominance.
Furthermore, Perkins’ later work, A History of the Monroe Doctrine (published in 1955), serves as a forceful interpretive intervention -notably under Theodore Roosevelt -where he argues that the Roosevelt Corollary induced the transformation of the Monroe Doctrine into a justification for U.S. intervention, whereby replacing European non-intervention with coercive enforcement of American intervention. This conceptual rupture was not an organic development as it recast the doctrine itself from a shield into a sword. This anathema of political misappropriation was exploited systematically by U.S. Presidents from Polk, Cleveland and Roosevelt to Cold War presidents and most recently by the Trump administration. The blatant misuse of this historical doctrine has corroded both law and legitimacy by disguising responsibility for intervention, undermined international credibility of the United States and transformed defensive principles into expansionist rationales of obscurantist foreign policy.
A foreign policy maxim as enduring as the Monroe Doctrine is an archetype of what Professor John J. Mearsheimer, one of the most influential realist thinkers of the post-Cold War era, refers to as a policy based on “strategic rationality”. A policy strategy qualifies as rational when it is supported by a credible and coherent theoretical framework: that is to say the underlying assumptions of the policy are realistic, the explanation of the causal reasoning exhibits logical coherence, and the assertions are substantiated by historical evidence. As policy formulation and execution at a state level is a collective endeavor, whereby rational individuals deliberate specific strategies for achieving their goals, taking into account that there are genuine uncertainties in the international system. Ultimately, it is these selective few people in the room that make these crucial decisions.
Unless there is rational deliberation, institutional mediation and methodical examination at this policy level, which is free from political coercion, vendetta, manipulation of information and sycophancy, any decision-making process or strategy formulation even if it is based on a credible theory (case in point: the Monroe Doctrine) is bound to be counterproductive and detrimental to the system itself in the long run.
The Trump administration’s strategic lodestar, the National Security Strategy 2025, is the intellectual scaffolding of its foreign policy. A U.S. grand strategy based on a deeply transactional worldview, personalized governance, wholesale revisionism, strategic nationalism and national security rhetoric. The jingoistic orientation of U.S. foreign policy in the Americas, set in motion by unprecedented military action against the Venezuelan president, is utterly bereft of a historically doctrinal paradigm, evidentiary logic and contextual reconstruction.
The writer is a columnist with a keen eye on U.S politics, global security, US foreign policy, terrorism and the Middle East.
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