Donald Trump’s resurrection of the Monroe Doctrine – he likes to call it the Donroe Doctrine because he egomaniacally likes to call things after himself – is currently being celebrated as a dramatic and successful assertion of power-without-casualties.

Indeed, Trump has broadened it out as including not only America’s right to do whatever it wants in “our hemisphere” but also its “right” to take over Greenland “whether people like it or not”. In fact this is a huge mistake for which America will pay dearly.

It is doubtful if Trump had heard of the Monroe Doctrine until recently: he is not a reader and knows little history.

In fact, the real author of the doctrine was President James Monroe’s Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, and Monroe himself was hesitant and uncertain about asserting that America would not tolerate the re-imposition of Spanish (or other colonial) power over its erstwhile possessions in Latin America. And he had every reason for his uncertainty because what he and Adams were asserting was just a bluff, for the United States (US) had no means to enforce its claims.

The reality was that the Napoleonic wars had left the British as by far the dominant power – they had even burnt down the White House in 1814. The Royal Navy ruled the world and America’s tiny navy could hardly compete with that.

During the Napoleonic wars the links between Spain and Portugal and their Latin American colonies had been broken and British merchantmen had moved in and captured the Latin American trade. The British were determined to keep that and the Royal Navy could easily keep the Spaniards at bay.

Observed

So, for the next forty years the Monroe Doctrine was observed – thanks to the Royal Navy. It was only after the US Civil War that America began to develop a serious navy and Britain remained the dominant economic power in Latin America until 1914.

Trump’s reassertion of the Doctrine in Venezuela is based on a foolish delusion. Trump has the average schoolboy’s assumption that Venezuela’s large oil reserves translate into enormous wealth.

In fact, their oil is so thick and sticky that it has to have solvents put into it even to get it to flow down a pipe. It takes a special sort of refinery to deal with such oil and all of America’s suitable refineries are busy dealing with Canadian oil.

In addition, the mismanagement of the Venezuelan oil infrastructure has been so hideous that it will take $100 billion of investment over many years to get it back into shape.

Meanwhile the world oil price hovers at $58 a barrel. At that level the US oil industry, based mainly on fracking, only breaks even. The last thing that US oil companies want is a further large supply of oil coming into the market, driving down prices.

This is why Exxon-Mobil, the biggest oil major, has informed Trump that Venezuela is “uninvestable”. They could have added that even if somehow $100 billion can be found to invest in Venezuela, Trump will have long ceased to be President before much Venezuelan oil comes on stream. Trump is feeling super-confident because his take-over in Caracas was so easy but actually he’s bought a pig in a poke.

High price

Moreover, Trump has paid a much higher price than he realises. This bullying re-assertion of nineteenth century American imperialism has undone the diplomatic effort made by Washington over many decades in which the US sought to convince Latin Americans that those were the bad old days and that now they were all partners in an Alliance for Progress.

Opinion polls show over 80% of Latin Americans disapprove of Trump’s Venezuelan foray while the situation in Canada is so bad that not only has Canadian tourism to the US slumped and sales of US goods have fallen thanks to Canadian consumer boycotts, but Canada is even having to re-examine its defence posture in case Trump or a successor were to try to force Canada to become a 51st state. For Canadians no longer necessarily see America as a friend.

Trump behaves as if this tremendous loss of goodwill doesn’t matter. The assumption seems to be that it’s a realpolitik world, that only brute force really matters – indeed, Stephen Miller, Trump’s principal adviser, has said that almost in those very words.

This is, though, to disregard not only a lot of history but any realistic analysis of the dynamics of the emerging multi-polar system.  The assumption is that we are moving from a situation in which the US was the preponderant world power to one in which there are three great powers, the US, China and Russia, each with its own sphere of influence. To accept that, however, is a huge derogation of America’s role – very far from making America great again.

Soft power

And in fact, of course, Russia is a declining power. Both the US and China expected Russia to roll over Ukrainian resistance in no time but after four years and over a million Russian casualties Ukraine still resists.

In effect Russia is seen as a great power because it has such a huge territory and because it has nuclear weapons but it has neither the economic nor the demographic strength to play such a role. The net result of the Ukraine war has been to turn it into a tributary of China.

As one surveys these three great powers the big difference has always been that the US benefits from a whole series of allied relationships while both Russia and China are pretty much alone apart from a few unimportant stragglers like North Korea. Moreover, America has – at least until now – enormous soft power – reflected in the great attractiveness to foreign students of American universities, the dominance of American films, TV, and popular culture, America’s leading position in many markets, particularly hi-tech, and its enormous attractiveness to foreign tourists and immigrants.

America’s allies include all of Europe, Japan, Australasia, Israel, South Korea, the Gulf monarchies, the Philippines, various Oceanic territories, and a number of African states – Ghana, Botswana, Kenya, Egypt, and so on. One result is that America has 128 foreign military bases scattered right round the world and also has the use of many Allied facilities. Neither China nor Russia can remotely compare with that.

This network of allies and friends derives from three major sources – history, money, and values. The fact that America intervened in both world wars twice saved Europe and also helped either save or lay the foundations for democratic rule in many other parts of the world. That history created a degree of trust and affection which is now disappearing.

Secondly, through those two wars and the long Cold War which followed the rest of the Free World looked to America as its leader, confident that they shared basic democratic values. As for money, the US is no longer the America of the Marshall Plan: Trump has pulled back from giving out money anywhere.

Again, neither Russia nor China can compare. The European countries which were liberated from Nazism by the Red Army then had to endure nearly fifty years of Soviet-imposed Communist dictatorship. The result is that all those countries are determined to avoid ever falling under Russian influence or control again. Similarly, Sinkiang, Tibet, Macau and Hong Kong all resisted coming under the control of Beijing and Taiwan is desperate to avoid the same fate. Even a Communist state like Vietnam is utterly determined to assert its independence of China.

Similarly, Russians or Chinese who are able to amass a degree of wealth are often keen to quit their native countries to reside in the West. Almost nobody from the rest of the world chooses to reside in Russia or China if they have alternatives.

Greedy and bullying

All of this has been threatened and damaged by Trump’s greedy and bullying initiatives. Throughout his business career Trump has pursued the acquisition of wealth by all and any means and has shown scant respect for the law or for anyone’s feelings. He has happily continued in this manner as US President. As a result America has lost affection, trust, and respect throughout the world.

In addition, Trump has wrought considerable damage to America’s universities and its pre-eminent research community. Many American academics are fleeing abroad.  America’s scientific community has been damaged and its leadership in medicine has been rubbished by Robert Kennedy, Trump’s Secretary for Health and Human Services. These too were key elements of America’s soft power.

Immediately, Trump seems not to care provided he can still bully others into doing what he wishes but this is mere coarse ignorance: compliance exacted in this fashion has long-term costs. Currently Trump talks of forcing Greenland to become an American possession but the cost of that – the destruction of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation alliance – will be a far greater loss to America than anything it can conceivably acquire from Greenland.

Moreover, when we listed (above) America’s friends and allies, the striking thing was that these are spread right across the world from Gaborone to Seoul, Tokyo to Sydney, Dublin to Bucharest and from Manila to Jerusalem. The one area which went unmentioned in that list of those friends and allies was the Western Hemisphere.

That is, Trump’s resurrection of the Monroe Doctrine largely misses the point. The great majority of America’s allies are scattered everywhere in the world except in Latin America where America is usually the object of a sullen resentment. As we have seen, Trump’s latest intervention in Venezuela has only confirmed those feelings. If he ploughs on, as he threatens to do, with other interventions in Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, or Panama, America will end up being roundly hated in Latin America. It would be surprising if Russia and China cannot exploit that to their advantage.

The fact is that Trump’s foreign policies are based on ignorance. He believes that the rest of the world has been “ripping America off”, while the fact is that the long period of America’s dominance has admirably served both America’s and the Free World’s interests. He has no time for the professional competence of the State Department and instead relies on his own bullying interventions and the amateur blundering of Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy to the Middle East.

He rushes in to demand and threaten when a softer, diplomatic approach would have been far more fruitful. He has offended his allies and destabilised world trade by his sweeping imposition of tariffs but the promised benefit of those tariffs – the re-industrialisation of America – has not occurred and instead the number of industrial jobs in the US continues to shrink.

It is, in other words, just what one would expect when a wilful, bullying man is in the White House and tries to force his uneducated and prejudiced views upon the world. When this is all over there will have to be a huge cleaning-up job and although Trump is plastering his name in gold all over the place now, it is a tale of Ozymandias. It is likely that he will be remembered as the worst and most foolish President of all time.