YANKEE GO HOME, AGAIN / PROJECT SYNDICATE

Yankee Go Home, Again

With his attack on Venezuela, US President Donald Trump channeled the US leaders who sought to “liberate” Spain’s former colonies in 1898. But just as the Spanish-American War produced few real gains in the 20th century, Trump's efforts to revive the Monroe Doctrine in the 21st are more ambitious than realistic.

Jorge G. Castañeda

MEXICO CITY – After months of threats and escalating violence over Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s alleged involvement in drug trafficking, US forces carried out a raid on Venezuela’s capital and captured Maduro, who has now been brought to New York to stand trial for his alleged crimes against the United States. 

The resemblance between the US military’s “Operation Absolute Resolve” in Caracas and events in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines some 125 years ago is uncanny – and portends more violence.

Like President Donald Trump, the US presidents who sought to “liberate” Spain’s former colonies at the turn of the 20th century were unabashed in their willingness to wield military power in Latin America, international law be damned. 

They were enacting the Monroe Doctrine – articulated by President James Monroe in 1823 – which effectively asserted US authority over the Western Hemisphere, by declaring that the US would regard any foreign intervention in the Americas, particularly European colonialism in Latin America, as a hostile act. 

These leaders, like Trump today, also cynically co-opted democratic principles and humanitarian justifications to defend their actions and showed no regard for the consequences.

Nothing Gained

Joe Jackson’s new book, Splendid Liberators: Heroes, Betrayal, Resistance, and the Birth of the American Empire, could not have been published at a better time. 

It tells the story of the US running roughshod over Latin America in the 19th and 20th centuries, and particularly during the Spanish-American War of 1898. 

He shows that the country’s second major movement toward empire – the first was the conquest of more than half of Mexico in 1846-48 – unfolded in fits and starts.

President William McKinley (whom Trump has often praised, both for the tariffs he embraced before his presidency and for his imperial appetites) and Vice President Theodore Roosevelt (who would succeed McKinley as president) only vaguely understood their imperial ambitions. 

They did not know which countries would ultimately become targets, nor how many resources would be needed to achieve their objectives.

The US military remained underdeveloped, despite modernization efforts toward the end of the 19th century. 

The US invasion of Cuba, launched from Tampa, Florida, was largely a disaster. 

Had Spain not been in the final throes of its imperial decadence, the Spanish-American War could well have been catastrophic for the US. 

Jackson describes in vivid detail how the US won the naval battle outside Santiago Bay only because the wooden decks of Spain’s obsolete warships rapidly caught fire.

The narrative may not be groundbreaking, but Jackson delivers it eloquently and with a laudable lack of bias, reminding readers that America’s war to dismember the Spanish Empire was a story of real people, not glorious heroes fighting to save nameless, tragic victims from dastardly conquerors. 

He describes, for example, the ruthless concentration-camp strategy that the Spanish adopted in Cuba before the American invasion – a policy that helped to turn US public opinion against Spain.

But Jackson also explains how that public opinion was manipulated by just about everyone: the US media, McKinley, Roosevelt, and Cuban freedom fighters. 

Moreover, he describes the atrocious conditions under which US forces fought in Cuba, particularly in the Battle of Santiago de Cuba. 

Beyond Cuba, he does not neglect to recount the atrocities US troops committed in the Philippines (specifically at Batangas).

Furthermore, like other historians – such as Ada Ferrer, in her Pulitzer Prize-winning Cuba: An American History, and Daniel Immerwahr, in How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States – Jackson shows how the US deceived its local allies (a pattern Trump appears to be repeating in his efforts to sideline Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Venezuela’s democratic opposition leader María Corina Machado). 

The deceit began with the earliest communications between US officials on the ground and local insurgents. 

As Jackson observes, Major General Nelson Appleton Miles, Commodore George Dewey, and Major General William Shafter – speaking to insurgent leaders in Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Cuba, respectively – all made similar vows: “In exchange for your help in defeating a common enemy, the United States will not treat you as a fief, but will accept you as an equal.”

But none of these officials had the power to make such promises, so the US “was not bound” by their statements. 

Whether born of naiveté or dishonesty, the “distance between promise and fact rang through the years,” Jackson writes. 

While the leaders of the national liberation struggles occasionally discerned US deceptions – sometimes consciously, sometimes unwittingly – there was little they could do about them.

Though Jackson does not shy away from exposing the flaws and duplicity of the characters in this drama, he applies the same even-handedness to depicting them as he does to his narration of events. 

No one – Cuban, Puerto Rican, Filipino, Spanish, or American – personifies evil: all are human, with defects, weaknesses, and perspectives shaped by their experiences. 

Nor is anyone perfect, though many show courage, altruism, and ambition, whether in pursuing or resisting empire, and a few outstanding figures have endured the judgment of history better than the rest.

But make no mistake: if there ever was a pointless, needless, tragic war of choice, it was the “splendid liberation” of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. 

Had Cuba become independent from Spain without US interference, it could have leveraged American investment and tourism to advance its own development. 

And had the Philippines not become a US colony after Spain’s departure – which would have happened before long, even without American “liberation” – it might have done better than it did under nearly a half-century of US rule.

As for Puerto Rico – which remains a US territory – Latin American progressives argue endlessly about the benefits and misfortunes it has experienced since the war. 

Some say that Cuba would have ended up in the same situation, were it not for the revolution of 1959. 

Others point out that Puerto Ricans have repeatedly voted against independence over the past half-century. 

But this counterfactual exercise is futile. 

Ultimately, the US “liberation” of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines was, above all, a tragedy.

The Trump Corollary

In 1905, Roosevelt – who had by then become president following McKinley’s assassination – expanded on the Monroe Doctrine with a “corollary” stating that the US had a “responsibility to preserve order and protect life and property” in the countries of the Western Hemisphere. 

This built on his 1904 assertion that the US, as a “civilized nation,” may be “forced” to exercise “international police power” in response to “chronic wrongdoing” in Latin American countries.

Trump has publicly embraced this reprehensible and patronizing imperial logic. 

His administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS) pledges to “assert and enforce” a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, which entails keeping “our Hemisphere” free of “hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets” and ensuring US access to “key strategic locations.” 

This is directly reflected in the Trump administration’s plans to “run” Venezuela, which apparently cannot be trusted to run itself, and “take back” the country’s oil, which apparently is owed to the US.

The Trump administration is not wrong in saying that Maduro, who brazenly stole the 2024 presidential election, was not the legitimate president of Venezuela. 

But this does not make America’s use of military force to capture him legitimate. 

After all, Trump made no effort to secure support from other countries, in the region or beyond – something that even President George W. Bush did before his 2003 invasion of Iraq. 

The Venezuela operation thus violated international law, the United Nations Charter, and multiple treaties. 

This was nothing short of an act of war.

Nonetheless, Trump is not operating in a vacuum. 

Just as Spain, in its desperation to conserve its dwindling empire at all costs, bears partial responsibility for the events of 1898, the stage for Trump’s operation was arguably set by four leaders who should have known better: former US President Joe Biden, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula), Colombian President Gustavo Petro, and former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO).

All four were in office when Maduro stole the 2024 election, but they did nothing about it. 

Lula, Petro, and AMLO proved unwilling or unable to convince Maduro to accept his defeat and go into exile, partly because Biden made no effort to support them, such as by threatening to quarantine Venezuelan oil exports. 

They did not push through a resolution at the Organization of American States to impose sanctions on the Maduro regime and invoke the Inter-American Democratic Charter, which would have bestowed regional legitimacy on the threat of the use of force.

With the prospect of Trump’s return to the White House looming, these influential Latin American leaders might have been able to persuade Cuba – a critical enabler of Maduro’s regime – to help them make their case. 

Not only would this protect Cuba from Trump’s wrath should he win the November 2024 election, they could have argued; it might earn Cuba some concession from the next US administration.

But none of this happened, and then Trump won the presidency for a second time, at which point a US intervention in Venezuela became practically a foregone conclusion. 

Months of US attacks on alleged drug-trafficking boats escalated to a unilateral military strike on a foreign capital, and a new age of US intervention in Latin America dawned.

The Limits of US Hegemony

Much like the “liberation” of the three Spanish colonies, which ushered in an era of American interventionism in the Western Hemisphere, the Trump administration’s operation in Venezuela will probably be followed by more attempts to assert US hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. 

The shift in US policy toward the Americas may well outlast Trump.

Whether this is depicted as the revival of the Monroe Doctrine, or a manifestation of Realpolitik, is irrelevant. 

(How handing control over three-quarters of the global economy to Russia and China can possibly be considered hard-nosed pragmatism is another discussion.) 

What matters, above all, is how this new policy approach is enacted.

It will not be hard for the US to impose its will on the countries of the so-called Caribbean Basin. 

In terms of trade, foreign investment, tourism, migration, and military engagement, Mexico, Central America, and the region’s larger islands have been plainly part of the US sphere of influence since the 19th century.

The same cannot be said of South America. 

Within the last two decades, China has become the largest trading partner for Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela, mainly through commodity purchases. 

Chinese companies, largely state-owned, also have huge investment stakes in these countries, with China having established itself as the largest foreign investor in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Peru. 

Evidence of possible military cooperation has also emerged.

In its pursuit of hemispheric hegemony, the Trump administration might attempt something akin to the series of US interventions and occupations in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean between 1898 and 1933, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched his Good Neighbor Policy. 

Already, Trump has threatened multiple other Latin American countries, particularly Colombia and Cuba.

But whether this would yield durable gains for the US beyond its existing sphere of influence is far from clear. 

Countries like Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Peru are formidable players. 

And while Trump might be willing to surrender America’s position in Europe and Asia, China would not be so short-sighted as to do the same in Latin America.

 And as long as China remains firmly entrenched in the Western Hemisphere, Trump’s vision of American dominance will remain out of reach. 

And this is to say nothing of the limited appetite Trump’s MAGA base has for foreign adventurism.

Following the strike on Venezuela, it is clear that we cannot dismiss the NSS and Trump’s threats against other Latin American countries, as well as against Denmark over Greenland, as mere bluster. 

Like so many of Trump’s policies, his strategy in the region will probably be confusing and haphazard, making its outcomes difficult to predict. 

But there is little doubt that it will prove disruptive, potentially generating severe tensions – even violence – in South America for years to come. 

To appreciate that, it is worth revisiting the grim history that this episode echoes.

Joe Jackson, Splendid Liberators: Heroes, Betrayal, Resistance, and the Birth of the American Empire, Macmillan Publishers, 2025

Jorge G. Castañeda, a former foreign minister of Mexico, is a professor at New York University and the author of America Through Foreign Eyes (Oxford University Press, 2020).