Opinion: ‘Dumb-roe’ diplomacy all over again — get ready for blowback

President Donald Trump’s justification for the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro fits neatly within what he now calls the “Don-roe Doctrine.” It is little more than colonialism updated for the twenty-first century, stripped even of the thinnest pretense of democracy or human rights. 

In practice, it is a reboot of the Monroe Doctrine that asserts U.S. veto power over any administration, business relationship or ideology deemed insufficiently obedient to Washington D.C. from any government in the Americas. This includes Canada and Mexico.

Enforcement is not subtle. It mirrors the logic Trump claims to despise in the cartels: plata o plomo — money or lead. Comply, submit, fall in line or face economic strangulation, covert action or outright military force. This is not foreign policy; it is extortion backed by the empire.  

History is unforgiving to regime-change fantasies. Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan — and Latin America itself — offer a brutal record of what happens when the United States removes a “bad actor” without any coherent plan for what follows. More often than not, what replaces the old regime is not stability or democracy, but chaos, violence and long-term blowback.

What makes this moment especially dangerous is the complete incoherence on display. Watching the aftermath of the invasion as justifications shift by the hour. Marco Rubio insists the United States will not “really” be running things; Trump, minutes later, openly boasts that, of course, the U.S. is in charge. When the rationale changes this fast, it’s not strategy — it’s improvisation, live on TV. 

Trump did not cloak this operation in the usual language of freedom or democracy. He spoke plainly about dominance, resources and hemispheric control. His own National Security Strategy claims the right to “reassert and enforce” U.S. supremacy in Latin America. This may not be our truth — but it is unmistakably his.

Trump is not pretending to be a liberator. He is behaving as the Spanish, English, Dutch and French empires once did — monarchies unconcerned with consent, legality or long-term stability. Oil is central here, not incidental. Venezuela’s vast reserves, combined with its efforts to reduce dependence on the U.S. dollar by trading energy through alternative currencies and Chinese financial channels, strike at the heart of American economic leverage. 

That reality gives substance to what critics of American power have argued for years: force, not persuasion, has become Washington D.C.’s primary diplomatic tool. In practice, the United States now acts as if it has a natural right to veto any business deal in the Western Hemisphere that conflicts with its own economic interests. But such a rule cannot be enforced through diplomacy or law — only through military power. 

Intervention does not reduce migration; it produces it. Maduro’s regime helped drive millions from Venezuela, but U.S. military escalation will not reverse that flow. It will likely accelerate it. Chaos, disrupted energy markets, armed non-state actors and shattered institutions push people out. Those migrants then arrive in the United States only to be demonized by the same politicians whose policies helped destabilize their home countries. For Latino communities, this is the cruel recurring immigration loop we know too well. 

This is where U.S. Latinos — especially Latino Democrats — must stop treating foreign policy as someone else’s problem, or worse, taking comfort in the privilege of ignoring the U.S.’s abusive power in Latin America simply because life is comfortable at home. In this moment, voluntary ignorance and silence are forms of complicity. It is not enough to oppose Trump rhetorically while voting for — or quietly tolerating — bloated military budgets that make unilateral interventions inevitable.

If the so-called “Don-roe Doctrine” is allowed to proceed without challenge, it will harden into precedent, and precedent will become policy. What is needed now is not another U.S.-led “solution,” but a hemispheric reset. Latin America should convene a hemispheric convention — a peace conference grounded in sovereignty — explicitly rejecting unilateral American military intervention. 

Regional security can be decoupled from Washington D.C. Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia are large enough, capable enough and legitimate enough to form a multinational peacekeeping and stabilization framework that excludes U.S. command. That would be a profound shift — and that is precisely why it matters.  

The lesson for Latin Americans ought to be clear: under its current guise, the United States is not an equal partner but an unpredictable power, one whose commitments shift with political convenience.

That is why this moment demands more than outrage. “Clean-up on aisle 10” cannot simply mean undoing Trump’s mess after the fact. It requires a deeper realignment at home — one that reasserts constitutional limits, restores respect for international law and rejects the idea that the Western Hemisphere is Washington’s private estate. Without that reckoning, Trumpism becomes precedent, not an aberration.

For Latin America, the lesson is stark. As long as doctrines and corollaries continue to flow from the White House — Monroe, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Reagan — and now their newest rendition, the “Don-roe” Doctrine, true partnership will remain impossible. Equality cannot exist under threat. Sovereignty cannot survive veto power enforced by aircraft carriers.

Only when hemispheric colonialism is decisively buried can Latin America emerge from the shadow of American control and engage the United States as an equal economic and political partner — not a subordinate one.

The question now is whether U.S. citizens — especially Latinos, who know the costs of intervention in both their homelands and their neighborhoods — are willing to confront this reality before it hardens into permanence.