By announcing his territorial ambitions in Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal, President Donald Trump seems to have breathed life back into the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. That was the first time the US asserted its right to unrestrained autonomy within the Western Hemisphere. President James Monroe declared that Washington would take any interference in the hemisphere by other great powers as an ‘unfriendly disposition toward the United States’. Are you listening, China? Hemispheric policy is nothing new to Trump’s circle. Project 2025, the Trump-friendly set of ideas about US governance published last year, envisaged ‘re-hemisphering’ supply chains as both a requirement of US economic security, and a way to support economic activity in ‘parts of the Americas in need of growth and stabilization’. John Bolton, in his capacity as National Security Advisor during Trump’s first term, made the point more bluntly in a 2019 speech when he declared that ‘the Monroe doctrine is alive and well’.
The economics of the new Monroe Doctrine | Chatham House – International Affairs Think Tank
