From an audacious operation capturing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from his own house in Caracas, to claiming to make Canada the US’ 51st state, or owning Greenland, US President Donald Trump has made clear his marker of foreign policy — force, national power, and a return to spheres of influence.
The US appears to be returning to the pre-20th century script of defending its interests across the Americas. There is a declaration of a renewed focus on its immediate geography. This adds a new wrinkle to the increasingly bipolar nature of world politics. And that is why the ‘spheres of influence’ is ThePrint’s Newsmaker of the Week.
Trump and his administration have spent the last week since the capture of Maduro sharpening their knives at America’s ally Denmark and the semi-autonomous territory of Greenland. The US State Department declared that “This is OUR Hemisphere” and that Trump will not allow American security to be “threatened.”
Trump has been willing to leverage the US’ financial system, the dollar-based international trading regime, and its overall military strength against friends and foes alike — imposition of tariffs, deals with traditional allies promising hundreds of billions of dollars in the American economy, and the chastising and alienation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), while focusing on deals with perceived adversaries such as Russia and China.
From Monroe Doctrine to Donroe Doctrine
All of this has brought about conversations of the “Donroe Doctrine”, a moniker Trump used after invading Venezuela. It’s a sort of modern day reinterpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The incumbent US President has in the past raised the spectre of a return to the Monroe Doctrine, first established in 1823 by then-President James Monroe to curtail the interference of the European colonial powers in the Western Hemisphere. A portrait of Monroe hangs near Trump’s desk in the Oval Office.
The Monroe Doctrine was a warning to the powers of the day — Spain and the United Kingdom in particular — to stay out of the affairs of the Western Hemisphere. In 1865, after the end of the civil war in the US, the American government offered covert support for the Republican Benito Juarez in Mexico against the French-backed Emperor Maximilian, as a part of its efforts to minimise European influence at its borders. The short-lived empire of Mexico ended in 1867.
In 1904, the Monroe Doctrine was further expanded by President Theodore Roosevelt who was willing to “exercise international police power in ‘flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence.’” The 20th century saw the US repeatedly intervening in the region, starting with the Dominican Republic in 1903 and 1904, Nicaragua in 1911, and Haiti in 1915.
The end of the Second World War and the rise of the US as the preeminent superpower in the West saw Washington use its influence in overthrowing the Communist–backed governments, including President Salvador Allende’s regime in Chile in 1973.
The end of the Cold War in the 1990s brought an end to the ideological spheres of influence that had defined the post-World War II period, envisioned as a fight between the capitalist West and the communist East. The following years witnessed the growth of a new order fuelled by globalisation and a perceived end to the West versus East split.
However, in the last year, Trump has seemingly spelt the death of the post-Cold War order with his emphasis on using the US’ “big-stick” to bring adversaries to heel. As Trump told The New York Times, in a recent interview, the only limits he sees to his power is his own “morality” — best defining in his own words his view of international politics.
A return to royalist ambitions?
The ‘Donroe Doctrine’, according to Trump, goes further than Monroe’s own, by ensuring that the US will never “be threatened” in the Western Hemisphere ever again. The jubilation or sugar rush Trump has shown after the capture of Maduro has seen a wary response from other powers in the world.
“We live in a world, where you can talk all you want, about international niceties, and everything else, but we live in a world — in the real world — that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world,” Stephen Miller, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff of Policy, declared in an interview with CNN earlier this week.
The US will start acting like a superpower, ignoring the limitations of international law that have restricted its action since the creation of the modern global system, Trump hinted in his interview with the New York Times.
In all of this, the US’ message is clear: unlike his predecessors, Trump is willing to use the full force of America’s power, every time, all the time. However, Trump’s approach is also informed by his business instincts and those who are seated in his cabinet, including Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff.
Trump’s foreign policy also relies on the enrichment of his own family and allies, which complicates any comparisons to solely an imperialist agenda, argues Stacie E Goddard and Abraham Newman in an essay published by Cambridge University Press in November 2025.
The focus is not the “national interest” of the state, but rather extraction of resources and profit of individuals connected with the regime, notes Goddard in an interview with Politico. Trump has sought control over Venezuela’s oil, and, in the past, his administration has declared that Japan will invest $500 billion in the US in areas decided by the government — all of which indicate a merging of foreign policy, power, and clique enrichment.
Since his return, Trump’s web of allies and family members have all profited from their proximity to power, revealed in an investigation by The New York Times.
Also read: Trump is not merely controlling the backyard. He is disrupting networks that lie beneath
The G2 and Indo-Pacific
If the US is the leader of the Western Hemisphere, as Trump and his administration has claimed, it remains to be seen who is the new leader of the rest of the world. The US President had referred to China as a part of the G2, or of equal power to America, ahead of his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping last year in South Korea.
It remains to be seen what China will do to defend its own interests, especially with regard to reunification with Taiwan. As Trump told The New York Times, Taiwan and Venezuela are not the same, but it is up to Xi to decide.
His actions have seen internal push back, with Democrats highlighting their fears that President Vladimir Putin of Russia or Xi may use the Venezuela precedent to defend their own interests, from Ukraine to South East Asia.
The US has consistently backed the self-governing territory of Taiwan even if it does not maintain formal diplomatic ties. But it also raises a question of the US’ focus on the Western Hemisphere and potential withdrawal from the larger Indo-Pacific.
For example, the Quad — US, India, Australia and Japan — are yet to have a leaders’ meeting during Trump’s current term. Currently, chaired by India, there has been no information if such a summit of leaders would be held.
The use of the US’ power across all spheres has upturned the current global paradigm, while the Donroe Doctrine is set to impact Washington’s long-term influence across the regions of the world.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)