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The Trump Corollary in Venezuela
By Carole Hornsby Haynes January 14, 2026
With the capture of Nicolás Maduro, analysts and even Trump have stated that the foreign policy of the Monroe Doctrine, one of the most influential policy statements in United States history, is being invoked.
Because many Americans today are unfamiliar with the history of the Monroe Doctrine, let’s review its purpose.
History of the Monroe Doctrine
In his Farewell Address, George Washington warned that the new republic could ill afford to get involved in the squabblings of the Old World and should focus on building its own internal affairs. “Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation…Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.”
Despite the efforts of the new republic in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to avoid foreign entanglements, Spain, Britain, France, and Russia all were laying claim to vast acreage on the North and South American continents. Some, especially Spanish colonies in Latin America, began revolutions in the early nineteenth century to claim self-governance in the spirit of the American Revolution. European despots sent military troops into the Western Hemisphere to crush these revolutions.
In response to potential foreign interventions in South America, President James Monroe issued a declaration on December 2, 1823 stating, “the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” He noted attempts by European monarchs to quash revolutions in Latin America, “The political system of [European monarchs] is essentially different…from that of America. We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.”
Though largely symbolic, the Monroe Doctrine was invoked by future presidents from Ulysses Grant to Teddy Roosevelt to John F. Kennedy to justify United States military interventions in the Western Hemphisphere to protect our national security.
The foreign policy was expanded in 1904 by the Roosevelt Corollary, named after President Theodore Roosevelt, which asserted the United States had a right to intervene in Latin American countries in cases of “chronic wrongdoing.”
This paved the way for U.S. dominance in the region until well into the 20th century. However, Washington bureaucrats neglected it over the past 30 years.
Trump is upending that. On December 5, the new U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) was unveiled, “We will assert and enforce a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine,” alluding to the Roosevelt Corollary.
Although the Monroe Doctrine aimed to protect the independence of the new republic from European empires, the Trump Corollary broadened the foreign policy to exclude the Chinese Communist empire from the Western Hemisphere.
With the announcement of the new U.S. security strategy and the activities of the military around the shores of Venezuela, the attack on Caracas came as no surprise.
Why Caracas Was Attacked
In the early hours of January 3, a group of U.S. Delta Force operators broke into the heavily fortified presidential compound of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan dictator since 2013.Through spectacular planning, the U.S. had sent an undercover team into Venezuela months before the strike to establish a detailed picture of Maduro’s daily habits. Just prior to the operation, Venezuela electricity was disabled. U.S. carrier aviation and aircraft from the American homeland jammed and attacked Venezuelan radars and air defense systems, creating a path for the Delta Force to move into Caracas and capture and extract Maduro and his wife within 30 minutes. They were taken to the USS Iwo Jima bound for New York, where they were placed in U.S. custody. This enforced the March 2020 federal indictment of Maduro and 14 of his top officials who were charged with using cocaine as a weapon to “flood” the United States. Appearing before a judge in a federal courthouse in lower Manhattan, Maduro and his wife pleaded not guilty to federal drug trafficking and other charges.
Yet United States intervention in Venezuela was not about drug traffickers, but rather dismantling dangerous geopolitical foes entrenched in our backyard. This is being implemented with the toppling ofVenezuela’s criminal and drug cartel network masquerading as a government,countering the decades long communist revolution spreading across the key battleground of Latin America, and addressing covert warfare against the U.S.
With the fall of the Berlin Wallin 1989 and the lifting of the Iron Curtain, communism did not fall everywhere as the worldexpected. Instead, it mutated and spreadrapidly across Latin America, aided and abetted by Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and George Soros.It is important to note that the Chinese Communist Party’s Belt and Road Initiative encroached into the Western Hemisphere in 2013, the year the Obama Administration formally renounced the Monroe Doctrine.
The far left NCLA boasts that the communist revolution has been highly successful with over 80 per cent of Latin America’s economic output now in the hands of progressive governments and Venezuela serving as one of the most strategic footholds.
Since September, U.S. forces have carried out strikes on suspicious vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific that were allegedly carrying drugs.In late 2025, Trump ordered a naval blockadeof all sanctioned oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela ports.
In November 2025, the U.S. formally designated the so-called “Cartel of the Suns” as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and placed large bounties on the heads of their leaders.This cartel is a consortium of military officers, judges, ministers, and intelligence chiefs in Venezuela who are deeply involved in drug trafficking and organized crime. Observers note that you “cannot tell the difference between the cartels and the government” because Cartel of the Sun functions as the Venezuela state and Maduro is head of the cartel.
Over 200–300 metric tons of cocaine flow through Venezuela each year via military and government planes, state protection, and diplomatic passports. Through drug trafficking and theft of oil, Maduro’s regime is the cash cow for the dangerous “São Paulo Forum,” the world’s largest and most influential international Marxist organization that is engulfing the region.
With the seizure of their ships, the drug cartel will face a massive loss of income that will seriously impede their ability to expand their operations in the Western Hemisphere.
Consequences of the Trump Doctrine
Seth Cropsey, retired naval officer and former deputy Undersecretary of the Navy, believes the greatest strategic problem the U.S. faces in the next decade is Chinese expansionism. Under the Trump Corollary, that is being addressed.
Trump’s announcement that the United States will take control of Venezuela’s oil is a death blow to Cuba. He posted on social media that no more oil or money would flow to communist Cuba which, in return, provided security services for Maduro and Chavez. Trump called on Cuba to “make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE." The loss of oil supplies places the communist regime in Havana, whose partners include Russia and China, at risk of collapsing.
With the United States bringing Maduro to justice and controlling Venezuela’s oil reserves, China will be undermined with the loss ofdiscounted Venezuelan crude.
J. Michael Waller, national securities scholar, writes that losing control over Venezuela and Cuba and Trump’s move early in 2025 to ensure American interests in the Panama Canal will prevent the Chinese Communist Party from establishing naval port access in the Caribbean.
Not only will the increased presence of the United States military under the Trump Corollary will be a powerful deterrent to illegal migration and illicit trafficking, but to operations between Latin American communists and United States domestic terrorists and subversives.