The Monroe Doctrine Is Back…and Trump Is Enforcing It With Oil, Seizures, and Power

The revived Monroe Doctrine is crushing it. Already, other narco-states in the American hemisphere are paying exceedingly close attention to what just happened in Venezuela. They don’t want it to spread. Namely, President Trump reported yesterday that Colombia’s president isn’t just waiting around for the midnight caller; he phoned the White House with a whole new and more helpful tone:

President Trump also made several dramatic announcements about Venezuela itself. First, and suddenly, our former hemispheric adversary will now, for some reason, be spending their vast oil revenues right here at home, in the United States, instead of paying the Russians and Chinese for military hardware:

Not just that. Also yesterday, President Trump dramatically announced that Venezuela would be “donating” to the U.S. millions of barrels of high-quality crude oil (worth billions), immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

🔥 It’s still not over. In any other news cycle, this would be all anyone was talking about. The Wall Street Journal poured out a story yesterday headlined, “Trump Team Works Up Sweeping Plan to Control Venezuelan Oil for Years to Come.” The subheadline, get this, almost casually added, “President believes the effort could lower oil prices to his target of $50 a barrel.”

Fifty dollars a barrel.

“If successful,” the Journal modestly explained, “the plan could effectively give the U.S. stewardship of most of the oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere, when factoring in deposits in the U.S. and other countries where U.S. companies control production.” That’s not all. “It could also fulfill two of the administration’s primary goals,” the article continued, “namely, to box Russia and China out of Venezuela and to push energy prices lower for U.S. consumers.”

In other words, the Journal just described the Monroe Doctrine to a “T”: (1) stewardship of most of the oil reserves in our Western Hemisphere, (2) kicking China and Russia back to their own hemispheres of influence, and (3) making life more affordable for Americans. This also, not coincidentally, describes “America First.”

🔥 Along those lines, the military executed two more dramatic missions yesterday, all buried in the avalanche of news. The Washington Post sailed out the story under the headline, “U.S. seizes two tankers as Venezuelan oil blockade intensifies.” The sub-headline noted that, “In separate operations, a Russian-flagged vessel was boarded in the North Atlantic and another ship was apprehended near the Caribbean.”

The Russian-flagged oil tanker (now owned by the U.S.) initially sailed out of Venezuela with a shady fake registration. After being trailed by suspicious Coast Guard vessels to the Arctic, the tanker’s crew hastily painted a Russian flag on its bow. Later, Moscow advised that the Bella I was being escorted by a Russian nuclear submarine. The Coast Guard intercepted it anyway, without incident.

The Coast Guard was legally justified in at least two ways. First, it enforced Venezuelan sanctions, which were imposed or continued by Democrats during the Biden Administration. Second, maritime law allows seizure of improperly registered vessels. The post-hoc effort by the Russians to fix the fake registration using a couple buckets of paint proves the Bella (renamed in mid-cruise to the Marenara, a type of bland Italian pasta sauce).

Specifically, and allowing that I’m not a maritime lawyer (trust me, they are certifiably insane), UNCLOS Article 92 says that a ship that changes nationality during a voyage (if for other purposes than a true sale) is a stateless ship that can be boarded by any state. So.

Concerned friends texted me yesterday asking whether I thought this seizure was provocative. Could snatching Russian oil tankers, even falsely registered ones, start a war with Russia? My answer is ‘no.’ More specifically, once again, last month Trump explained to the world in his National Security Strategy memo that America would enforce its hemisphere. Get out. They don’t have to go home, but they can’t stay here.

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