Trump set off a chain of events that will end in disaster

During rambling remarks on Jan. 3, President Donald Trump announced that the United States had bombed Venezuela, “captured” President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, and gained control of that country’s oil reserves.

Now what? Trump has no idea, but historical precedent portends disaster.

Dubious legal basis

As with his bombing of alleged drug-smuggling boats that have killed at least 115 civilians, Trump offered no justification under international law for his actions:

• The operation was not “self-defense” because Venezuela did not “attack” the United States.
• Calling Maduro a “narco-terrorist” did not render him or his country an “imminent” national security threat. In fact, Venezuela is a relatively small player in the international cocaine market and has no role in fentanyl — the primary killer in overdose deaths.
• Trump used the word “oil” more than 20 times in his speech. Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves. Fifty years ago — in 1976 — it nationalized US companies’ oil assets and facilities through a negotiated legal process that netted the firms more than $1 billion. Reversing that nationalization is an absurd — and dangerous — hook on which to hang the military attack in 2026.

Repeatedly, Trump invoked the Monroe Doctrine, saying that he had expanded it “by a lot.” But in fact, Trump has stood President James Monroe’s 1823 seminal proclamation on its head while emboldening China’s President Xi Jinping and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to follow Trump’s lead in dictating the affairs of sovereign countries.

Monroe vs 'Donroe'

In 1823, President Monroe announced a new defensive principle: The United States would object to Europe’s further colonization of the western hemisphere as “dangerous to our peace and security.” The US would not interfere with existing European colonies, but it would regard future attempts to determine the destiny of these independent nations “as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.”

In 1904 and 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt’s Corollary expanded the Doctrine, permitting the US to act as an “international police power” to prevent “some civilized nation” from intervening to assure a struggling country’s financial solvency.

Rather than a defensive warning to would-be foreign interlopers, Trump has transformed the Monroe Doctrine into an offensive weapon to invade, conquer, and control independent nations.

Trump calls it the “Donroe Doctrine.” It stems from his 19th-century worldview that the United States, China, and Russia are each entitled to operate within their own spheres of influence — kings carving up the world: China gets the Far East; the United States gets the western hemisphere (and Greenland!); Russia gets whatever it wants that’s left.

China’s designs on an independently democratic Taiwan are well known. Russia started a war to absorb Ukraine into the new Russian empire. And now Trump has conquered Venezuela.

Pottery Barn rule

Before the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Gen. Colin Powell warned President George W. Bush that the strategy was fraught with risk.

“If you break it, you own it,” Powell said, invoking the “Pottery Barn rule.”

Powell meant that if the US intervened militarily and destabilized a country, it bore long-term responsibility for rebuilding, governing, and managing the consequences. Bush would “own” Iraq’s 25 million people.

Venezuela’s population is 28 million.

Trump said that he, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine will “run” that country for the indefinite future. But what does that mean?

For starters, Trump is picking its next president. Maduro’s scandal-ridden vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, is subject to U.S. and E.U. sanctions and has been a central player in the corrupt regime. But she will serve for as long as she does Trump’s bidding.

“She really doesn’t have a choice,” he said.

An alternative, María Corina Machado, is a former lawmaker and the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner who led the opposition to Maduro. She would've won the presidential primary by a landslide in 2023, but Maduro’s government disqualified her from running. Her successor still won the general election. Maduro refused to recognize the outcome.

But Trump declared that Machado can’t be president because she “doesn’t have the support within or respect within the country.” What he probably meant was that she won the Nobel Peace Prize that he coveted.

But what if the Venezuelan people want Machado? Things can turn ugly quickly, especially if Trump makes good on his threat to put “boots on the ground.”

Searching for monsters

In 1821, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams delivered the most memorable speech of his career, saying:

“Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.”

To do otherwise, he cautioned, the “fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.” America would become “an Imperial Diadem, flashing in false and tarnished luster the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”

When the United States has departed from Adams’s principle, it has turned out badly.

Coup attempts and more than 500,000 “boots on the ground” for years could not secure victory in South Vietnam.

Nearly 15 years after the US led the ouster of Libya’s dictator, it remains a fractured state.

President Bush’s “pre-emptive” war in Iraq over non-existent weapons of mass destruction became a decade-long quagmire.

America’s 20-year struggle in Afghanistan ended in disaster and the Taliban’s return to power.

Worst president ever

Trump himself made opposition to foreign entanglements a central issue in his “America First” presidential campaigns. But words spoken to win elections ring hollow today — just like his campaign promises to release the Epstein files and strengthen the economy.

Maduro is a despicable person. But it’s a dangerous quantum leap to bomb a country and kidnap its leader in violation of international law. Trump suggested that Colombia’s president could be next. Secretary of State Marco Rubio hinted that Cuba might be on the target list. And Mexico is in Trump’s crosshairs.

Trump has no knowledge of history, much less respect for its costly lessons. And with the “Donroe Doctrine,” he has created new danger for the nation and the world.

For all mankind, surviving the final three years of his term will be a daunting challenge.

• Steven J. Harper is an attorney, adjunct professor at Northwestern University Law School, and author of several books, including Crossing Hoffa: A Teamster's Story and The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis. He has been a regular columnist for Moyers on Democracy, Dan Rather's News and Guts, and The American Lawyer. Follow him at https://thelawyerbubble.com.