[Salon] The Ongoing Abuses of the Monroe Doctrine"

[Chas Freeman <cwfresidence@gmail.com>]

https://daniellarison.substack.com/p/the-ongoing-abuses-of-the-monroe?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=73370&post_id=180509991&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=210kv&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

The Ongoing Abuses of the Monroe Doctrine

Nothing could be a greater violation of the letter and spirit of the original Monroe Doctrine than a U.S. war of aggression to overthrow a South American government.

Daniel Larison   12/2/25

One of the more ridiculous claims made by regime changers is that Venezuela’s relationships with other authoritarian governments pose some dire threat to the United States. This is from National Review’s predictably awful editorial:

And Maduro has aligned Venezuela with a who’s who of anti-American despots and adversaries: Cuba, Iran, Russia, and China. He has brought into the Western Hemisphere their financial interests, their intelligence apparatuses, and even the possibility of the projection of their military power against us — a direct challenge to the longstanding U.S. policy, in the Monroe Doctrine, toward Old World intervention in the New.

It is true that Venezuela is aligned with these other states. That alignment has been greatly reinforced thanks to the dimwitted and destructive policies favored by Venezuela hawks, but leave that aside for the moment. Venezuela’s alignment with these governments may or may not be regrettable, but it doesn’t threaten the United States in the least. It is barely a cause for concern. It certainly isn’t a legitimate cause for war.