Trump's 'Peace on Earth' Raid: The Monroe Doctrine Is Back, Baby

"Peace on Earth. You’ve got to have peace. It’s our hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine was very important when it was done. And other presidents, a lot of them, they lost sight of it. I didn’t lose sight. But it really is. It’s peace on earth." —President Donald Trump

Sometimes you read something so delightful you just want to share it with everybody on X or Facebook or fax machine or even by Xerox — yes, I'm (barely) that old — but then you realize there's more that needs to be said. So instead of sharing, you're compelled to sit down at your desk and warm your fingertips up on the keyboard.

So here I am.

The quote atop this article comes courtesy of Larry Kudlow over at RealClear this morning, and it comes from President Trump's Operation Absolute Resolve press conference earlier this week. Having missed the presser live, before Kudlow's column, I'd relied on Mainstream Media Accounts — and therefore missed the best part.

"If you had to sum up Operation Absolute Resolve, would you say that it was about oil or it was about regime change?" some reporter asked, and honestly, it was about both. But oil — in this case, denying Russia a path to avoiding sanctions — and regime change weren't Trump's end. They were merely the means.

The end, as Trump himself put it, was "about peace on Earth."

You don't get peace by allowing Great Power meddling in our own backyard.

James Monroe, our fifth president, understood that. The doctrine that bears his name was an early effort — much more wishful thinking than anything our fledgling republic could actually enforce — at making Europe's great powers think twice about further meddling in our hemisphere.

Monroe was a Continental Army veteran of our Revolutionary War against Great Britain. He knew a thing or two about meddling, and about war and peace, too. Monroe, along with Secretary of State (and future president) John Quincy Adams, pursued reconciliation with Britain — the one Great Power with its own interest in helping enforce the Monroe Doctrine — and expansion against crumbling Spain. 

Come to think of it, they might have been the Trump and Marco Rubio of their time. Or rather, Trump and Rubio might be the Monroe and J.Q. Adams of ours. But I digress.

And Another Thing: Yes, our hemisphere. "Somebody has to be the grownup," as I reminded readers yesterday, and with that comes the responsibility for maintaining (and occasionally enforcing) the peace because it's what's best for America.

Venezuela came up on Trump's radar long enough ago that our special forces had time enough to construct a perfect mockup of Nicolás Maduro's home and rehearse how to storm it — and cut through a military-grade safe room door — in minutes. Our intelligence services had time enough to infiltrate Maduro's regime and collect enough human and electronics intel to pinpoint his location at almost any given time of day.

In other words, Absolute Resolve wasn't some spur-of-the-moment action. If I had to guess (and I do), Trump gave the prep order soon after his re-inauguration. Maybe even during the transition. 

Venezuela started lighting up my radar like a fleet of B-52s back in November, when I wrote this:

Almost exactly a dozen years ago, then Secretary of State John Kerry declared, "The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over."

"The doctrine that bears his name," Kerry explained, "asserted our authority to step in and oppose the influence of European powers in Latin America. And throughout our nation’s history, successive presidents have reinforced that doctrine and made a similar choice."

"Today, however, we have made a different choice."

So Obama's SecState declared it was Open Season for the first time in two centuries for European (Russia), East Asian (China), and Middle East (Iran) powers to do whatever the hell they want in our neck of the woods. And guess what? They've done exactly that.

Six weeks later, Maduro was whisked away on a helicopter after Venezuela's Russian and Chinese air defenses (MUCH more on that tomorrow) were fully humiliated — and Trump closed the book on another chapter of Obama-era idiocy. 

"Restoring the principles of the Monroe Doctrine is the single most important foreign policy move we can make for the United States and the entire hemisphere right now," PJ Media's own Sarah Anderson wrote on Tuesday, and she couldn't be more correct.

The Monroe Doctrine is back, baby. Not just because it's better for us, but because it's better for our hemisphere, and it's better for the world. 

For a man that the press and the Democrats (but I repeat myself) paint as some sort of meth-addled rhino in the china shop of international relations, he does have a consistent worldview. Finally, now, in his second term, he has the team around him to see it through.

"Peace on Earth," Trump promised. And almost in time for Christmas, too.

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