Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal host Greg Grandin, professor of history at Yale and author of Empire's Workshop, to discuss the Monroe Doctrine's evolution and its relevance to current Venezuela policy.

The conversation explores how the 1823 Monroe Doctrine has been repeatedly reinterpreted, from its original cautious statement to Theodore Roosevelt's "international police power" expansion to Trump's current approach.

Grandin explains the historical pattern of US presidents turning to Latin America during moments of domestic weakness or global setbacks, using the region as a testing ground for projecting American power.

The Monroe Doctrine's Humble Origins and Gradual Expansion

The Monroe Doctrine wasn't actually a formal doctrine - it was "four or five non-contiguous paragraphs in the State of the Union Address of six thousand words" written by John Quincy Adams in 1823.

The document was contradictory and cautious, appealing to different constituencies: "Thomas Jefferson's expansionism, John Quincy Adams's isolationism, and Henry Clay's vision of a large American mercantile system."

By 1895, Grover Cleveland dramatically expanded it, declaring "the Monroe Doctrine granted the United States absolute sovereignty over the whole Western hemisphere."

Theodore Roosevelt added his corollary in 1904, granting the US "international police power to suppress chronic wrongdoing in Latin America" - wrongdoing often provoked by US banks and oil extractors.

FDR's Complete Reversal and the Good Neighbor Policy

In 1933, FDR reversed 180 degrees, renouncing US intervention rights and recognizing "the absolute sovereignty of Latin American nations."

This created "ten years of goodwill" that got Latin America on board for World War II, preventing the region from falling to fascism like Spain.

FDR tolerated economic nationalists and let Mexico nationalize Standard Oil, creating continental unity that strengthened the US position entering WWII.

International Law as Power Relations and Moral Arena

"International law doesn't exist in some void in which absolute justice is going to happen" - it's created through power relations but provides "a moral arena in which right and wrong could be understood."

The Drago Doctrine emerged when European warships tried collecting Venezuelan debt from colonial times - the US supported it to keep Europe out of the Caribbean.

Latin American jurists consistently pushed back against US claims, particularly the "doctrine of conquest" which the US held onto until 1933 while Latin America had rejected it since independence.

Trump's Venezuela Strategy: Theatrical Spectacle Without Ideology

Trump's approach represents "pure Trump" - theatrical spectacle where he told his base "we'll get our oil back" despite oil trading at low prices and Venezuela requiring massive capital investment.

The strategy appears to be "targeted attacks" and "one and done" operations, avoiding the Iraq 2003 scenario while keeping the Venezuelan state intact.

"Trump isn't even trying to cobble together a new worldview" unlike FDR's New Deal coalition or Reagan's anti-communist liberalism - he's just "demanding tribute."

Precedents exist: Manuel Noriega's arrest in 1989 with 30,000 Marines and Jean-Bertrand Aristide's forced exile in 2005, but the oil tribute concept is unprecedented.

Latin America as America's Fallback Dominance Strategy

There's a historical pattern where "the United States turns back to Latin America" during moments of weakness - after the Great Depression, Vietnam, and the War on Terror.

"Latin America is the first place in which the United States got a sense of itself as an overseas power" - projecting financial, cultural, and military power beyond its borders.

The Monroe Doctrine appeals to America First nationalism because "it wasn't universalist, it wasn't international law, it was customary law specifically related to US power within its hemisphere."