THE DOTARD DOCTRINE

WHAT THE MONROE DOCTRINE WAS AND WHY TRUMP WANTS TO WEAR IT LIKE A NAME TAG

The Monroe Doctrine was a claim of space, delivered with restraint. In 1823, the United States informed European empires that the Western Hemisphere was no longer open to their expansion. It was not a speech. It was not a spectacle. It was a quiet assertion of influence backed by patience, credibility, and the understanding that power works best when it doesn’t need to introduce itself every morning.

That doctrine assumed discipline. It assumed continuity. It assumed that once boundaries were established, they did not need to be constantly restated at higher and higher volume.

Donald Trump looked at that history and fixated on the wrong part. Not the restraint. Not the patience. The ownership. He wanted the doctrine to feel personal. He wanted it branded. He wanted his name welded to American power the way his name is welded to buildings he didn’t finish paying for.

The Dotard Doctrine is not written down. It is performed. It replaces strategy with impulse, deterrence with provocation, and restraint with exhibition. It treats foreign policy as a series of dominance demonstrations that must be refreshed constantly because credibility is assumed to decay unless it’s fed explosions.

VENEZUELA: THE DOCTRINE MADE EXPLICIT

Only days into the new year, the United States launched a direct military assault on Venezuela, striking military targets in and around Caracas and capturing Nicolás Maduro, who was flown to the United States like seized property. This was not a multilateral operation. It was not coalition warfare. It was unilateral force, executed loudly, without institutional patience or allied cover.

Then Trump gave the speech.

He announced that the United States would run Venezuela until a transition could occur. Not oversee. Not assist. Run. No timeline. No framework. No explanation of limits. The act itself was presented as justification.

That moment did not merely fit the Dotard Doctrine. It defined it. Force without structure. Control without constraint. Confidence substituting for governance.

THE SPEECH THAT STRIPPED AWAY THE PRETENSE

Trump’s post-Maduro remarks mattered more than the bombs. Military action can still be constrained by institutions. Rhetoric reveals how a leader understands power. By declaring American control over another sovereign nation as an open-ended condition, Trump collapsed the distance between impulse and authority. He spoke as if American power required no legal, diplomatic, or temporal boundaries beyond his own confidence.

This was not deterrence. It was possession announced as policy.

THE STRIKES THAT CONFIRM THE PATTERN

Venezuela was not an outlier. It was the clearest example.

Under Trump’s second term, U.S. bombs and missiles have landed across multiple regions. In Iraq and Syria, strikes continued with renewed intensity under the familiar banner of counterterrorism, each framed as decisive, each announced as final, none nested in a visible long-term framework.

In Yemen, U.S. airstrikes hit Houthi targets and surrounding infrastructure, expanding American involvement while avoiding any serious discussion of humanitarian or regional consequences.

In Nigeria, U.S. aircraft struck Islamic State–linked militants, adding another theater to an already sprawling map of undeclared war.

Different justifications. Same posture.

Each strike was presented as strength. None were explained as part of a coherent, durable strategy that defined what success looks like after the explosion. Under the Dotard Doctrine, bombing is not a means to an end. It is the end, at least until attention moves on.

THE COGNITIVE SIGNATURE

This is where the name stops being rhetorical and becomes diagnostic.

The Dotard Doctrine follows a consistent cognitive pattern. Disorder is interpreted as disrespect. Resistance is taken personally. Escalation is confused with control. Outcomes are declared rather than built. Complexity is dismissed as weakness. Planning is treated as an obstacle to decisiveness rather than its foundation.

Each strike resets the board. Yesterday’s threat disappears. Yesterday’s red line evaporates. Continuity is optional. Memory is short. The world is treated as a series of disconnected stages on which dominance must be reasserted again and again because credibility is assumed to be perishable.

That is not grand strategy. That is temperament masquerading as doctrine.

WHY THE NAME HOLDS

Years ago, during a nuclear standoff, Kim Jong-un called Donald Trump a dotard. At the time, it was treated as novelty trash talk. In retrospect, it reads like an early description of method. Not age. Method.

A dotard is defined by poor judgment, emotional volatility, fixation on grievance, repetition, impulsivity, and an inability to process complexity without rage. Lay that definition alongside Trump’s foreign policy behavior and the overlap is exact. The doctrine is not aggressive because it is strategic. It is aggressive because it is impatient.

WHAT HISTORY WILL REMEMBER

Doctrines endure when they organize reality. The Dotard Doctrine will be remembered because it performed it instead. It took a tradition built on implication and restraint and replaced it with spectacle and impulse. It turned hemispheric influence into a press conference and global power into a branding exercise.

The Dotard Doctrine is American power governed by impulse, refreshed by force, and justified after the fact by confidence alone. It does not plan for the future. It assumes the future will comply.

History is very consistent about how that assumption ends.

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If you’re tired of coverage that treats escalation as normal and press conferences as strategy, this is for you. If you want someone to connect the strikes, the rhetoric, and the psychology into a single, uncomfortable picture of how power is being used and abused right now, subscribe.