The Ever-Expanding Scope of Presidential Doctrines

U.S. President James Monroe, addressing Congress amid a wave of Latin American independence movements in 1823, declared that the Western Hemisphere was off-limits to further European colonization and interference. The famous Monroe Doctrine.

At the time, the United States was still fragile after the War of 1812, and Monroe feared that European monarchies, fresh from defeating Napoleon, might try to reclaim their lost colonies. Backed by British naval power (London wanted free trade in the region), the doctrine was mostly diplomatic bluster that suggested a straightforward bargain: America would stay out of European affairs if Europe stayed out of the Americas. Monroe had drawn a defensive line in the sand.

But doctrines, like empires, have a habit of expanding. Theodore Roosevelt, first elected in 1904 (he’d assumed the presidency in 1901 after the assassination of William McKinley), turned from defense to offense. Citing instability in Latin America that might invite European interference, Roosevelt declared that the U.S. had the right, even the duty, to act as a sort of international police force. This came to be known as America’s “Big Stick” policy. 

The U.S. went on to intervene in Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, the practical expression of this new broadening doctrine. In a number of military interventions, known as “the banana wars”, U.S. Marines were deployed to protect American fruit companies and investments. So began the practice, in force to this day, of using military might to protect American corporate interests.

World War II and the subsequent Cold War turned what began as a regional policy into a global one. Harry Truman in 1947 pledged U.S. support to “free peoples” resisting subjugation, starting with aid to Greece and Turkey. The motivation was plain: containment of Soviet communism. The original Monroe Doctrine wasn’t limited to the Americas anymore, it was worldwide. Truman sent U.S. troops to fight communism North Korea in 1950 without a formal declaration of war, setting a precedent for executive overreach.

In 1953, the United States and Britain orchestrated the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran. Two years earlier, Mossadegh had the temerity to insist that his country, rather than western companies, should own Iran’s oil, nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Goodbye, Mossadegh; hello Shah Pahlavi. Goodbye Anglo-American, hello British Petroleum.

Eisenhower extended the doctrinal logic to the Middle East in 1957, authorizing force against threats from “international communism.” The Suez Crisis and Soviet influence in the region provided the justification.Now even indirect ideological threats were enough to provoke American involvement. When the U.S. sent troops into Lebanon in 1958, that doctrine turned into boots on the ground. 

John F. Kennedy didn’t declare a single doctrine, but his “flexible response” strategy amplified the trend. The Bay of Pigs fiasco underscored America’s determination to contain communism in itsbackyard while projecting power globally. Covert operations had become routine, and Vietnam, with its escalating body counts (more than a million civilians may have been killed), exposed the human cost when doctrines shed their restraints.

Richard Nixon’s Doctrine in 1969 tried to shift some of the burden to America’s allies through arms sales and aid. All the while the States keptexpanding indirect interventions — bombing Cambodia (between 50,000 and 150,000 civilian deaths); supporting the 1973 coup in Chilethat ousted the socialist Salvador Allende; and backing Operation Condor across South America, where tens of thousands of people werekilled or “disappeared.” Proxy wars offered deniability and effectively did away with congressional oversight. 

Jimmy Carter’s Doctrine focused on the Persian Gulf, declaring it a vital U.S. interest and pledging military force against any external threats. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and Iran’s revolution provided the perfect rationale. After all, oil, being infinitely more valuable than bananas, apparently justified pre-emptive military action.

Ronald Reagan took it even further, supporting anti-communist “freedom fighters” worldwide, from the mujahideen in Afghanistan to the Contras in Nicaragua. The Iran-Contra scandal, the U.S. was secretly selling arms to the embargoed Iran and using the proceeds to fund the Contras in Nicaragua, showed that covert operations were now the order of the day, and formal U.S. doctrine was now unbridled. 

Subsequent presidents kept expanding the scope. George H.W. Bush’s “New World Order” framed interventions as enforcing international norms, as in the Gulf War of 1991. Bill Clinton emphasized humanitarian enlargement and America’s “responsibility to protect,” leading to American actions in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo, often without full congressional approval. 

George W. Bush’s post-9/11 doctrine enshrined pre-emptive war based on bogus justification and revenge for the Twin Towers attack (“Iraq hasweapons of mass destruction!”). In Iraq and Afghanistan upwards of a million civilians lost their lives.

Barack Obama favored “leading from behind,” drones, and multilateral cover (as in the NATO bombing Libya), lowering the threshold for lethal force while also reducing visible U.S. footprints. Each step made intervention easier, more discretionary, and less accountable.

And then along came Trump. His “America First” doctrine has revived Monroe on steroids. The “Donroe Doctrine” allowed for interventions in Venezuela (framed as anti-drug operations, but really targeting BRICS ties), pressure on Greenland, and (urged on by Israel) the bombing on Iran. Was this resource security, countering China and Russia, foreign influence on American policy makers, or simply the brute exercise of power? 

Each president widened the doctrinal net as the U.S. moved from hemispheric defense to global pre-emption. Congressional approval for waging war ,which is required by the US constitution, is routinely bypassed and pretexts multiply. The Constitution has become nothing more than a quaint artifact, where every guardrail the founders put in place, except, of course, the Second Amendment, an individual’s right to bear firearms, is conveniently ignored.

When a reporter asked, “Any evidence Iran was about to attack the United States?” he was told by Karoline Leavitt: “The president had a good feeling” Iran was going to attack. This is the natural culmination of doctrinal creep: wars based on feelings and hunches, ignoring its own intelligence agencies and with Congress reduced to the role of bystander.

More than two thousand years ago, the Roman Republic turned into the Roman Empire, and the parallels with the U.S. in 2026 are instructive. The Roman Senate grew weak, corrupt, and unable to check ambitious generals and emperors. Expensive wars of expansion became routine. 

In a 2024 article on The Intercept, “How the Israeli Attack on Iran Could Seed a New World War,” I warned that regional conflicts risk drawing in great powers and spiraling out of control. The war on Iran, launched with minimal public debate and thin justification, is exactly the kind of overreach I was talking about. It turned defensive postures into offensive strategies, at the expense of long-term stability.

America once had at least the veneer of leading the world with capital, innovation, free speech, and foreign aid. Before our eyes, it is being transformed into an imperial power where might makes right. Mark Carney, Canada’s Prime Minister, recently said that the idea that the United States was ever as righteous as it branded itself was mostly a fairy tale, one we told ourselves to justify military interventions on behalf of corporate America.

Presidential doctrine, which started as Monroe’s neighborhood watch program, has become a global power play with ever-changing rules and increasingly existential stakes. The question now is whether the next doctrinal stretch takes us somewhere we cannot return from,if we haven’t already reached that point.