The 20th-century international order isn’t being replaced now by a more just system that restrains the appetites of powerful nations. It’s quite the opposite.

US President Donald Trump`s vision of U.S. foreign policy has been treated as something of a puzzle ever since he entered the political fray in 2015. But over the weekend, it became abundantly, startlingly clear.

Assessments of Trump as an isolationist or an opponent of overseas entanglements abruptly ended with his middle-of-the-night capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The assertion by Trump that the U.S. will now "run" the Latin American country, in a press conference that also included a lot of attention to Venezuela`s oil industry, gave observers an even clearer perspective. Add to that picture the administration`s National Security Strategy released in December, which declares a "Trump Corollary" - or what Trump is calling the "Donroe Doctrine" - to "reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere."

This vision, which comes into focus, is one of unbridled imperialism in pursuit of resource extraction and hemispheric domination. And it would bring the world back to the late-19th century`s "spheres of influence" where the great powers, now with the U.S. in a leading role, divide the world up for conquest and extraction.

The administration is extremely clear about this. Touting the operation to capture Maduro, the administration posted images on social media proclaiming: "This Is Our Hemisphere."

In claiming the Western Hemisphere as "ours," Trump asserts a U.S. right to the resources of other sovereign countries. In Venezuela`s case, that means oil.

Ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro arrives at the Wall Street heliport ahead of his appearance in federal court in New York, on Monday, Jan. 5, 2026.Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

"We`re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country," Trump said during his Jan. 3 press conference after Maduro`s capture.

This is what the end of the international order, built since the end of World War II, looks like. That order relied on international institutions and laws that protected the sovereign right of nations to exist and govern themselves free from unprovoked aggression, respected by global players in theory, if not always in practice.

That order, dealt a lethal blow by the U.S. with the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and made a laughingstock by Israel`s assaults on Gaza in recent years, was at times real and at times fake. But it provided an alternative political structure to hopefully avoid the total disaster that befell the world following the rush of Great Power competition that began in the late-19th century, enabling the rise of independent countries in the wake of colonialism.

The 20th-century international order isn`t being replaced now by a more just system that restrains the appetites of powerful nations - including the U.S., which has flouted international law time and time again - but with the ancient barbarism that might makes right. It is the full embrace of what one anonymous architect of the Iraq War once said: "We`re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

That infamous quote had to be said on background back then, but Trump administration officials state it plainly now.

"We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power," deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said in an interview with CNN`s Jake Tapper on Monday. "These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time."

President Donald Trump declared that the U.S. would "run" Venezuela after capturing President Nicolás Maduro in an early morning military operation.JIM WATSON via Getty Images

This is not what the Monroe Doctrine, which Trump bases his new vision on, was intended for. Proclaimed by President James Monroe in 1823, the Monroe Doctrine was a defensive declaration of U.S. opposition to European meddling in the Western Hemisphere.

Trump`s new vision instead harks back to the early 20th century, when President Theodore Roosevelt altered the Monroe Doctrine with his "Roosevelt Corollary." This corollary transformed the doctrine into an "obligation" for the U.S. to intervene militarily in the Western Hemisphere to maintain U.S. supremacy. This alteration of the doctrine came packaged with the mythology of Manifest Destiny, which held that the U.S. had a divine right to territorial expansion in pursuit of economic growth, and with the racial ideologies of the time.

"Chronic wrongdoing" by America`s southern neighbors would "require intervention by some civilized nation" to exercise "an international police power" to restore order and open economic opportunities, Roosevelt declared.

For decades afterwards, the U.S. intervened routinely to overthrow governments, prop up dictators and protect corporate interests across Latin America and the Caribbean.

While U.S. meddling in Latin America and the Caribbean never stopped, it focused largely, although not exclusively, on free trade deals and narcotics interdiction after a series of Reagan-era abuses in the 1980s and the end of the Cold War. And rarely, although not never, was it quite so blatant as the midnight capture of another world leader that followed no precipitating event. The Trump Corollary, as expressed in the domination of Venezuela, seeks to go back to the old days of imperial control and domination.

International laws that protect the sovereign rights of other nations are mere "international niceties," according to Miller. In rejecting the international order, for all its faults, and declaring a sovereign right to domination, the Trump administration seeks a system in which the largest, most powerful countries have a right to exert their power over others where they have regional dominance.

President Theodore Roosevelt altered the Monroe Doctrine to make it an "obligation" of the U.S. to use military force to control the Western Hemisphere.Bettmann via Getty Images

That includes seizing territory, as Miller threatened to do by taking Greenland by force from Denmark, and using military force to exert control, as Trump is doing by threatening interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez with "a situation worse than Maduro" if she does not do as he says.

Indeed, in recent days, Trump has already threatened to seize Greenland, overthrow Colombian President Gustavo Petro, and "do something" in Mexico, all while chatting with reporters on Air Force One.

"Sounds good to me," Trump said when asked about toppling the democratically elected government of Colombia.

The White House affirmed Trump`s threats to Denmark that it is seeking to acquire Greenland, including "utilizing the U.S. military," according to a statement from press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

This followed Miller`s assertion of the administration`s doctrine that only the U.S. has the right to the North American island.

"By what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland?" Miller said on CNN. "What is the basis of their territorial claim? What is their basis of having Greenland as a colony of Denmark? The United States is the power of NATO."

The past five years have seen other regional powers, Russia and Israel, assert a similar right to dominance with brutal results. But the U.S., once upon a time and often with blatant hypocrisy, had at least promoted an international order that aspired to restrain the brutality that visited the world in the first half of the 20th century - no more.

Trump and Miller would rather return to their vision of the state of nature that existed before the world learned a bloody lesson. Another age of naked imperialism can only end in calamity.