Greg Ip

It seemed unnecessary.

The Soviet Union was gone.

The Europeans were our allies.

And it also seemed kind of unseemly.

Those were all now, for the most part, fairly healthy democracies, and they were all friendly towards the United States.

What kind of neighbor would America be to be going around threatening to meddle in their affairs?

In fact, Obama's Secretary of State in 2013 said the Monroe Doctrine is dead.

And so in some sense, you could argue that globalization became a superior way for the United States to project its economic influence than imperialism did because we could trade with these countries.

We could invest in them.

We could get all the benefits of their resources without having to send gunboats into their harbors.

Exactly.

Why invade a country in pursuit of its resources when, for the most part, throughout the Western Hemisphere, they're available to any American investor at the right price?

I think the most important way it's different is that the Donro doctrine, as the name suggests, is very specific to Donald Trump.

Remember how he talked on and on and on during the election campaign about invading Venezuela?

No.

Yeah, no, I don't remember that either.

I thought I was covering that.

What I think that tells you is that there's a lot about Trump's foreign policy that is very idiosyncratic to Trump himself.

I don't know that anybody else in the broader foreign policy sphere or the Republican Party thinks is that important to acquire Greenland.

That kind of started with Trump.