Rich Lowry

There are all sorts of risks.

But the way he's done it so far is calculated to minimize those risks, I think.

Yeah, so the Monroe Doctrine is the idea that we have supremacy in the hemisphere, right?

So the strategic purpose of it is to

exclude European nations because they represent a significant threat to us, potentially geopolitically.

And then what happens after its initial enunciation, you get the Roosevelt corollary and the Lodge corollary, which basically kind of flip it in its head in some respects.

So instead of excluding others from intervening, we assume a right to intervene when there's disorder such that it's a threat to us or it might

tempt someone else to come in and intervene.

Yeah.

So the Trump corollary is basically just the Roosevelt corollary or the Lodge corollary.

It's not a new corollary, but he likes putting his names on things.

So he has to have his name on a corollary.

But this is a traditional American approach he's taken.

Now, we've gotten away from it the last 30 years.

The last real manifestation of this was when George H.W.

Bush went into Panama.

But this is...

we went into Latin America on much less provocation than this.

Countries would just be poorly run fiscally.

And we'd go in and say, okay, we're taking over your finances because we don't want you in debt to Britain or Germany because that might tempt them to come in and seize your territory or take control of your government.