On New Year’s Eve, President Trump hosted his annual black-tie party at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. In attendance were Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Vice President J.D. Vance, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and countless other high-profile guests from the Republican sphere and beyond. The evening featured fine dining, conga dancing, live music and even a live painting of Jesus Christ, which was later auctioned off for a modest $3 million.
As the president entered the event, a reporter asked whether he had any New Year’s resolutions. Holding hands with First Lady Melania Trump, the President replied simply: “peace on Earth.”
Three days later, in the early hours of Jan. 3, the United States military launched a series of attacks across northern Venezuela, striking major infrastructure targets before ultimately invading President Nicolás Maduro’s compound in the capital city of Caracas. After breaching the compound, United States troops captured Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. The two were immediately flown to New York City to await trial.
The full details of the operation are still emerging. What is clear is that this marks one of Trump’s most dramatic acts of foreign aggression to date.
Arguably, the most suspect aspect of the operation is the role of oil. According to OPEC’s 2025 Annual Report, Venezuela ranks first in the world in proven oil reserves, with 302.2 billion barrels. The United States, meanwhile, ranks first in global oil demand, nearly as much as China and India combined.
On Jan. 14, a Trump administration official confirmed that the United Stateshad completed its first sale of Venezuelan oil, valued at approximately $500 million. Semafor reported that revenue from the sale is currently being held in bank accounts controlled by the United States government. Furthermore, according to a second senior administration official, the primary account is located in Qatar. What this relationship means in the long term remains to be seen. However, the Trump administration has made clear its intention to take an active role in rebuilding Venezuela, on its own terms, for better or for worse.
As I have tried to make sense of this story over the past few weeks, I keep returning to the same question: how does this move fit into American history? Does this represent an unprecedented display of foreign aggression, or is it simply the continuation of a long-standing U.S. foreign policy tradition?
Answering that question requires nearly a 200-year historical refresher.
In 1823, speaking before Congress, President James Monroe articulated what would become known as the Monroe Doctrine. Among other things, the doctrine warned European powers against imposing their political systems on the Americas. Monroe declared, “We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.”
This statement alone positions the United States as a hemispheric safeguard against competing ideologies. The phrase “our peace and safety” implicitly binds U.S. interests to the entire Western Hemisphere, inserting a sense of collective responsibility that has, for nearly two centuries, been used to justify American expansion and intervention throughout the region. The tradition continued under presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt, who expanded this logic through the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, granting the United States authority to interpose itself throughout the hemisphere at will.
Two centuries later and Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed this same logic while defending the strikes in Venezuela on the Jan. 4 edition of Meet the Press. The White House website later highlighted his remarks. “This is the Western Hemisphere. This is where we live and we’re not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operation for adversaries, competitors, and rivals of the United States.”
What is notable about his comments is the distinctly paternalistic role Rubio assigns to the United States. When he claims that the Western Hemisphere cannot serve as a base for United States adversaries, he implicitly treats any adversary of the United States as an adversary of the hemisphere as a whole.
By emphasizing that “this is not the Middle East” and that America’s mission is “very different,” Rubio reinforces the notion that United States involvement in the Western Hemisphere is not rooted in conquest or war — a reference to the unpopular perception of American military involvements in Iraq and Afghanistan — but in protection. This frames American power as benevolent and necessary, rather than coercive.
Taken together, Rubio’s rhetoric continues a long standing tradition of United States foreign policy leaders portraying the country as a beacon of freedom within a hemisphere that must be governed through a liberal, capitalist order. It is a declaration of ideological superiority that has repeatedly been used to justify intervention.
This rhetoric has accompanied American imperial expansion for nearly two centuries where the dual nature of United States hemispheric hegemony becomes clear: the pursuit of ideological dominance alongside the protection of economic interests.
This pattern repeats itself throughout the 20th century. Nicaragua, the Panama Canal and Honduras each became sites of United States intervention justified by rhetoric about stability, protection and ideological order, while serving concrete economic or strategic interests.
Even when no single corporate interest was at stake, the preservation of a regional capitalist order led by America remained paramount. As with Venezuela today, only time will tell whether the country becomes another United States economic puppet. If history offers any guidance, however, the answer seems painfully predictable.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
