A New Monroe Doctrine

Darrell Castle talks about the military actions taken by president Trump against the nation of Venezuela as well as some other South American and Latin American nations. Is stopping drug trafficking and importation of narcotics into the United States all there is to it? Transcription / Notes A NEW MONROE DOCTRINE Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 24th day of October in the year of our Lord 2025. I will be talking about the military actions taken by President Trump against the nation of Venezuela as well as some other South and Latin American nations. I argue that there is more involved in these actions than an effort to stop drug trafficking and also assert that countering the import of narcotics into the United States is at best a side benefit of the action against those countries. The original Monroe Doctrine has been the policy of the United States for a little over 200 years, but it has been more or less abandoned in recent years. Is Donald Trump trying to reassert that doctrine with his military efforts in the Western Hemisphere, I think he is and I will make my case today. First, let’s look at the Monroe Doctrine and what it was originally intended to be. It was first formulated or at least spoken of by President James Monroe in 1823 during his state of the union address to congress. He laid out before congress a foreign policy position that opposed European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. Essentially, he just told the Europeans, and at the time Spain was the primary nation, that we will leave you alone in Europe and not interfere in your affairs and in return this hemisphere is off limits to you. Intervention in the affairs of nations in this hemisphere by foreign powers would potentially be treated as a hostile act against the United States. This doctrine was the grand foreign policy strategy during the 19th century. The Spanish American War at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th was the capstone or high-water mark of that policy when the United States removed Spain from its last two remaining colonies in this hemisphere. The 20th century brought with it two world wars and an America victorious and willing to intervene anywhere and at anytime it wanted to. Instead of non-intervention in European affairs the U.S. now has in the neighborhood of 750 military bases on foreign soil all over the world. The doctrine has been argued about and debated since the Spanish American War, but now everything is different and far more dangerous because of nuclear weapons and the reality that one mistake by one psychopathic leader could unleash a worldwide catastrophe. We also have a new war called the war on drugs that has been raging since President Nixon proclaimed it in the early 1970’s. That war has been fought, lost and fought again since then by almost every president since Nixon. Every president at least pays lip service to stopping the scourge of drugs coming into the United States. It seems that each time one drug is somewhat controlled a new, even worse one takes its place. Cocaine, fentanyl, and other synthetic opioids for example. Unlike other presidents Trump seems to be approaching the problem as an actual war rather than using war as a turn of phrase. He has stated that the U.S. is in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels he has designated as terrorist organizations. The Trump administration delivered that notice to congress after a strike on an alleged drug boat from Venezuela. There have been several strikes since then all against supposed drug boats. The scene is usually a high-speed boat carrying several people speeding across the Caribbean when a drone unleashes a hellfire missile and the boat and all its contents disappears. Designating a group as a terrorist organization is more than just saying we don’t like those people. It deprives that group of many of the niceties of American law such as due process of law and its proponents argue that it permits the non-judicial killing of members of that group. You may recall that President Obama used it when he used to analyze and revise his kill list each Tuesday morning. He used it to kill an American citizen named Anwar al Awlaki somewhere in I believe North Africa, perhaps Somalia. He took a lot of heat for killing an American citizen without any due process but he just said he’s a member of Isis, a designated terrorist organization. So, that’s how it works, if you are a member of an organization designated as terrorist you are fair game. That’s why designating Antifa as terrorist is so significant and why a few of the group’s members have apparently fled the country. So, an actual shooting war is being conducted against the drug cartels who are of course terrorists. The President of the United States has not limited his invectives to the cartels but has extended the attacks to include the leaders of other countries, at least with words...