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Does the 'Donroe Doctrine change US foreign policy?
The Independent
|January 07, 2026
Geopolitics has been gifted a new term by Donald Trump: the “Donroe Doctrine”.
It’s a portmanteau of “Don” and “roe” from the fifth president of the United States, James Monroe, who developed back in 1823 what came to be known as the “Monroe Doctrine”; that asserted that the Americas, or the western hemisphere, should be a primarily American sphere of influence and power. Or, in the blunt words of the latest meme from the US State Department: “This is OUR hemisphere, and President Trump will not allow our security to be threatened.”
Who coined the “Donroe Doctrine”?
Who do you think? Rather like the renaming of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as the Trump Kennedy Center, Trump has once more attached his own name to something essentially unchanged. The Monroe Doctrine has undergone many revisions, interpretations and definitions, but its basic principle has remained constant: South, Central and North America are the United States’ backyard and foreign powers or companies operate only on Washington’s terms.
What is the “Trump Corollary”?
This story is from the January 07, 2026 edition of The Independent.
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