MIGHT IS RIGHT

From Tripoli in 1801 to Caracas in 2026, American interventionism reveals a consistent exercise of raw power, unburdened by global legal constraints

- BY AJISH P. JOY

When the United States launched its first major military intervention abroad, it was a fledgling republic barely 25 years old.

In 1801, president Thomas Jefferson decided that America would no longer follow the European custom of paying protection money to North African Barbary states to keep Mediterranean trade routes safe. Instead, he sent the US Marines to war.

The campaign against Tripoli also included an ultimately unsuccessful covert expedition led by William Eaton, the US consul general in Tunis, aimed at overthrowing Tripoli's ruler and installing a more pliant alternative. Jefferson's cabinet defended the operation by arguing that the president required “no specific statutory authority” to do so. More than two centuries later, the same logic propels Washington's justification for the dramatic capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. Many described the January 3 operation as shocking and unprecedented. The brazenness of the Maduro operation and its openly transactional character, particularly the emphasis on oil, may appear new. But the underlying logic is not. For more than 200 years, the US has repeatedly acted alone, used force without international approval and justified intervention as necessary to protect its interests.

The broader framework for intervention in the Americas emerged in 1823 with the Monroe Doctrine declaring that the western hemisphere would be treated as a US sphere of influence. Over time, it became a licence for intervention. In 1904, president Theodore Roosevelt made this explicit through his 'Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine,' claiming the right for the US to act as an international police force in Latin America when governments were deemed corrupt, unstable or incapable.