After Moving on Venezuela, Trump Drops Clues About His Next Target

After Venezuela, Trump Signals Bigger Ambitions

Less than two days after overseeing the ouster of Venezuela’s leader and asserting U.S. control over the country’s oil, President Trump began hinting at what might come next.

In interviews on Sunday and during an extended conversation with reporters aboard Air Force One on his way back from Mar-a-Lago, Trump swung his attention to Colombia, Cuba and even Greenland — offering a window into how emboldened he feels after the swift capture of Nicolás Maduro on narco-trafficking charges.

He boasted that the United States is now “in charge” of Venezuela and tied the operation directly to a revived, more aggressive version of the Monroe Doctrine, which he has branded in his own style as the “Donroe doctrine.”

A Revived Monroe Doctrine — Trump Edition

Trump did not spell out all the details of his “Donroe doctrine,” nor did he say clearly whether it applies beyond the assault on Caracas. But he made it clear that he sees the Venezuela mission as a template for a broader assertion of American power across the Western Hemisphere.

He suggested that the U.S. forces now deployed in the Caribbean could be redirected if necessary — and pointed next toward Colombia and its president, Gustavo Petro.

Trump described Colombia as being “run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States,” claiming that Petro controls “cocaine mills and cocaine factories.”

“He’s not going to be doing it for very long,” Trump said on Air Force One. When asked whether he was contemplating an operation against Colombia, he replied, “It sounds good to me.”

The threat may have been more rhetorical than imminent, a way to leverage the rapid removal of Maduro to pressure Petro. But Trump’s framing was explicit: he sees the Venezuela action as proof of U.S. dominance and his own readiness to use force.

“American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again,” he declared when he first announced the Venezuela strike from his Florida club.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio spent much of Sunday softening Trump’s repeated claim that the United States would “run” Venezuela for the foreseeable future, but a more nuanced version of this approach is laid out in the administration’s new National Security Strategy — particularly on page 15, which reads like a blueprint for this new territorial assertiveness.

The “Trump Corollary” and Control of Strategic Assets

Trump keeps a portrait of President James Monroe near his Oval Office desk, alongside Alexander Hamilton and Andrew Jackson.

“The Monroe Doctrine is a big deal,” Trump said, adding, “but we’ve superseded it by a lot, a real lot.”

He appeared to be pointing to what the National Security Strategy calls the “Trump Corollary” to Monroe’s doctrine. That corollary asserts that the United States has the right to “restore American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere” and to block “non-Hemispheric competitors” — especially China — from positioning military assets or controlling “strategically vital” resources.

That last phrase mirrors Trump’s own justification for claiming rights over Venezuela’s oil, the largest proven reserves in the world. In his remarks about the operation, he mentioned oil repeatedly, describing plans to refurbish neglected infrastructure, manage production and compensate U.S. companies he says were wronged when Venezuela nationalized their assets.

“We built that whole industry there, and they just took it over like we were nothing,” Trump said.

“We had a president who decided not to do anything about it,” he added, referencing President Biden. “So we did something about it. We’re late, but we did something.”

Richard Haass, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former national security and State Department official, called the approach “the unvarnished essence of the Trump doctrine.”

Power, Not Democracy, at the Center

Trump’s emerging framework is less a global strategy than a regional one. He has not said whether, if Washington claims exclusive privileges in the Western Hemisphere, China would be free to do the same in Asia. But by declaring the Americas off-limits to outside powers seeking oil and other resources, he is essentially signaling that only U.S. firms — including some linked to his allies — should profit from Venezuela’s reserves.

He did acknowledge that Venezuelan oil shipments to China would likely continue, noting that Beijing currently buys between half and three-quarters of Venezuela’s limited output.

What Trump did not emphasize was democracy. In discussing Maduro’s fall, he never mentioned restoring free elections or rebuilding Venezuelan democratic institutions, despite the country’s long history of competitive politics before Hugo Chávez took power in 1999.

That omission tracks with the administration’s latest National Security Strategy, which largely sidelines democracy promotion — a theme once central to the doctrines of both Republican and Democratic presidents, including during Trump’s first term.

Even as he considered what might come after Maduro, Trump did not publicly call for installing Edmundo González as president, despite U.S. recognition of González as the rightful victor of the 2024 election that Maduro claimed for himself. González had run as a stand-in candidate for popular opposition leader María Corina Machado, who was barred from running.

“The omission creates an immediate problem for the political legitimacy of the Venezuelan government,” said Richard Fontaine, chief executive of the Center for a New American Security and a former top aide to Senator John McCain. “Many hoped this operation would bring freedom, not just a new policy on drugs and oil.”

He added that the return of democracy in Venezuela “does not obviously appear” among Trump’s priorities.

Instead, Trump seems ready to work with elements of the old Maduro apparatus — as long as they obey Washington and provide access to oil and compensation for past nationalizations. It’s a nation-building project very different from those pursued by George W. Bush in Afghanistan and Iraq, where democracy was at least the stated goal. Trump’s mission is more narrowly transactional: secure control over valuable resources.

A Doctrine From Another Era, Reimagined

Trump’s advisors are openly trying to re-energize the Monroe Doctrine, but the context is nothing like it was 200 years ago.

When Monroe first issued the doctrine, the U.S. had roughly 10 million people and a modest navy of a few dozen ships with about 3,500 sailors and 500 officers. That was tiny compared with the military presence the Pentagon recently assembled near Venezuela.

Back then, newly independent Latin American nations were shaking off rule by Spain and Portugal, and Washington’s main fear was a renewed colonial push from Europe. Monroe’s doctrine was meant to deter that interference, though it was unclear whether the young republic had the power to enforce it.

It’s uncertain how much of this history Trump knows. But as he revived the doctrine over the weekend, he said, “We sort of forgot about it. It was very important, but we forgot about it. We don’t forget about it anymore under our new National Security Strategy. American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.”

From Venezuela to Greenland

Trump’s comments appear aimed in large part at China and Russia — the two countries he frequently cites as strategic rivals. Both also figure into his renewed interest in Greenland, the vast, ice-covered territory that he insists the U.S. “needs” for national security.

He first floated the idea of acquiring Greenland publicly at Mar-a-Lago about a year ago, then dropped the subject for a while. (He has likewise temporarily backed off talk of reclaiming the Panama Canal or making Canada the 51st state.)

Now, in the wake of the Venezuela operation, he seems to be sketching out a similar argument for Greenland: that the territory holds critical resources, potentially including rare earth minerals, and that the U.S. cannot afford to let others control them.

“We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One Sunday night. “Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place.”

“Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he added, suggesting that Copenhagen lacks the capacity to protect the territory. To underscore his point, he mocked Denmark’s contribution to Greenland’s defense: “They added one more dog sled.”

Pushback From Denmark and Practical Limits

Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, responded sharply to Trump’s renewed interest.

“It makes absolutely no sense to talk about the U.S. needing to take over Greenland,” she wrote on social media. “The U.S. has no right to annex any of the three countries in the Danish Kingdom.”

Unlike Venezuela, Greenland provides no easy pretext for U.S. intervention, and asserting control there could severely strain relations with a NATO ally. The economic payoff is uncertain, too, given the high cost of exploiting any resources under Greenland’s ice.

Restoring Venezuela’s devastated oil industry will also be extremely expensive. Trump himself acknowledged that “the infrastructure is rotten, rusty.”

Yet despite his reputation as a deal-maker obsessed with costs, those long-term price tags don’t seem to faze him. He appears to view Venezuela, Greenland and other possible targets — including Gaza and, half-jokingly or not, even Canada — as strategic investments that will “pay for themselves” over time.

In the process, Trump seems intent on surpassing Monroe, not just reviving him. Where Monroe sought to keep foreign powers out of the Americas, Trump is openly talking about using American power to claim resources and rewrite the map in ways that past presidents only hinted at.