What Teddy Roosevelt has to do with Trump's moves in Venezuela and Greenland

"Until recently, the terms were relegated mostly to the pages of dusty history books. But President Trump is leaning heavily on his own understanding of these concepts to justify his attack on Venezuela, his bullying tactics aimed at acquiring Greenland and his latest threats to strike Iran. At a news conference this month, Trump said U.S. troops captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro"

"In 1823, President James Monroe cautioned Europe in his address to Congress, declaring that "any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of" the Western Hemisphere would be seen as "dangerous to our peace and safety." Monroe's declaration came at a time when Spain was struggling to hang on to its North American possessions areas on the continent that included parts of Florida and vast areas of the present-day U.S. Southwest."

"The Monroe Doctrine "emerged from a geopolitical context in which the United States was a rising power, staking a claim to the Western Hemisphere as its sphere of influence," says Jay Sexton, director of the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy at the University of Missouri. At its inception, the doctrine "simply stated what European powers could not do in the Western Hemisphere" but was deliberately open-ended, allowing "later Americans [to] redeploy it or reimagine it for a new context," adds Sexton,"

The Monroe Doctrine originated in 1823 when President James Monroe warned European powers against extending their political systems into the Western Hemisphere, calling such attempts dangerous to U.S. peace and safety. The doctrine arose as the United States was rising and asserting the Western Hemisphere as its sphere of influence. Its original wording barred European actions in the region but remained deliberately open-ended, enabling later leaders to reinterpret it. Over time, U.S. leaders reimagined the doctrine into more interventionist policies, applying its logic to 20th- and 21st-century assertions of influence and force.

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