The Donroe Doctrine: The limited sovereignty of states and the erosion of the rules-based world order

The “Donroe Doctrine” is a neologism that has entered political and political-science usage over the past year, denoting a contemporary interpretation of the “Monroe Doctrine” and associated with the policy of the 47th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, towards the Western Hemisphere. The neologism is formed by blending the names “Donald” and “Monroe” and denotes the dominance of the United States of America within its broad zone of influence – chiefly the Western Hemisphere and the adjacent Arctic territories, including the island of Greenland – through harsh, including forceful and possibly military, methods, disregarding the interests of its allies for the sake of the country’s “national interests” as D. Trump personally conceives them. The term first appeared at the beginning of D. Trump’s second presidential term, in the work of R. Foroohar (2025). It represents an updated version of the “Monroe Doctrine”, directed against interference by the great powers of Europe and Asia in the affairs of a region the US regards as a zone of its privileged interests – above all against the presence of Russia in Venezuela, Cuba, and Brazil, and against the growing presence of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in Panama and a number of other countries of the region. Whereas the statements and corresponding actions of the new American administration are declarative, authoritarian, peremptory, and at times threatening in character, Chinese policy in the region, at least since the mid-2000s, has been consistently dynamic in its economic and credit-investment character, and quite attractive to the countries of the region (Sydorenko, 2026). The core provisions of the “Donroe Doctrine” are set out in the new National Security Strategy... (2025), adopted in November 2025, which considerably surpasses the “Monroe Doctrine” and is regarded as D. Trump’s “amendment” to it. The new doctrine proclaims Washington’s freedom of action within its own sphere of influence while, at the same time, in effect granting China and Russia a similar carte blanche in the regions they regard as their exclusive zones of influence