The Don-roe Doctrine

The Don-roe Doctrine.

When I heard trump say it, I almost fell off my chair.

I don’t believe for a second that trump knew what the Monroe Doctrine was when he struggled to pronounce it at his press conference. But the moment he rebranded it “the Don-roe Doctrine,” it clicked. That’s what this is really about.

Don—as in mafia don.

This isn’t foreign policy. It’s a shakedown.

Trump thinks like a mafioso, and business for him is no different than organized crime. He’s done it before. He did it with Ukraine during his first term, on the now-infamous 2019 call with President Zelensky: dirt on Joe Biden in exchange for Congressionally approved Javelin missiles. It was textbook extortion, the basis of his first impeachment. He got away with it.

Now he’s emboldened enough to announce his rackets to the world in public.

Another moment from the same press conference offered an important clue. Trump casually sidelined Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, claiming she lacked the support or respect of her people.

This was a blatant lie.

Machado is widely admired in Venezuela. She just won the Nobel Peace Prize. When Maduro barred her from running in the last election, the opposition candidate she backed won an estimated 70 percent of the vote. Trump knew this.

Why dismiss her?

Because Machado represents something trump cannot work with: an incorruptible actor. Someone driven by democratic values and moral principle. Corrupt people can’t make deals with uncorrupt ones. Organized crime requires criminal allies.

Step back from conventional political analysis for a moment and the picture sharpens. The most accurate lens for understanding what’s happening in Venezuela right now isn’t politics at all. It’s organized crime.

That’s what the Don-roe Doctrine is in a nutshell.

Think of how a classic protection racket works. A criminal organization claims territory. It enforces that claim through intimidation and violence. It flexes its muscle—not because it has to, but because it must be seen to.

That’s why trump was blowing up fishing boats and seizing oil tankers. Every criminal enterprise needs a show of force.

But you’ve also got to show you’re ready to make deals. That’s what pardoning the drug dealing former president of Honduras was all about. If you think trump did that to correct an injustice, or out of the goodness of his heart, I have a bridge to sell you.

Trump’s so-called war on illegal drugs—against cartels and gangs like Tren de Aragua—isn’t law enforcement. It’s extralegal. It's less like policing and more like a turf war between rival criminal organizations.

Even trump’s import tariffs fit the pattern. If you want to do business in our territory, you pay the gatekeeper.

At the centre of the current protection racket is oil.

Trump idolizes Putin, partly because Putin’s unprecedented fortune was built by skimming off the top of Russia’s oil exports after consolidating control over the energy sector. Trump wants to replicate that model in Venezuela.

But there’s a problem.

Unlike Putin, trump can’t directly control Venezuela’s oil industry. He can’t nationalize it, and he can’t force American companies to funnel profits into his pocket. What he needs is a corrupt regime willing to make a deal—a cut, quietly delivered.

That’s why democracy is an obstacle. That’s why Machado had to be dismissed.

And that’s why trump let something slip when he said, “We’re going to run the country...”

He didn’t mean it politically. He didn’t mean boots on the ground.

He meant it the way a mafia don means it.