The Monroe Doctrine, the Donroe Doctrine, or the BIBI Doctrine? The evolution of a politics of impunity

 

I want to map something out that I think people keep missing because they’re stuck in moral language—“norms,” “rules,” “international order”—when what’s actually happening is more basic.

It’s about impunity.

And impunity, in geopolitics, doesn’t mean “nobody complains.” It means: nobody who matters can impose costs you care about.

1) The Monroe Doctrine was always about the right to call the shots

Start with the Monroe Doctrine. In its cleanest form, it’s the U.S. telling European powers: don’t recolonize the Americas, don’t interfere, this is our sphere. It’s a line in the sand—separate spheres, non-colonization, non-intervention—presented as principle, but anchored in power. Monroe is the early branding of a deeper claim: we get to define what happens in this hemisphere

Authority links: National Archives (Monroe Doctrine) | U.S. State Dept. Historian (Monroe)

1.5) The Roosevelt Corollary: Monroe becomes “police power”

But Monroe didn’t stay as “Europe, stay out.” In 1904, Theodore Roosevelt adds what becomes known as the Roosevelt Corollary—and this is where the logic shifts from soft-powered sphere-claim to righteous claims, backed by ostentatious enforcement.

The Corollary basically says: if countries in the Western Hemisphere are unstable, mismanaged, or can’t meet obligations, the U.S. reserves the right to intervene as a kind of hemispheric “police power”—in part to prevent European intervention and debt-collection gunboat politics. But let’s be clear: it was a justification to intervene as the U.S. saw fit, within the Americas.

Authority links: National Archives (Roosevelt Corollary) | U.S. State Dept. Historian (Roosevelt Corollary)

So if Monroe is “this is our sphere,” Roosevelt is the upgrade that says “and we’ll step in whenever we decide (our) order needs to be preserved.”

Keep that move in mind, because it’s the bridge between doctrine as boundary and doctrine as intervention method.

2) The Donroe Doctrine is the Monroe Doctrine with the mask off

Now fast forward and you get what people have started calling the “Donroe Doctrine”—Trump’s corollary to Monroe framed within his 'America First' logics. The reporting is pretty explicit that Trump is reworking the Monroe logic into a posture of raw dominance and coercion in the Western Hemisphere (and beyond), and even linking it to concrete moves—Venezuela intervention, Greenland, Iran, and threats elsewhere, tariffs-as-leverage.

Key reporting: Reuters (Donroe coverage hub) | EL PAÍS English (U.S. / Donroe analysis) | Defense News (U.S. national security strategy framing)

But the Donroe Doctrine isn’t the real innovation. It’s the marketing wrapper. And if you want to be precise about the genealogy: Donroe reads like Monroe + the Roosevelt Corollary’s “police power” instinct—but updated into a more openly transactional, coercive style that’s less about “stability” rhetoric and more about leverage, extraction, and claims.

3) What this really is: the BIBI Doctrine — impunity as method

But what the Donroe doctrine really is, and what Trump is really admiring, and trying to emulate, is what I’ll call the Bibi Doctrine—Benjamin Netanyahu’s nickname and his way of engaging geopolitically...

The Bibi Doctrine is not a formal policy paper. It’s an operating method. And the core of it is simple:

Take whatever you want. Do whatever you want. Because nobody’s going to stop you.

Why?

Because Israel has learned something structural: when your biggest backers are the U.S. and key Western allies—and those allies treat your security as non-negotiable—then you can push far past what “international law” is supposed to allow, and you can absorb condemnation without absorbing real consequences.

Context link: The Guardian (Western leaders’ “steadfast support” framing)

And what does that look like in practice?

It looks like cross-border reach and escalation that would be suicidal for most states:

• Regular incursions and attacks in Lebanon (airstrikes, cross-border fire, escalation cycles).
• Assassinations / covert operations inside Iran that Iranian authorities and multiple outlets have blamed on Israel (and which Israel often neither confirms nor denies).
• Israel striking Houthi targets in Yemen—repeatedly—because it knows it can expand the battlefront without being meaningfully contained.

Reporting links: Reuters (Haniyeh killed in Tehran – what we know) | Reuters (Israeli official later claims responsibility) | Reuters (Israel–Iran escalation timeline)

You can call it “deterrence,” “preemption,” “counterterrorism,” if you'd like. But we all know the point is pretty offensive: reach, strike, escalate, normalize it, and dare the world to do more than talk.

And the reason this becomes a “doctrine” is because it’s not just violence—it’s violence plus impunity—plus it’s working (in the narrow, brutal sense of “working” as a method that keeps going unpunished).

4) Why Trump wants it: decline-management, not just personality

Now bring Trump in—as a strategist of decline.

At the core of MAGA is one clear point, that while it may have started as political rhetoric, is actually quite real at this point: Simply put, America is not what it was. “Make America Great Again” only makes sense if greatness has been lost - and not just the usual ‘racialized’ critiques of what 1960's America was like - but rather on an even more systemic level.

It is visible around Trump, where you have a whole ecosystem—Project 2025 included—that is openly oriented toward a hard right wing state reconfiguration to enforce sovereignty and executive capacity, in radically rapturous ways from the previous status quo.

Authority link: Project 2025 (full document, Heritage), DemocracyNow!, ACLU. 

Economically, the argument is also not random. The tariff obsession, the bargaining posture, the willingness to blow up old arrangements, resource grabs, all in an attempt to reposition the U.S.—to allow it to hold on to power for just a little bit longer.

Yanis Varoufakis has laid out the internal logic: use disruption, tariffs, currency pressure, and leverage to try to force production and advantage back toward the U.S., in a way that echoes earlier U.S. shocks like Nixon-era moves.

Link: Varoufakis (on Trump’s economic masterplan, UNHerd)

It looks like this:

• Trump sees decline (or believes it).
• He sees a narrowing window.
• He watches Israel operate with impunity because everyone is scared of the U.S.
• And he draws the obvious conclusion: If Israel can do that because they’re backed by us… why don’t we do it directly?

No “rules.” No altruistic “values.” No “alliances.”

Only late-empire pragmatism: take what you can while you still can.

5) The pattern: resource grabs, chokepoints, leverage

And once you see it, the map becomes legible:

• Greenland isn’t a random fantasy: it’s Arctic positioning, maritime rights, minerals, strategic depth. (Axios (Greenland context) | TIME (Greenland + tariffs))
• Venezuela isn’t “democracy promotion”: it’s oil and pesky thorn-in-our-side hemisphere enforcement—Monroe logic with a gunboat vibe. (Reuters (Venezuela + hemisphere framing))
• Iran certainly isn’t about democracy promotion and allowing protests/free speech—especially as the U.S. itself is currently brutally cracking down on protest, and recently killed one.
• Tariffs aren’t just economics: they’re coercion tools, pressure applied like a business deal at geopolitical scale, and all bringing back notions of the late 20th century and the 'asian tigers' infant industry logics. (Reuters (tariffs-as-leverage framing))

So yes—Monroe → (Roosevelt Corollary) → Donroe is the storyline. But the deeper claim reality is that Donroe is Bibi-logic scaled up, where impunity becomes a holistic governing style.

The bottom line

So this is what I want to put on the table as an alternative idea:

We’re watching an illuminating moment where global politics is openly less about “rules” and more about who can act without consequence. The Monroe Doctrine was an early assertion of sphere-power. The Roosevelt Corollary was the moment that sphere-power became explicit intervention authority—the “power” to do (i.e. take) what we want. The Donroe Doctrine is that posture rebranded and reactivated. But what’s powering it psychologically and strategically is the lesson of the Bibi Doctrine (and a level of power and impunity Trump is infatuated with):

Do whatever you want, take whatever you want—because the world will complain, perhaps even  protest or send a ‘strongly worded rebuke’; but ultimately, nobody will stop you.

And if you believe your empire is declining, and you're like Trump, and want to be seen as its savior, that lesson becomes irresistible.

Related reading inside the ecosystem

• America First Isn’t Isolationism—It’s a License for Empire (Alternative Ideas)
• Sovereignty Without Permission: Why Latin America Needs their own version of “NATO” (Alternative Ideas)
• Why We Need Parallel Infrastructures (AnotherDemocracy)
• Interpreting Capitalism (hub)
• AIBIA (hub)

This post is part of Alternative Ideas—and it sits inside a wider ecosystem of “parallel” projects that try to think (and build) beyond mainstream political common sense. Related hubs: AnotherDemocracy.com, InterpretingCapitalism.com, and AIBIA.