He’s going to do whatever he thinks he can get away with.

Are the other of the nations of the world really so helpless? Hopeless? If you want to roll over and die, that’s up to you, but if it were me, I would fight to the death, even and especially if it were a lost cause. I mean, look at the guerilla fighters who fought back against the mighty US in Vietnam or Iraq. They gave the US hell and they sure didn’t have trillions of dollars to work with. Sure, the guerilla fighters lost a lot, but they made damn certain that America didn’t “win.”

If you have a better idea, let’s hear it.

A coalition of nations that are opposed to imperialism needs to be formed. Only a world united against imperialism can stop these imperialist powers.

Exactly. The majority aren’t going to take action against something that isn’t on their radar. The majority may just be along for the ride, but that doesn’t change the destination.

Some Americans absolutely want this. But, yes, it’s probably not a majority. Of course, I don’t think the majority can, or will, do anything about it.

The world needs to take the threat of the US very, very seriously. Don’t assume that upcoming US elections will fix the problem. There’s no guarantee those elections will even take place. Take steps to protect yourselves now.

I made a mistake. I typed lower case “liberal” when I should have typed upper case “Liberal.”

You’re right that a rules-based global order would certainly have some liberal characteristics. What I’m saying is that a rules-based order does not have to be purely ideologically Liberal, as in strictly adhere to the tenets of Liberalism, in order to be a functioning rules-based order. In fact, I think it would be best if the order were ideologically secular, otherwise non-Liberal nations would be left out of the order, significantly reducing its effectiveness.

I guess the way I understood the original intent was that we were attempting to set up a bulwark against further expansion from European colonialism.

That was the original intent. That is absolutely true. But the doctrine has evolved or expanded since. One major addition was the Roosevelt Corollary, right around the turn of the 20th century.

The corollary states that the United States could intervene in the internal affairs of Latin American countries if they committed flagrant wrongdoings that “loosened the ties of civilized society.”

Eventually, the “wrongdoings” came to include anything related to the “spread of communism.”

I don’t think the average American citizen wants hemispheric domination.

That’s probably true, but some Americans absolutely do want that, and many of those people are a part of Trump’s political coalition. This new enhanced version of the Roosevelt Corollary is sometimes called the “Donroe Doctrine” or the “Trump Corollary.”

Your sentence about control over the Western hemisphere implies that the majority of Americans are pro-imperialist.

Aren’t they?

The Monroe doctrine has evolved since 1823. It has been invoked or used as inspiration or justification for US involvement, solicited or unsolicited, in the political and economic affairs of several countries in Central and South America, especially those with socialist governments.

Even major European allies, more cautious and measured in tone, carefully signaled concern about the operation’s legality while largely aligning with the U.S. on policy.

Grow a pair, Europe.

Is the edict not the Monroe doctrine? Or some modern iteration of it?

We need a rules-based world order, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be Liberal. If the countries of the world decide that the rules-based order should be Liberal, fine, but if a majority of countries decide to embrace a different ideology, or decide to be ideologically secular, then so be it. The important thing is that the rules-based order be democratic. That’s what matters most.

Deviation from the edict is breaking it’s terms.

Yeah and I don’t think the American people want to deviate from the edict. I think a majority of us support the edict, either tacitly or explicitly. I think they want our country to have ultimate control over the resources of the Western hemisphere. And maybe the world, at least eventually.

The recently released National Security Strategy also considered a rebranding of the Monroe Doctrine to guarantee US control over the region’s strategic resources.

This is what the American people want, apparently.

The US has been increasing oil production like crazy for years now, even as most other oil producing countries have been slowing down production. Why has everyone else been slowing down? Because they don’t want to overproduce and drive down the price, especially since many are expecting oil demand to peak in the near future and begin to slowly decline as more and more countries diversify away from fossil fuels. I don’t know why the US wants to keep increasing production so much, but if we increase Venezuelan oil production significantly, we’ll just further drive down the price, reducing profits. That becomes even more true if global oil demand drops faster than expected, which is what should happen to minimize the impacts of climate change as much as possible.

we are still discovering (and “proving”) new oil reserves

That’s true, but each new oil discovery is likely to be more expensive to extract than the last, and because it takes energy to extract oil, we have to consider the energy return on investment (EROI) of all future oil extraction. Once we get to the point where it requires a barrel of oil equivalent of energy to extract a barrel of oil out of the ground, the EROI drops to 1:1 and there’s no profit to be made, from an energy standpoint, regardless of price. Oil discovery in the US has decreased from an EROI of 1000:1 in 1919 to about 5:1 in the 2010s.

No matter how you look at it, the world has just got to stop using oil wherever physically possible.

We have less than 50 years of proven oil reserves left, and we’re doing everything we can to ensure that we run out at least that fast, while also ensuring that we pass critical climate tipping points.

Ok, well they’re going to continue to be ruled without their consent, so what’s your point?

I never mentioned Maduro. Not once. I never said he was even a somewhat competent leader, let alone a saint. My problem isn’t that a bad leader had been removed from power, it’s that a nation’s right to sovereignty and independence has been violated.